Bob Nightengale says that the Yankees are looking into trading for Justin Masterson. Meanwhile, Buster Olney says there are “no legs” to that rumor. Who’s to say they can’t both be right? Sure, any offer for Masterson would have to be dramatically reduced to compensate for having no legs. After all, as this lip-smacking, possibly-eating-while-video-podcasting YouTube pitching coach points out, back leg drive is an integral part of generating a pitcher’s velocity:

That said, Justin Masterson’s strong strikeout numbers are supported by his plus-plus ability to generate ground balls, and starting from closer to the ground may actually make Masterson more effective in keeping the ball down. This intriguing possibility could be worth a mid-level prospect, or a good A-ball arm for the Yankees.

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Totally click, totally embiggen.

In his film Annie Hall, Woody Allen (playing Alvy Singer) suggests to Diane Keaton (playing his ladyfriend and the title character, Annie) that “life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories.”

He continues:

The horrible would be like terminal cases, you know? And blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me, you know. And the miserable is everyone else. That’s all. So when you go through life you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s — you’re very lucky to be miserable.

One might reasonably assume that — per Allen’s definition — that losing function/the entirety of one’s digit(s) would place the victim of such a misfortune among that class known as the Horrible. Indeed, perhaps in many cases, this is the result. In the dual cases of great right-hander Mordecai Brown and great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, however, such an injury actually facilitated invention and greatness.

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C’mon Doug. I mean, what are you doing? How can you not see a man doing a remote right in front of you? I mean, you walked by him like ten times. Do you know who Ken Rosenthal is? He’s a big deal. And I’m sure he’s on like two hours of sleep, so it’s in your best interest to get out of his damn way. Ugh. Just … try and pay more attention OK?

Look, I know you’re still rattled from when Walt Jocketty yelled at you today. But that was hours ago, and you need to put it behind you. Remember, I’m only doing this as a favor because you’re married to my sister. I know you’re having trouble finding work, and I’m trying to help you out here. Getting another media pass to the Winter Meetings wasn’t easy. But you need to stay out of the way, like we talked about. If you do a good job, I can try and recommend you to my boss when something opens up, but now your face is on TV looking like a dope. You just better hope that some dumb blogger doesn’t find it and make some shitty jokes about you.

OK, OK. Calm down. It’s fine. Let’s go grab a drink at the bar. I need to find Jon Heyman anyway. If we see him, though, remember — let me do the talking. Gammons already thinks you have some sort of brain damage or something.

Imagine if an animated elephant played baseball, is more or less the essence of your friend’s point.

The record — which, in this case, has been carefully prepared by great Italian-American sporting writer Nick Piecoro — the record shows that the Arizona Diamondbacks have acquired today Los Angeles Angels corner-type Mark Trumbo in a three-team deal also involving the Chicago White Sox.

What your totally high friend wants to know, however, is what if — instead of acquiring Mark Trumbo — what if Arizona accidentally acquired cartoon elephant Dumbo instead? Because, according to your friend, “that’d be hil-larious.”

“Hilarious, indeed,” is what you’re forced to also say, at this sad, sad juncture of the human comedy.

A scroll around the MLB.com site introduced me, for the first time ever, to the 2013 GIBBYS, a set of 22 awards apparently being issued today (!), in categories such as Moment of the Year, Storyline of the Year, Oddity of the Year, and Cut4 Topic of the Year (for “the season’s top-trending moments, as chronicled by Cut4”). (No, I do not know what Cut4 is either.)

GIBBYS, “the ultimate honors of the industry’s awards season,” stands, of course, for the Greatness in BaseBall Yearly awardS. I now present what I’m hoping will be the 23rd GIBBY award, for most tortured attempt to create an award acronym. Here are my five nominees:

1. FOXXs: For Outcomes that are Xtra Xtra good
2. SPAHNs: Season’s Pitching Awards for Heart and also NumberS
3. MAYSs: Most Awards of the Year, given Seasonally
4. LEFTYs: Lifetime Evaluation by the Fans of Total Yearly Statistics
5. CLEMENS: Collective Lies regarding EnhanceMents, Eventually Negating Statistics… award.

Perhaps you have some of your own.

Halladay never even took organic chemistry.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Just a day after announcing his retirement from baseball, former Philadelphia and Toronto right-hander Roy Halladay returned Tuesday with an even more startling confession — namely that, despite answering to the name “Doc” for almost the entirety of his 16-year career, that he isn’t a medical professional in any sense of those words, nor does he possess any formal training whatsoever in the health sciences.

“No, of course not,” Halladay said when confronted on Tuesday by a member of our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team and asked if he’d ever attended medical school. “I assumed it was pretty obvious from how I was drafted out of high school. I didn’t even go to college.”

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The below tweet — in no way altered from its original posting — shows that very successful managers are not adverse to having a totally bodacious time.

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So far as the author knows, it is not the case that the genre commonly referred to as “clip art” — it isn’t the case that clip art was either (a) ubiquitous or even (b) extant at all during the Victorian era. What he does know (i.e. what that same author knows) is that, in the present — an epoch commonly denoted as the Kate Middleton Topless Photos Era™ — a thing available even to people who went to state schools of the American South is this wide-ranging and conspicuously charming collection of Victorian clip art made possible, it would appear, by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology.

Among the images included in said collection are a number concerning the rules and equipage of the Pastime.

Like this one, for example, which appeared originally in Everybody’s Cyclopedia and illustrates quite clearly the most relevant dimensions of a base-and-ball field:

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Seriously?

Our crop of 17 prospects has withered into a near nothingness, a throbbing blight of the minor leagues! We have a combined 0.3 WAR in the majors — over five seasons. Basically, Jerry “Juice” Loose reached the majors in 2015, pitched 29.0 innings, got injured, and never returned to the majors. That’s our combined career MLB experience.

Here’s a look at our miserable scouting report:

And the miserable statistical outlay of our players across all levels:

But before you say to yourself, “Well, hey, there’s some solid numbers in here,” just know: None of these players are in Triple-A. Perrywinkle, Wiggin and Osborn spent most of the season in Double-A, and everyone else was lower.

Go ahead and set the mood near your computing device — put on a vinyl of eerie Baroque music, light some candles and dab a light pale white foundation on your sallow cheeks and eye sockets — because here comes our most depressing, emo Top Five:
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