Links for Wednesday…
- Chipper Jones explained his stance toward retirement to Tim Gunter of 790 The Zone.
- Braves manager Bobby Cox was noncommittal on 2010, talking to Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
- Amelia Rayno of the Detroit News notes that Magglio Ordonez's $15MM option for 2011 will vest with 1080 plate appearances between 2009 and 2010. Meanwhile Cot's Baseball Contracts reveals that 135 starts or 540 PAs in '10 will do the trick.
- ESPN's Buster Olney informed us yesterday about a potentially interesting free agent reliever named Mike Schultz. The former D'Backs minor leaguer has been tearing it up in Japan the last two years.
- Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes that a top five Cy Young finish for Adam Wainwright in 2010 or 2011 would cause his 2012 and 2013 options to vest. This year, his maximum bonus is $250K if he wins the award.
- Derrick Goold of the P-D has a discussion going about the Cardinals' third base plans for next year.
- Conor Glassey of Baseball America looks at next year's draft class, which is of course led by Bryce Harper.
- Murray Chass has posted several interesting columns since his website's inception. His latest on the Pirates is not one of them. It's a simplistic view of Neal Huntington's plan, with the Nyjer Morgan trade as Chass' main beef. And is he suggesting the organization would've been better off re-signing Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson instead of trading them? Plus, Chass uses the opinion of one anonymous "baseball official" in advancing the notion that the Pirates will have explaining to do to MLB regarding their revenue-sharing money. Wouldn't a consensus assessment of execs have been more useful?
- According to Maury Brown of The Biz of Baseball, minor league attendance dropped by only 2.9% this year.
