Today's Special

Everyday, I read a ton of great baseball articles.  Unfortunately, I have only so much time in my busy schedule to put together posts.  (In case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty long winded...)  So each Sunday, I'll post a bunch of links of articles I recommend.  You can read them, not read them.  It's up to you.  Let's put it this way, if I'm posting them, there's probably a good reason for it.

• Fangraphs' Dave Cameron continues his great Contract Crowdsourcing series.  This week, his subject was first basemen.  Check out the results.  There are some pretty surprising outcomes.
• Rob Neyer has a take on one of my all-time favorite punching bags (Giants GM, Brian Sabean), and how his "plan" helped get the Giants back to the World Series.
• Joe Posnanski gives us his take on anti-competitive nature of the intentional walk.  If there's one must read article on here, it's Part 1 and Part 2.
• Fire Brand of the American League's Charlie Saponara takes an objective look at J.D. Drew's prospects for 2011.  Based on his projections (one that I agree with), it looks like the 4-5 WAR production we saw from Drew in 2008 and 2009 is long gone.
• I am a huge fan of linear weights like wOBA, FIP, etc.  This article by Hardball Times Jeffrey Gross uses linear weights to find out what would happen to Ichiro's batting average if he decided to focus on power rather than hitting singles.  
• Do you not have enough reasons to think Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman was a giant tool?  Well, get your fix with Patrick Sullivan's (Baseball Analysts) piece on the Blue Jays hiring of Jon Farrell and Heyman's reaction.
• If there's one Yankee blog that I would classify as "Must Read" it's "It's About the Money Stupid."  Check out their rational, objective take on how the 2009-2010 directly contributed to the Yankees missing the World Series.
• Crash Burn Alley's Bill Baer put together a great series on Chase Ultey.  Check out the article--even if you only check it because of the clip from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
• Sabernomics is a great site.  The author, J.C. Bradbury, gives baseball a fresh look by analyzing the game through the lens of economics.  This week he asks the question, "What is Jayson Werth, Worth?"
• The Book's MGL gives an excellent explanation of what sabermetricians mean by luck.
• Nick's Twin Blog exposes Bill Smith's greatest weakness--overvaluing his young player's future performance.