Links of the Week or So and Notes

Work dictates a quick one today, a few notes (some of them very old, but interesting...at least to me):

• tHeMARksMiTh wrote what I think is a very eloquent and well-reasoned plea for civility between the sabermetric and "traditional" crowds. More on this tomorrow or the next day, time permitting.
  
  
• Dave Cameron on the vastly improved defense that he thinks is creating the illusion of vastly improved pitching in Texas.
  
  
• Something is seriously wrong with Scott Baker. I mean, his numbers aren't good, but he's not just a little tweak away. He's not even close. You notice these things when you're stuck watching the White Sox feed of the game, but can't stand to listen to The Hawk, so you put the Twins' radio broadcast on, which is just a second or two ahead of your TV. When on just about every other pitch you watch Redmond set up high and away at the exact same time as you're hearing Dazzle Dan say "...and that's down and in," it really drives home how far off Baker is right now.
  
  
• A while back I wrote about the Yankees putting Chien-Ming Wang on the DL with what looked to me like a pretty obviously made-up injury. Craig pointed out about a week ago now that Dontrelle Willis basically admitted his was made up, and Craig has a lot of the same questions I did. Some unintentionally comedic comments below, too.
  
  
• Speaking of Wang, he says he's ready and is expected to rejoin the rotation soon. He's looked pretty good in AAA, too. Of course, given his 34.50 ERA to start the year, he could go on a Zack Greinke-like 38-inning scoreless streak and his ERA would still sit at 4.70, almost exactly league average. I have a feeling he's going to struggle again, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. And he could hardly help but be better than he was.
  
  
• A few more things I left off yesterday's post on the 2005 prospect lists that I found interesting, all about the Baseball America Top 100 this time: Ian Kinsler was #98 on BA's list, 77 places below BP's. Russell Martin was #89. Only four second basemen made the list (Kinsler and Aaron Hill were shortstops back then): the ill-fated Rickie Weeks (8), the even iller-fated Josh Barfield (45), the "meh" Chris Burke (60), and the then 30 year old Tadahito Iguchi (96) all had considerably brighter futures than ROY-MVP Dustin Pedroia.