Courtesy of a comment from Joe the Guy, we have news of a terribly juicy new rumor: the possibility of Brian Roberts heading to the White Sox in exchange for the other hometown hero, pitcher Gavin Floyd. There’s info and speculation available at both MLBTradeRumors and Roch Kubatko’s blog. First impression: let’s get this done. [...]

As noted by Tomás in the last thread, the Angels have reportedly dropped out of the Mark Teixeira sweepstakes. This appears to be a real dropout, as opposed to the “will they or won’t they” dropout the Red Sox handed us last week. Emphasis on appears. Assuming it’s true, the list is now down to [...]

The much anticipated Ravens-Steelers post/thread goes up tomorrow morning, so I wanted to sneak in a fresh Hot Stove post tonight in order to stay current. The two big pieces of news, as already discussed in the comments: AJ Burnett to the Yankees and the DC Cab to the free agency pool. Where to begin? [...]

Well, yes, if you believe what Peter Schmuck has to say on the matter. Two things: One, I respect Schmuck but this smells like the old-school newspaper columnist in him coming out. This is a half-sourced but extremely newsworthy claim, and there was a time when this was the kind of thing you’d do to [...]

Word has leaked out today that often-injured lefty Mike Hampton has reached an agreement to rejoin the Astros, for whom he won 22 games in 1999. The Chronicle report calls it “a low-risk, high-reward move for the Astros, who are in need of starting pitching.” True enough. That’s a far cry, though, from the situation [...]

I have no desire to belabor the Mike Mussina issue. My last word on it, opinion-wise, is what I said on Fox Sports 1370 Friday night: he’s a great player, probably a Hall of Famer, but not an Oriole. All of which is up for debate, of course. What’s not up for debate, though, is [...]

I’ll have the normal Sunday football thoughts/thread up tomorrow morning, but tonight I wanted to sneak in some quick baseball thoughts. First, some more on Mike Mussina‘s decision to retire. I knew I’d be in the minority with my thoughts, but I was surprised just how many people rose to greet the news with fond [...]

First, forgive me if I’m not around quite as much as normal for the next couple of days. I’m going to be up-and-back from PA for some family stuff. I’ll still be here, but if news breaks I might miss it. Not a lot of Hot Stove action to discuss so far, which is normal [...]