Barry Larkin’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame has generated the usual amount of celebration and argument this week. Most of the debates — about Jeff Bagwell, Alan Trammell, Tim Raines, and, of course, PEDs have been covered at length, so I will not pursue those topics immediately (I discussed this year’s ballot elsewhere). I do have other thoughts about the Hall of Fame, inspired by a combination of my thoughts about third basemen in the 1970s and Grant Brisbee’s tremendous piece about Trammell’s difficult candidacy. And that led me to reflect on the short-lived candidacy of a player whose career numbers may surprise you: Buddy Bell.

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Fan Projection Target season is upon us, a time for FanGraphs readers to show those computers what’s what and out-project them using only intuitive genius. In past seasons, relievers have sometimes suffered from a relative lack of ballots, and while I am not sure this is true of all the relievers mentioned below, it might be a good place to start getting into projecting bullpens. How will some notable 2011 rookie relievers fare in 2011?

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Last Saturday, Jon Heyman mused via Twitter that he hadn’t yet seen any trade interest develop in Astros’ first baseman/outfielder Carlos Lee. The tone of Heyman’s tweet was one of surprise; he noted “Guy did have 90-plus rbis for awful team.”

Putting aside Heyman’s reliance on RBI to make his point, the question remains. Is there a trade market for Carlos Lee? He will turn 36 next June and is in the last year of six-year/$100 million contract with the Astros. According to Cot’s Contracts, the Astros still owe Lee $19 million.

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On Tuesday, we took a quick look at the competitive balance in the MLB, and I made the claim that baseball may have more parity than most leagues, but it also has want of greater balance. During the course of the piece, I made this statement:

The NFL has decided it wants payroll to have essentially no impact on winning, so teams basically trot out the same amount of money every Sunday and hope their money was better-spent. Is that what the MLB wants?

Aft’wards, Paul Swydan pointed out to me that indeed NFL salaries are not flat. Despite their hard cap, their hefty revenue sharing, and their tight spandex pants, the NFL still exhibits nearly a $77M gap between the biggest and lowest payroll — impressive, but still nothing compared to the MLB:

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Yesterday, Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein announced the Chicago Cubs and manager Mike Quade have parted ways. Kudos to Theo Epstein for not doing what we all expected him to: Fire Quade immediately.

It appears Epstein — like he has approached most everything in his young Cubs reign — decided to withhold judgement until he had fully investigated the matter himself. Like Joe Maddon is wont to say, “Tell me what you think, not what you heard.”

Quade’s managerial time with the Cubs was both short and possibly undeserved. Taking the helm when Lou Piniella suddenly retired in 2010, Quade inherited a team that was predisposed towards failure. But, despite that, the team went 24-13 to close out the season. That was enough proof for Jim Hendry to vault Quade not only into the manager discussion, but the manager’s chair:

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The Cleveland Indians love ground balls. After the acquisition of Derek Lowe on Monday, the Indians now have three of the most extreme ground ball pitchers in the majors. With this added focus on ground ball pitchers, the Indians’ infield defense will play a huge factor in the team’s success next season. Problem is, the Indians don’t have particularly strong defenders on the infield. With three-fourths of their infield set entering 2012, will the Indians’ ground ball strategy be their undoing?

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The Braves and Indians consummated the first trade of the off-season today, with the Braves trading Derek Lowe to the Indians for a minor-league pitcher Chris Jones. As a 23-year-old reliever who spent the year in A-ball, Jones is not exactly a premium prospect – this deal was all about money, as Atlanta also agreed to pay $10 million of the $15 million owed to Lowe for the 2012 season.

For the Braves, Lowe was a surplus part given their existing rotation members (Tommy Hanson, Jair Jurrjens, Tim Hudson, and Brandon Beachy) and their quartet of MLB ready pitching prospects (Julio Teheran, Mike Minor, Randall Delgado, and Arodys Vizcaino). In addition, Lowe’s 2011 did nothing to endear him to Braves fans; he was arrested for DUI in April, went 9-17 with a 5.05 ERA in 187 innings of work on the season, and contributed more than his fair share to the Braves’ September collapse by allowing 25 runs over 23.2 innings in his last 5 starts.

For the Indians, Lowe represents a relatively low cost addition to a rotation that includes Ubaldo Jimenez, Justin Masterson, and Fausto Carmona. Clearly, Cleveland likes ground-ballers, but what can the Indians expect out of Lowe in 2012?

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With a classic World Series — the most exciting in a long time, if not the best-played or best-managed — now over, it is time to hand out individual awards for the 2011 regular season. Sure, some people are anticipating the Cy Young, MVP, and Rookie of the Year announcements, but I bet true baseball fans really pumped for stuff like today’s award, which attempts to measure how much a hitter has contributed to his team’s wins beyond what traditional linear weights indicates. Who is 2011’s King of Little Things?

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According to Jordan Bastian of MLB.com, the Indians are expected to decline the $9 million 2012 option on Grady Sizemore. The Tribe is also expected to exercise the $7 million 2012 option on Fausto Carmona. Bringing back Carmona is considerably less risky than exercising Sizemore’s option, however, taken together, the transactions tandem speaks to the Indians evaluation of risk and reward.

Is the team making the right choices with these two longtime employees?

The kneejerk reaction with Sizemore is to pan the organization. How could they decline a relatively low-valued option for a player who averaged close to 7 WAR from 2005-08? At $9 million, even an injury-prone Sizemore would seem worth the risk because the reward is substantial. By declining his option, the team is effectively saying one of two things: that it would rather pay him $500,000 for the right to bring him back on an even lesser deal, or that it thinks so little of his long-term health and performance prospects that it’s unlikely he hovers around the league average moving forward.

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Near the beginning of last night’s World Series Game Four, which ended up being the Greatest Game in World Series History Pitched by a 14-year old, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver were discussing Lance Berkman, specifically his status as one of the most productive switch-hitters in major-league history. Now, I usually believe everything people on TV say. For example, when Tim McCarver asserts, as he has during this season’s Fall Classic, that “Michael Young didn’t complain” when asked to change positions for Elvis Andrus and Adrian Beltre, or that “Tony La Russa doesn’t lie,” I just take it at face value. However, while I agree that Berkman is and has been an excellent player who may have even have Hall of Fame credentials, I thought I should both trust and verify. How does Berkman compare to the other great switch-hitters in major-league history, and who exactly are they?

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