I went on a cruise. I came back alive. Here, then, are five supposedly fun things baseball teams should never do again.

1. Sign Michael Young to a $16 million per year, five-year deal after his age-29 season that doesn't actually kick in until he's 32. It's supposedly fun because Young was a nice 3.5- to 4.5-win player from 2005 to 2008. He followed that up with solid years in 2009 and 2011 and a decent one, all things considered, in 2010, but he cratered to literally-less-than-worthless status last year and the Rangers have to be thankful that the Phillies were willing to take him off their hands.

Using the Baseball Prospectus version of WAR(P), Young has been worth 5.6 wins above replacement over the first four years of the extension, for which he's been paid $64 million. There is simply no dollars-per-win ratio that justifies that. Don't sign Michael Young to big deals.

2. Build a stadium with public money. Just stop.

3. Let your general manager get to the point where he feels like he has to make win-now moves with a team that had 72 victories the prior year. I'm not going to flat-out blast Dayton Moore for his trade of Wil Myers plus other goodies for James Shields and Wade Davis, mainly because Shields is really quite good and Davis can be useful, and Myers, good as he probably is, is no lock to be great. The move might even be defensible as a win-now move ... except that the Royals rotation is now Shields-Guthrie-Santana-Davis-Chen. That's Ervin Santana, who the Royals are basically praying bounces back from a horrendous 2012, and Bruce Chen, who the Royals are ... well, no, there's no point even praying.

Will the team be better in 2014 with Shields-Guthrie-Davis along with Felipe Paulino and Danny Duffy, both back at that point from surgery, with John Lamb and Chris Dwyer also possibilities? Sure. And isn't a farm system not only for bringing players up to the majors but also for trading to acquire major leaguers? Sure.

But does this seem like a move being made a year early? Yes. Even supposing that the Royals were a .500 team that got unlucky last year, they're still left trying to add six or eight or ten wins to that talent to make a playoff team. That's a lot to ask in one off-season.

Though note that you'll never catch me telling Dayton Moore to his face that I think this was a panicked win-now move to save his job. Hell no.

4. Try to take Sandy Rosario from the Red Sox. Sounds cool, right? He's got good stuff and if he pulls it together he could end up being a middle reliever of some utility. So the A's did just that, acquiring the reliever in a trade with the Red Sox for a player to be named later (who turned out to be Graham Godfrey, about whom don't get me started because it'll probably just get me in trouble with his fiancee on Twitter). A few days later, Oakland acquired Chris Resop in a trade. They needed to clear room on the 40-man for him and designated the most obvious choice for assignment: Sandy Rosario. Rosario was promptly claimed by the Red Sox.

The lesson: don't you dare touch Sandy Rosario. The Red Sox will extract a possibly useful relief pitcher from you for doing so and end up with Rosario back on their team anyway.

5. I'm cheating, but I wanted to get to five since that's what I promised above and I'd hate to disappoint you, so I'm going to do one that's not a team thing -- arguing your father's Hall of Fame case sounds like a great idea. You're educated, you're well on your way to a PhD, you can put words together to form a sentence ... and you can make jokes about "VORP, GORP, SCHLORP, and THUNDERCORK" that imply that you've never actually read a baseball article because if you had, you'd realize how hackneyed and ridiculous you sound.

Dale Murphy's kid isn't even making a stupid point (which basically is that Murphy's good character should count to boost him in just as much as someone's bad character should keep them out), but his entire lengthy argument is undermined because he felt the need to go for a cheap joke rather than simply saying "the stats, especially the advanced ones, don't stack my dad up with the very best who've ever played, but there's more to the Hall of Fame than playing record." See how easy that was?

In the middle of the Winter Meetings, Major League Baseball released their annual jobs report, proudly touting the league's year-in, year-out steady job rate for their highly skilled and athletic workforce. Said an unnamed baseball rep, "The league is happy to say that, despite upheaval and uncertainty in almost every other job market, Major League Baseball has seen no loss in on-field jobs since 1994. Every single 25 man active roster is at 100% capacity. We remain committed to hiring American and International ballplayers that make our brand of Sport like no other." 

Every year, one of my favorite parts of the Hot Stove season is watching the reports roll out on various "untouchable" players. Whether these are reports from industry sources, or even the GMs themselves, it's always entertaining to hear about how highly a team values one of their own players, especially when that kind of reasoning is patently ridiculous. 

In 2011, the Cubs' general manager at the time, Jim Hendry, famously said that Jeff Baker was untouchable. Uh-uh. You can't have him. I imagine conversations with Hendry went something like this: "So what you're saying is, even if we offered Mike Trout AND Jered Weaver, you still won't trade Jeff to us. Okay, fine."

(For what it is worth, Jeff Baker is currently an unsigned free agent, and has produced a line of .266/.316/.428 over his career. Jim Hendry is currently a special assistant to Brian Cashman, GM of a team without a third baseman. Expect Baker to be starting for the Yankees on Opening Day.)

Anyways, here are some of my favorites from this year, so far ... starting with the most recent impetus for this article. Footnotes at the bottom.

• Bobby Parnell ("virtually untouchable") *
• Billy Butler ("close to untouchable")
• Alcides Escobar AND Salvador Perez ("the only untouchable Royals") **
• Will Middlebrooks ("consider[ed] to be untouchable")
• Dylan Bundy ("likely more untouchable than any other prospect in baseball")
• Danny Hultzen AND Taijuan Walker ("likely untouchable") ***
• Mystery Phillies ("there are a few untouchables in the organization")
• Andrelton Simmons ("I don't think anyone is untouchable, but I think he would be...") ****
• Not Chris Tillman ("I wouldn't consider Tillman to be untouchable")

Please do us all a favor and report on any untouchables that might appear in your Twitter feeds or in any reports you read.

Footnotes:

* - I understand this to mean that he is currently trapped inside of the film Tron.

** - This is fun, considering Billy Butler, above, is also a Royal.

*** - Walker is also "virtually untouchable" which I think means he is riding light cycles with Parnell in Cyber-Venezuela or something.

**** - This is an actual quote from Frank Wren, and it makes me giggle.

Here is some news that, as an aside, doesn't make me entirely happy as an A's fan who enjoys his team winning and having easy teams to beat up on in the American League West. The news is that the Rangers have put Josh Hamilton contract talks on hold to pursue Zack Greinke. You can see why this would upset me.

But that's not what I'm here for. I have a whole A's blog to whine about the A's. What I'm here for is the weirdness of an entire front office apparently being unable to manage two different contract negotiations at once, and in particular being unable to so manage in a public fashion. Or semi-public, at least -- Jon Heyman wasn't able to put a name to his report that Hamilton was being backburnered, after all, but it's not crazy to imagine that teams frequently let information out for a reason. This isn't the Cold War, but there sure is a lot of money at stake, so spy-game measures are well justified.

The point is this: just how many intensive hours of negotiation are going on between Jon Daniels and Zack Greinke's agent that Daniels can't call up Hamilton's man and have a chat here and there? Are Daniels and Greinke locked in a hotel suite together in Nashville, not permitted to leave or make a phone call until a contract is signed or they reach an impasse? Will a Federal Mediator be necessary to resolve things between the parties?

And more semi-seriously: what's the purpose of letting this get out? If you're Greinke, don't you now have a tad bit more leverage over the Rangers? "I know I'm your number-one target. If you lose me, you have to go to Josh, and if you go to Josh, he'll know you lost out on me and have that leverage, and besides he'll be mad at you that you tossed him aside to negotiate with a pitcher." If you keep talks going with both players, you can give 'em the ol' one-two -- "Whoever accepts first gets to win a ring! And also have $150 million!" Or, hell, at least pretend that you're doing that. "We've made this offer to Josh Hamilton and if he takes it, we'll take him, but if you take this first, we take that off the table and you get our money," whether you've made that offer or not.

Or maybe you don't like lying because everyone in the game talks and you know Greinke will eventually chat with Hamilton and find out that Daniels duped you. So you don't say that Hamilton has an offer, but you just keep Greinke in the dark about what your backup plans are and are not.

Now, I'm me. You know me. I'm not the guy who rails at the front offices of baseball about how stupid they are and what are they doing and why would they ever do that and oh my god just hire me already I'll revolutionize this bullshit. No, these people are smart and experienced and adept at running franchises worth nine or ten figures while I'm sitting on my couch in my underpants. (I'm wearing pants and a shirt, actually, but I have underpants on underneath, so I'm not actually lying.)

So where does that leave us? Here: I doubt the Rangers are making blunders, but I'm not sure why they're doing things this way and I'd love to have some theories. I guess Occam's Razor would probably say that the leak wasn't part of some negotiating strategy. It was just a piece of information from some front office type to Heyman, a minor piece meant to appease him and keep him close or maybe even in direct trade for something else that Heyman knows. That only deals with the public aspect and doesn't address the question of why the team can't negotiate with both players at once, but it's something, at least. What else we got?

Source: Cubs have told Marmol he's trade candidate but they won't "give him away." #fujikawa

— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubCub) December 3, 2012

OK?

OK.

Upcoming tweets:

• Braves have told Tommy Hanson he's trade candidate but they won't "trade him to Seattle"

• Angels have told Albert Pujols he's first baseman but they won't "bat him eighth"

• Yankees have told Alex Rodriguez his contract is expensive boondoggle but they won't "be at all afraid of embarrassing him into retiring"

• Royals have told Ned Yost he's manager but they won't "ever give him a team good enough to win"

• MLB has told Jose Canseco he's never playing in the majors again but they won't "... no, just no"

• Lakers have told Kobe Bryant he's on team for life but they won't "ever win a championship again"

• NFL has told players they want 18-game season but they won't "do anything about their head injuries"

• RNC has told Mitt Romney he's not President but they won't "ever nominate him for anything ever again"

• Bill has told the Common Man he's terrible human but he won't "stop tweeting mean things about you"

• Jason has told cats they poop too much but he won't "get mad at them because they're just too cute"

If there's anything the last three weeks of baseball transactions have taught us (besides the fact that Jeffrey Loria is a big jerk), it's that a third baseman is a valuable commodity. Evan Longoria signed a big-time extension to remain a Ray until 2022, and then David Wright re-upped with the Mets until 2020. Longoria got $100 million for six years, while Wright pulled down $138 million for eight.

Following that, reports surfaced that Alex Rodriguez will miss four to six months with hip surgery, leaving the Yankees with a hole at third base until at least June. Even though Rodriguez's production has tailed off (did you hear anything about that during the playoffs?), he still leaves a substantial gap on the Bombers' roster.

So two elite third basemen were so valued by their teams, that they were willing to make decade-long commitments and nine-figure salaries to keep them despite all the risk that entails. And though A-Rod had wormed his way out of the hearts of Yankee fans, his loss made more than a few catch their breaths. Why is that? Is third base really such a valuable position?

I love Denard Span. I think he's one of the most underrated players in baseball, and one that was under team control for three more years at insanely low prices, even considering the first two would have been arbitration years ($4.75 million for 2013, $6.5 for 2014, and a no-brainer team option for $9 in 2015). 

I can't imagine why any team would want to trade Span, without being blown away. The Twins will not compete in 2013, and would not have competed with Span...but if there's any team with a front office that doesn't think they'll compete three seasons from now, that team needs a new front office. The team's presumptive replacement, Ben Revere, is passable but a huge downgrade, and I don't even know who might fill Revere's vacated corner slot. The deal cripples the formerly-averageish lineup in the short term, and they'll need one of their prospects (most likely Aaron Hicks or Oswaldo Arcia) to make it in a big way to keep it from hurting the lineup in the long term. I just can't track with any line of thinking that makes trading Span for less than most of some team's farm system makes any sense. 

For all that, when they finally did trade him yesterday for Nationals pitching prospect Alex Meyer -- a live arm yet to appear above high-A who may ultimately profile as a reliever -- I was okay with it. And it had nothing to do with Terry Ryan's justification (from the same article, "[w]e have some depth in the outfield here, so it just made sense," which isn't a lie in the sense that all three-dimensional objects have some depth). 

It's just that, frankly, I was expecting a lot worse.

As you may have noticed, I (Jason) have been attempting to write more here on good ol' TPA. I owe Bill and Mike a lot and I haven't really been handling my obligations lately. Tonight, though, I had to spend five hours proofreading a book for my wife, so I was unable to write a blog post. What follows is the post that she wrote for me. (I'm not kidding.)

Today Russell Martin was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates have notoriously not been a good baseball team for about 20 years. Martin might make them a better baseball team, but no one really knows. From living with an internet baseball pundit, I have learned that you can't really know anything in baseball, despite all the fancy stats you baseball nerds are so obsessed with: WAR, fWAR, VORP, PECOTA, YOMAMA, to name a few.

Therefore, I am the perfect person to write about this transaction. I do not know what position Russell Martin plays, but based on his name, I'm guessing catcher. I also don't know what team he came from, but I have just been informed that he came from the Yankees. I am gathering that the significance of this news is that the Pirates -- a small-market, poor-relations team -- outbid the big, bad, uber-rich New York Yankees.

The question becomes: is this a sign of the Pirates making a run and becoming a win-now team? Or is this an example of a team overpaying for a player who is either past his peak or had some fluke 2012 season that no one smart can expect him to repeat in 2013? Have the Pirates embarked on a misguided attempt to out Moneyball the Monyeballers?

Again, prediction is a fool's errand, so we'll just have to see and blog about it again later.

She's kinda got us figured, doesn't she?

Aroldis Chapman is a starter. A starting pitcher. A pitcher who will pitch in the first inning of baseball games. Rejoice and celebrate, right? Hoorah! Hooray! Hoorak! Five cheers!

Well.

The problem is that we're all a little gunshy. Daniel Bard blew up for the Red Sox and then didn't even pitch well out of the bullpen in Triple-A. Neftali Feliz went under the knife. Chris Sale and Jeff Samardzija ... well, actually, those went fine. Sale was a Cy Young candidate and Samardzija posted a 4.07 RA/9 (the NL scored 4.22 runs per game). But it's Bard and Feliz who I think remain foremost in the minds of many, myself included. And given the stellar numbers put up by Chapman as a reliever in 2012 (122 whiffs, 23 walks, four homers allowed in 71 2/3 innings -- that's an FIP of 1.59, which is so low that you'd think maybe it breaks the system, except Chapman's ERA was 1.51, so ...), you'd be forgiven for wondering why the Reds can't just leave well enough alone and let Chapman keep dominating out the 'pen. After all, Baseball Prospectus's WARP is as unfriendly to relief pitchers as any system (it doesn't include a leverage component, for instance), but Chapman racked up 2.4 WARP in his innings this year, tied for first on his team with Homer Bailey.

"But if you double or triple his innings, you could double or triple his value!"

Maybe. Probably not, though. Pitchers pitch worse out of the rotation than they do from the bullpen, and for what should be obvious reasons -- they have to save something for their 90th pitch, their seventh inning, their third time facing a batter. They get tired. They get up and sit down a lot. In the National League, they bat. Also, while BP's WARP does not include leverage, a team can pick a reliever's spots and assign him tougher, more important innings. A starter just starts and pitches as long as he can and that's it, even if it's 10-0.

I've covered this ground before, and I don't just want to rehash things I've written elsewhere, so I'll just note that, given these general concerns about any pitcher moving to the rotation, and with the fact that there will be an innings limit, I'm in cautious optimism mode about Chapman starting rather than full-on put-your-damn-hands-up happiness.

There's irrationality to this, of course. Bard and Feliz don't change Chapman's odds of success. They don't really even add information that we didn't already know -- pitchers get hurt and pitchers fail, especially pitchers who don't have enough depth in their arsenal to be rotation men. (If I remember right, Keith Law was concerned all along about Bard in that regard.) All they do is highlight the issue. They're like the car accident you saw last week on your way to work. You just have to note it, learn what you can, and move on. It doesn't change a thing.

Hoorooh! Hoor! Yay!

The end of the baseball season has passed. They are no games to watch today, nor will there be for many more days to come. We fill the time by “rosterbating,” fantasizing about what our favorite (or any) teams will do this offseason to make their squad better. There will be debates in bars, emails exchanged, and a slew of articles written on these subjects. We are forever looking forward, for that is the only place optimism lives. I however, find great joy in the past. I use the offseason to catch up on the mountain of baseball books I purchased during the season, but never got around to reading. I try to learn more about players and managers and teams and seasons that I was not around for, or was too young or careless to properly observe. I thought this would be a good thing to share (note: I also thought this would be a good excuse to start writing more). So I’m starting a little project called Lost Seasons. I’m not sure where it will lead, but I’m excited to find out.

When one is in the position of a famous person, their fame can hinge either on a single event, or a series of them. Barry Bonds is famous for, well, a lot of things, but his fame is certainly spanning. He was one of the league’s very best for a good number of years. Roger Maris, on the other hand, is remembered for only one thing, really. Sure, he was an above-average player for a number of seasons, but had he hit only 50 home runs in 1961, we’d certainly remember Roger Maris very differently. Both Bonds and Maris are famous in their own right, but for drastically different reasons. But that’s kind of how fame works. In many cases, one is either known for one thing, or a whole lot of things. Vanilla Ice vs. Johnny Cash. Kim Kardashian vs. Audrey Hepburn. Andy Warhol vs. Mr. Brainwash. In baseball, we celebrate the legends. But there is joy to be found in the one-hit wonders.

Fred Lynn gets a bad rap as a one-hit wonder. His 1975 rookie season is one of lore, and rightfully so. Since Lynn, only one other player has won the MVP, Rookie of the Year, and a Gold Glove in the same season – Ichiro. But this wasn’t Lynn’s only accomplishment. Though his career was marred by injury and inconsistency, he certainly had his moments. His rookie campaign was one of those moments. 1979 was another. He may have caught the most attention in 1975, but in 1979, Fred Lynn was the best hitter in baseball.