Buster Olney has been doing a series of Top 10 lists on his blog at ESPN this week. He even solicited suggestions from Twitter. It has been a fun exercise, I am not here to nitpick the method. One that was particularly enjoyable to think about was Olney’s list of the top ten outfields in MLB history. It is on Insider, but I do not think I am ruining anything by telling you that he rates the 1961 Yankees outfield of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Yogi Berra as the best outfield ever. It is not a terrible choice or anything, although there are arguments to be make for others, which is the fun part of this sort of thing. I wonder, however, was whether the 1961 Yankees outfield is even the best Yankees outfield of all time. What about 1941? (No, not the star-studded Spielberg/Belushi movie.)

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The World Baseball Classic is a cool idea. It is a bit hypocritical for me to write that, as I have not been terribly engaged by the WBC in the past, but I’m jumping on the bandwagon, such as it is. I am not here to convince you that you should love it, and I understand why many MLB fans would be almost impossible to win over. The WBC has its issues, one of which is the perceived lack of star power on the U.S. team. I do not want to enter that debate here. Writers like Craig Calcaterra and Drew Fairservice have done a good job of responding to that sort of hand-wringing. Fairservice makes another excellent point: it is up to the fans to turn the WBC into a thing that stars won’t miss.

I want to take a different tack on this by trying to look at things from the players’ perspective. In particular, I want to think about a certain subset of players — younger players still in their initial years of team control and without guaranteed contracts beyond this season — for whom the stakes are a bit higher.

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Tim Lincecum’s resume contains the following items: 2 time Cy Young award winner, 4 time All-Star and twice World Series Champion. With all the achievements over the last 5 seasons, he was relegated to a long relief once the Giants made the playoffs because he was no longer effective as a starter. Lincecum’s problem is he can no longer just throw the ball across the plate and hope a batter just swings and misses. If he wants any hope of returning to be the starter he once was, he now needs to learn how to pitch.

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The Yankees take care of their own. Or something. Former Yankees, Rangers, Yankees (again), and Dodgers outfielder and designated hitter Marcus Thames has apparently retired, as the High-A Tampa Yankees announced that he will be their hitting coach in 2013. Thames was never a superstar. He was not even everyday player over even one full season in the majors, as the most plate appearances he ever received in a single season was 390 in 2006. However, he was surprisingly productive despite his limited playing time. During 2006, he hit 26 home runs for the Tigers on their way to the World Series. Thames was a good example of how hitter with a limited skill set can carve out a surprisingly long career, which included his share of dramatic hits.

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Earlier in the offseason, it seemed absurd to think the Yankees wouldn’t acquire an established veteran catcher. Or re-acquire, if we’re speaking about Russell Martin. The Yankees are the Yankees, and even a fiscally restrained version of the Yankees is less fiscally restrained than almost everyone else. The Yankees, in theory, had the resources to get a catcher, and the Yankees, in reality, appeared to have a need at the position. And the Yankees always plan to contend, so addressing needs is sort of a thing.

Martin left, for a very reasonable contract with the Pirates. Other options have turned into non-options. The Yankees could still get a backstop, in that offseason time remains, but now they seem content to run with Francisco Cervelli, Austin Romine, and Chris Stewart. No one’s been promised a job, but this is the situation staring the Yankees in the face. These have been the in-house options all along, and the Yankees, to date, have been okay with them.

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Stuff tends to fall by the wayside during the holidays, even for baseball blogs. Still, Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui’s retirement deserves a some attention. Even for Christmas Week, it seemed to pass quietly. So, about two weeks after the fact, here are some briefs thoughts on Matsui’s MLB career and some of his biggest moments at the plate.

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Armed with a new measure for offensive volatility (VOL), I wanted to revisit research I conducted  last year about the value of a consistent offense.

In general, the literature has suggested if you’re comparing two similar offenses, the more consistent offense is preferable throughout the season. The reason has to do with the potential advantages a team can gain when they don’t “waste runs” in blow-out victories. The more evenly a team can distribute their runs, the better than chances of winning more games.

I decided to take my new volatility (VOL) metric and apply it to team-level offense to see if it conformed to this general consensus*.

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The Dodgers are rich. Very rich. After spending $2.15 billion to buy the team, the new owners have opened the checkbook again and again and again. First, in the trade with the Red Sox that netted Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Nick Punto. Next with the winning bid for Korean pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu. Then with the free-agent signings of Zack Greinke and Brandon League — and the contract for Ryu.

Over on his blog, my colleague Mike Petriello estimates the Dodgers’ current commitments for 2013 at $246.9 million. That figure includes deferred payments still owed to Manny Ramirez, Andruw Jones and Hiroki Kuroda, but excludes Ryu’s $25.73 million posting fee. Salaries for A.J. Ellis and Ronald Belisario — who are entering their first year of arbitration — still need to be added. And perhaps the Dodgers make another small move here or there. But let’s not quibble over pennies.

Instead, let’s assume the Dodgers’ Opening Day payroll is $250 million. A nice, big, round number. A quarter-of-a-billion dollars. Unprecedented, right? Blows anything the Yankees have ever done out of the water, correct? The most the Yankees ever spent on an Opening Day payroll was $209 million, back in 2008. But you can’t just compare $250 million spent in 2013 to $209 million spent in 2008 without adjusting for inflation. That’s not how money works. The value changes over time. Let’s take a look.

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A renewal of vows between Ichiro Suzuki and the Yankees is beginning to take on an air of inevitability. I don’t know what the Yankees thought they were getting when they first brought Ichiro in, but he had good success down the stretch, and he expressed a willingness to re-sign. The Yankees need an outfielder, and they’re trying to avoid multi-year contracts. Weeks ago, Ichiro’s agent all but declared that Ichiro just wanted to stay where he was, and now Ken Rosenthal reports that a contract agreement is just about reached. Barring a complete surprise, Ichiro will play for the Yankees during the 2013 season. Which, of course, just a few months ago, would’ve been a complete surprise. You’re not even aware of how quickly the things around you are changing. Ichiro is on the Yankees. Michael Young is on the Phillies. Kevin Youkilis is on the Yankees too. Consider this reality.

Had Ichiro performed poorly with New York, it stands to reason he wouldn’t be re-signing, because it stands to reason they wouldn’t want him. It would’ve been fascinating to see if a market would’ve developed had Ichiro struggled. He didn’t, though, batting well north of .300 with the Yankees, so of course they like him on a small contract. They’ll add a right-handed outfielder and then they’ll see how that goes come summertime. Ichiro’s stretch run added a good amount of value to his name, after a year and a half of hard times in Seattle.

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Before the 2007 season, Major League Baseball Advanced Media partnered with StubHub as the official secondary ticket marketplace for Major League Baseball. All 30 MLB teams participated. Anyone could list MLB game tickets for sale on StubHub, at any price. StubHub charged buyers a handling fee and a delivery fee, often totaling more than $10, regardless of the selling price. The “delivery fee” was the key to the deal, as it allowed buyers to print the tickets at home. Gone were the days of sellers tossing tickets out a window to buyers at midnight. Sellers also paid a fee to StubHub, charged as a percentage of the sale price. StubHub shared about half its fees with MLBAM. In 2011, that amounted to more than $60 million. MBLAM then funneled a portion of those funds to the 30 teams.

Fans rejoiced. During the 2011 season, more than 8 million MLB tickets sold on StubHub, up from 6 million in 2010.

But many teams weren’t as thrilled. The Yankees, in particular, were a vocal critic of StubHub’s pricing policies. With no price floor, Yankees tickets were often available on StubHub for less than $5, a price significantly below the lowest ticket price available at the box office or on Yankees.com.  Critics countered that Yankees ticket prices were too high, creating a fertile market for very cheap tickets on the secondary market. But even teams with lower ticket prices lost sales to StubHub.

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