Links of the Week or so

I didn't have much more time than I expected today, so here are some links to things I've found interesting over the last several days.

• My old friend The Common Man takes me to task for my faint praise of Michael Cuddyer on Tuesday. If things go well here, I'm looking forward to much more of my mindless blather being hyper-analyzed by people more intelligent than I.
  
  
• Much newer friend Lar takes us back to Orel Hershiser and his glorious 59 in 1988. I remember that streak, and Canseco's 40/40 the same year, as the first baseball things I noticed that weren't the Twins or the World Series...though the accuracy of that remembrance is extraordinarily questionable.
  
  
• Dave Cameron is one of my favorite baseball writers, and I think I've already linked to his stuff twice. This week, he drew some...interesting conclusions about the first 35 PA of Andruw Jones' season, and then responded to some criticism over that with some very broad statements about the usefulness of small samples. You can see what I think about all that in the comments to both articles, if you're interested; otherwise, I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
  
  
• In Cameron's very interesting piece about Chris Young's complete inability to hold runners, he concludes, "Quite simply, Young is worse at holding runners than anyone else in baseball is at any other skill." Probably right. I was thinking about possible competition for that title, and all I could come up with was pitcher Daniel Cabrera's hitting.
  
  
• Jonah Keri wrote a very good column for SI that, inter alia, defends David Wright from jumpy Mets fans, and yesterday responded to an email from just such a fan on his excellent blog. Keri has noticed something I have too, which is that fans go to insane lengths to find fault with their team's best player, especially when he's the soft-spoken sort. I'll write a thing about that someday.
  
  
• Shyster does a number on that ridiculous forthcoming A-Rod book and the ridiculous person who wrote it.
  
  
• Zack at MLB Notebook interviews Jason from IIATMS, Mark from Way Back and Gone, and many similarly excellent folk in chronicling The Life and Times of a Baseball Blogger. There is a nonzero chance that, had that post cropped up three short weeks earlier, you wouldn't be reading this right now...
  
  
  
• Non-baseball Division: For as long as there have been juries, there have been people who have tried to get out of jury duty (or so I assume). If you're looking to get out of jury duty, don't take your cues from this guy.
  
  
• From the Archives Division: I firmly believe that Joe Posnanski is the best currently active sportswriter on the planet, and I recommend everything he writes. But I also believe that the Snuggie is the most fascinating and bewildering thing in our modern world, and I can't recommend anything Joe has written more than his blow-by-blow dissection of its amazing commercial.
  
  
• Topical Comedy Division: The only thing funnier to me than Snuggies is everyone's severe overreaction to swine flu, and the only thing funnier than that is Colbert's riff on everyone's severe overreaction to swine flu:
  

  The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
  Enemy Swine: A Pigcalypse Now
  colbertnation.com
  Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor First 100 Days

• Happy Joe Mauer Day!!!