In our first episode of the new year, the Crack Technical Staff and I show a degree of enthusiasm about the sport of baseball unseen in these parts of a while now. It must be the promise of a new year, a new third baseman for the Cardinals, a new South American baseball academy for the Pirates, and a new not-GM for the Reds.

We also talk a bit about American Gladiators, so you won’t want to miss that.

The show covered the teams in alphabetical order by team name this week:

Astros

• Brandon Backe signed to avoid arbitration, can’t avoid losing in the hottest NLC baller contest
• Roger Clemens never shuts up

Brewers

• Mike Cameron signs with Brewers and will start the season off right: with a 25-game drug suspension
• Because of Cameron, Bill Hall will move to 3B and Ryan Braun will move to left field

Cardinals

• Traded Scott Rolen for Troy Glaus, giving the Blue Jays’ every child’s Christmas wish: the same right side of the infield as the Cardinals had last year
• Signed Matt Clement to incentive-laden deal ($1.5 Million)

Cubs

• Plans to rename Wrigley Field not received well, unless they sell them to Wrigley
• Andre Dawson was not voted in to hall of fame
• Goose Gossage, who pitched for the Cubs one year and probably would have taken steroids, was voted in

Pirates

• Academy in Dominican Republic
• Signed Elmer Dessens and several other players to minor league deals

Reds

• Walt Jocketty joins Reds
• Bronson and his love affair with Beantown

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I had every intention of getting this up on Sunday, but my ISP wasn’t cooperating (hard to post when you can’t connect at anything better than 21.6KBPS). Here are the player transactions in the NL Central that have occurred since the last update, as reported on the official web site of Major League Baseball.

Astros GM Ed Wade must have finally taken his holiday this week, as the Astros reported no transactions since I last updated you on these proceedings.

On Thursday 1/3, the Cardinals signed Matt Clement to an incentive-laden one-year contract with a club option for 2009. I reported on this in another thread. Also on Thursday, the Brewers invited OF Laynce Nix and RHP Steve Bray to spring training. A cursory search turned up no indication that Steve Bray and the Reds’ Bill Bray are relatives.

On Friday, the Cardinals signed IF Aaron Miles to a one-year contract, while the Reds – as previously reported by BubbaFan – claimed OF Jeff Fiorentino off waivers from the Orioles; and signed RHP Jim Brower, INF Jolbert Cabrera, INF Andy Green, INF Andy Phillips and LHP Adam Pettyjohn to minor league contracts with invitations to spring training.

On Saturday 1/5, the Cubs traded IF Angel Pagan to the Mets for a couple of minor leaguers, RHP Ryan Meyers and OF Corey Coles.

On Monday 1/7, the Brewers signed OF Drew Anderson, RHP Tim Dillard, 1B/OF Brad Nelson, LHP Manny Parra and RHP Luis Pena to one-year contracts. Also, the Pirates signed RHPs Adam Bernero and Elmer Dessens (a former Pirate, Red, and Brewer) to minor league contracts with invitations to spring training (Zeldink already told us about Dessens).

Note that there are two other Drew Andersons who have played recently in the minor leagues, one who was with the Reds’ organization the past three years and another who played in the Astros’ farm system last year. The Drew Anderson the Brewers signed on Monday spent all of last year at Class-AA and Class-AAA in the Brewers’ minor league system. Also, the Brad Nelson they signed is not the same Brad Nelson who pitched in the Braves’ farm system last year, and Luis Pena is not the same Luis Pena who pitched in the White Sox farm system a few years ago. The Brewers must be running out of names for their players and have to beg, borrow, and steal them from other teams…which, come to think of it, is pretty much the same approach they’ve used this winter in populating their bullpen.

🙄

Welcome to round 1 of the Jason Romano Commemorative NLC’s hottest blogger contest. 15 of the best-looking players on NLC (plus one fella in limbo) face off in a single-elimination tournament.

If you haven’t already voted in our first pairing–the Jason LaRue/Manny Parra contest–take a gander at those hotties as well.

Our second pairing pits a couple of newbies against each other as the Cubs’ Sam Fuld (or as I like to think of him, “the honey with the light eyes”) and the Cardinals’ Rick Ankiel (or as I like to think of him, “the guy I included in the tourney specifically for Bellyscratcher’s husband to vote for) face off.

Sam Fuld
ht: 5-10 wt: 180 dob: 11/20/1981

Fuld’s only appeared in 14 games, so we have to forgive him his .000 average for the moment. He has the distinction of being the only Cubs’ profile picture that actually make me say, “oh!”

Rick Ankiel
ht: 6-1 wt: 210 dob: 7/19/1979

OK, calling Ankiel a newbie isn’t exactly accurate, but he’s new to the outfield after fighting back from forgetting how to pitch exactly when it mattered. He’s also been subjected to some steroid-related scrutiny lately. But he’s kinda cute, so he’s got that going for him.

[poll=9]

Thanks to the holidays (and my own basic laziness), I neglected to post the weekly summary of transactions this past Sunday. Fortunately, RHM already gave you the big stories, and it wasn’t as busy as the previous week, so we’ll just catch up on things today. It’ll make next Sunday’s summary that much easier to do. So without further ado, the NLC player transactions from 12/17 thru 12/25/07:

On Monday 12/17, the Astros signed RHP Jack Cassel to a $400,000, one-year contract.

On Tuesday 12/18:

• The Cardinals jumped into the market for former Reds players, signing free agent IF D’Angelo Jimenez to a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training.
• The Astros signed RHP Chad Paronto to a one-year, $500,000 contract.
• The Pirates re-signed free agent RHP Masumi Kuwata to a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training.

On Wednesday 12/19, the Cubs signed OF Kosuke Fukudome to a four-year, $48 million contract, as previously reported by RHM. Fukudome has no page on Baseball-Reference.com yet, so I’ve linked to his page on The Baseball Cube instead. To me, that just seems like a lot of money for a guy who’s 29 and has never seen a major league pitch. In fact, for that money he better be good, because if not, the Bleacher Bums at Wrigley are going to have a field day with that surname of his.

On Thursday 12/20, the Brewers coaxed OF Gabe Kapler out of retirement with a one-year, $800,000 contract. The eight-year veteran spent last year managing the Red Sox’ Class-A Greenville farm team in the South Atlantic League, A.K.A. the Sally League. Greenville went 58-81, finishing 14th in a 16-team league, but I’m sure that had nothing at all to do with Kapler’s decision to give up managing and become a baseball player.

On Friday 12/21, the Pirates signed C Michel Hernandez, C (and ex-Red) Miguel Perez, RHP Mike Thompson and INF Jorge Velandia to minor league contracts with invitations to spring training. And of course, there was that trade involving the Reds and Rangers, on which RHM has given us the details in another thread.

That’s been it in the NLC, unless you are a Cardinals fan and are stockpiling ammunition with which to villify and condemn John Mozeliak, in which case you need to know that the Phillies snapped up OF So Taguchi two days before Christmas with a one-year, $1.05 million contract. Is it my imagination, or does it look like the Cardinals are trying to meet the Pirates in the basement?

JK

This week on the podcast:

• Cubs signing Kosuke Fukudome and Cubs non-tendering Mark Prior. Both sort of hard to quibble with.
• Houston trading for closer Jose Valverde from the Diamondbacks for 2B Chris Burke and pitchers Juan
• Gutierrez and Chad Qualls.
• Houston trading for Miguel Tejada and Tejada appearing in the Mitchell Report.
• Even more talk about the Mitchell Report.
• Cardinals trading away Edmonds, and the tears that flowed thereafter. But don’t worry; he’ll be OK.
• Brewers tendering one-year contracts to: SS J.J. Hardy, RHPs Dave Bush, Claudio Vargas, and Seth McClung, and LHPs Brian Shouse and Chris Capuano.
• Reds tendering one-year contracts to 2B Brandon Phillips and RHP Matt Belisle, coincidentally two guys likely to show up in the Hottest NLC Player bracket later this week (if I get all my Christmas presents wrapped in time).
• Pirates continuing to do not much of anything. Imagine.

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