• Yonder Alonso is asking for $8 million and a major league deal, which is scaring a number of teams off of him. Meanwhile, Casey Kelly is asking for so much money that teams are assuming he already has a deal in place, with the Cubs and (of course) the Yankees as two suspects.

• Heard David Cooper as a fallback option for three teams late in the first round: Colorado, the Yankees and Boston.

brian (red sox fan)-

i agree not many infielders do it , but that’s the reason the twins are always a decent to good team. bartlett didn’t get to the majors by not doing the little things. it’s old school baseball. coco should know to slide with his fist closed.

the problem the red sox are having with the rays is that the red sox are a macho team and the new rays are trying on the macho act. two machos don’t mix well. i think they should have a big brawl and take no prisoners. don’t worry about injuries. who’s tougher is at stake. i’ll bet beckett could take kazmir.

By David Pinto’s probabilistic model of range, one of the better defensive statistical approaches, Posada was the 5th best defensive catcher in baseball.

That model has limitations in assessing catchers.

So if you can use another method to also see what kind of defensive player Posada is.

By Clay Davenport’s runs above average system at Baseball Prospectus Posada was -4 runs worse than a league average catcher in 2007. In 2006 Posada was 9 runs better than a league average catcher. In 2005 he was 3 runs worse than a league average catcher. This system takes into account throwing/ stolen bases against.

And not that its a great stat, but last year Posada had the 4th highest fielding percentage for any AL catcher.

Posada may not be a top 5 defensive catcher but there’s no evidence to indicate that he’s “hideous.”

He’s probably around league average or a little better.

Also one more thing to worry Posada is that even though he had a similar surgery in the off-season in 2001 and recovered quickly from it. Now it is different. In 2001 he was 28 years old. At the end of the season he will be 37 and I think it will take longer to recover as you get older unless u r Clemens.