Saturday Morning and there's no cartoons on

First things first...welcome to BVtN Version 2.0...hope you all like the re-design...onto the day's news.

It seems that the D'Backs are close to acquiring the Big Unit and that "a deal may be done before next week"...joy...the yanks get rid of another old man and pick up more pitching prospects. I never thought I'd say this...but Brian Cashman is doing an incredible job at stockpiling the farm system this off-season

• On a side note, the article mentions that Doug Mientkiewicz would be the Yanks' first baseman and that they badly want Mark Loretta as a utility infielder.
  
• That article about rotations from BBTF I posted yesterday? Interesting...it seems that the Jays problems in the last two seasons has been their 4th and 5th starters being badly below average in both ERA+ and innings per start. Last season, the pitchers who combined for these two sports cost the team at least two wins. So what does JP do? Lose the number three starter and not replace him...this could be a long season. Oddly, Hardball Times has posted a similar article that I will recap tomorrow.
  
• So the ride to Toronto and back gave me plenty of time to read and although I'm not sure I suggest Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, I do suggest Dealing: The Cleveland Indians New Ballgame for any baseball fan. It's the story of Mark Shapiro's reign as the Indians GM up to 2006. It's an easy read and goes through many of the climatic events during his time as GM, beginning with the purchase of the team by the Dolans. It's an interesting period of time where they had to rebuild and let players leave through free agency such as Thome and Ramirez while trading players such as Alomar and Colon. There's an entire chapter on the Alomar trade, it's failure and what the Indians management staff learnt from it for future trades. It's a great read, certainly for anyone interesting in seeing how one GM rebuilt a team so well by using shrewd moves.