BBA Linkfest - General holiday greetings

I have not done this in a while and it is time to get back at it. I am the president of the General Chapter of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. General is such a bland word. I think of generic when hearing the word. But that is far from the case as you see the links below. General simply means that the writers of this chapter write about everything baseball and are not specifically a site about one team or fantasy baseball or something like that. They are a great group of people writing about baseball because they love it. This post is about their work.

What I do is go to each site and pick out one of the posts I find there. It is a time-consuming thing to do, but there is a lot of rewarding reading that occurs because of it. I have done the work for you, so all you have to do is click the link and enjoy yourself. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from this Flagrant Fan to you wherever you are.

The links:

A radio personality has issues with Matt Harvey. The Hall of Very Good rightly pokes a few holes in the stupidity of what the radio guy said.

In its most recent post, Off Base Percentage's Mike Hllywa took a look at the Yankees' spending spree this off season.

Over at The Golden Sombrero, Mike Rosenbaum posted some video from the recent Arizona Fall League featuring Austin Hedges, a Padres' prospect catcher.

This post from Grubby Glove is the oldest of the link list, but it was such a fine piece and such a noble thing, that I linked it anyway.

If podcasts are your thing (and I like them a lot), Eric and Jana from #Off the Bat presented by Number One Baseball had a great time discussing the off season.

TheNaturalMevs of Diamond Hoggers has some real juicy gossip for you concerning the Tigers and Prince Fielder. I needed a napkin for this one.

My friend, J-Doug is a brilliant, brilliant guy. His most recent post at Rational Pasttime gives us a real cool win probability map of the most recent World Series and David Ortiz's role in it.

Mike, over at The Sports Banter left a blueprint of what the Mets' off season should look like. At least one of his suggestions has already come true.

Our German entry, Dugout 24, has an interesting article (once translated - thank you Internet!) about aluminum bats.

Ben, of Ben's Baseball Bias, gave his thoughts on the trade between the Cardinals and Angels that swapped David Freese and Peter Bourjos.

Did you know that the Mets have a Santa Claus curse? Just ask David Wright. Michael Clair of Old Time Family Baseball has all the details.

I don't always agree with Sully of Sully Baseball. But he is easily one of the most entertaining podcasters in baseball today. Here is one of his latest.

The Sisco Kid put a lot of thought on the recent mega-contract of Robinson Cano for his most recent post at Baseball Sisco Kid Style. Definitely worth the read.

I met Dan, the author of Left Field, over the summer at a minor league game. He is not only a multi-talented writer and beer connoisseur, but a great family man and a terrific guy. And he is making head way in the baseball writing world and now writes for High Heat Stats and has his articles featured in a major newspaper. This post I have linked is also his work and it caps the year in music. Awesome stuff.

A lot has happened in the past year for my good friends at MLB Dirt. They are now part of the Field Rush network and are teeming with great writing talent. I am still a part of their roster, but haven't had time to write for them in forever. Here is one of their latest and greatest from Andrew Martin.

Mario Salvini of Che Palle! has some fun with the Matt Kemp gossip that has been keeping TMZ happy.

A lot has also happened with Call to the Pen over the last year as they have become a part of the Fansided network. They also have a large crew of talented writers. Here, one of them reports on the latest Jonathan Papelbon rumor.

One of my favorite buds, Daniel Day of The Ball Caps Blog, has some perspective of our weird money distribution in light of the Robinson Cano deal.

Through the Fence Baseball has to be one of the hardest working baseball blogs in our chapter. One of their terrific team of writers, Jake Mastroianni, has a fine piece on the rebuilding of the Chicago White Sox.

I also met Bryan at a minor league game this past summer and I came away so impressed. In one of the best posts I have read this year, Bryan talks about the 2013 Red Sox and his son. An amazing piece of writing over at Replacement Level Baseball Blog. Like Dan, Bryan also now writes for High Heat Stats.

Chuck Booth of MLB Reports (one of the most faithful #FF guys on Twitter!) has a terrific piece on Tommy John Surgeries over the years.

For the last three years, Graham Womack has invited the public to list the greatest 50 players not in the Hall of Fame. Theo of Hot Corner Harbor has a very interesting post about his selections.

In a really enjoyable piece, Matt Whitener of Cheap.Seats.Please has a great run down of free agent signings. I was torn between picking this piece or the previous one on what all second place teams needed. Cool idea!

Christopher Carelli has neared the big time as he is writing for Yahoo Sports. He deserves every success. His The Baseball Stance blog is a good place to keep up with his various writings and this one shows that he has been watching closely at what the Yankees are doing this off season.

Of all the links here, and I love them all, you HAVE to read this one over at The Baseball Enthusiast. You just HAVE to. Unbelievable writing.

Nik of Nik's Baseball Corner made all his free agent signing predictions back in November. It is fascinating to look back. Nik hits the nail on several and was way off on several. But it's all fun.

The heading of this piece about the Braves acquiring Ryan Doumit (or Dumbmitt as I call him) drew me in immediately. And it gave me a good laugh. But the article is good except for the part about Doumit being a respectable catcher. Check it out at Off the Bench Baseball.

A discussion of the 2013 season's best pitchers is the topic of the latest post over at Payoff Pitch.

Radical Baseball is one of our newer sites and is written by Kenneth Matinale. I love posts like this one on the worst left-handed batters against left-handed pitching over time. Great job.

Another of our newer sites is not happy with the Seattle Mariners' off season and not for the reasons you'd think. Check out Ben's entertaining post over at Know Hitter.

Dave, over at Baseball Roundtable has some Hall of Fame predictions and thoughts.

Did the BBA really get High Heat Stats!? In my chapter!? Woo! That site is the bomb! They used to be the blog for baseball-reference.com until that site stupidly cut it loose. This post by Doug on Seth Smith shows why the site is so great.

Another great new site to the BBA is Baseball Hot Corner. Here is that site's take on the Rangers' new deal with Shin-Soo Choo.

There you have it. Phew! I had forgotten how much time that takes. I was a young man when I started this post. Have a wonderful holiday season and here's to a very good baseball New Years to all of us.