I’m not a big intangibles guy…I generally think they are the things that people bring up to make players/teams they like who aren’t as good as others seem on par…"well sure he doesn’t give as much offense, but he brings intangibles…" Largely, they’re a bunch of hooey.

That said, nice piece here by MLB.com’s Marty Noble on the seeming change in Pedro Martinez, not performance-wise, but related to how he’s interacting with his teammates. He’s always been seen as loose, but apparently that’s be ratcheted up and he’s more involved in the general banter, more approachable. Simply, Pedro seems happy. Add that to the apparent friendly rivalry between John Maine and Oliver Perez, and the change seen by many in new dad Carlos Beltran, and we could see a dugout much more like the constant jovial bunch of two years ago than last year’s squad. Of course, winning breeds happiness, too.

Cool piece by Baseball Prospectus’ Will Carroll on evaluating injuries and, more importantly, the "cost" of injuries. Basically, it’s based off BP’s PECOTA projections and a derivative thereof, MORP, which is Marginal Value Over Replacement Player. It assigns a dollar value to a player based on the current market rate, not what they’re actually being paid. As Carroll notes, " If Florida doesn’t lose many [real] dollars to the DL (only $3.2 million last season, despite losing the 28^th-most days with 1,253), it’s because they’re not spending money, not because they’re avoiding injuries." Therefore, the MORP equation is a more real value, because it’s based on a player’s actual market value.

I mention PECOTA and BP here and elsewhere. I’m not a "sabermetrician" in the deepest sense, but I also think most people misunderstand sabermetrics just as they misunderstand what the concept of "Moneyball" really is. I’m always amused by the us vs. them attitude that seems to crop up between the sabermetric crowd and the classic stats crowd…it’s silly. It’s the same as the people who mock Billy Beane when one of his choices, i.e. Jeremy Brown, becomes a bust. "Well…so much for ‘Moneyball.’" But what about all Beane’s done right?  That never gets discussed. Sabermetrics are interesting and informative, but you can control how deep you get into them. To ignore sabermetrics as a serious fan is willful ignorance to me. There’s a ton of fascinating information out there.

I can’t believe what a big deal was made about the Yankees letting Billy Crystal play in a spring training game. It was a combination of jealousy someone else was getting to do it, resentment of his celebrity (which ties into the first reason for sure), and the arrogance that places the Yankees as "higher" than other teams and they "are above" such things. Give me a break. They gave a lifelong fan an at bat in spring training. Move on.

I’ll get my predictions out soon, but one team I think people are vastly overestimating is the Seattle Mariners. They can pitch, but they can’t score. The idea they can knock off the Angels is something I just don’t see. Obviously, health plays a part (and John Lackey is out for a month now) . The Mariners have zero power and, outside of Ichiro, little speed. Since they aren’t awash with patience either, you’re asking your staff to win 3-2 or 4-3 every night. Not in the AL, guys.

Biggest loser of the offseason? Kyle Lohse. The guy was seeking a 5-year, $50 million deal – absurd, given his mediocrity – and passed on a 3-year, $21 million deal. Lohse signed with the Cardinals earlier this month for 1 year at $4.5 million. A career losing pitcher with a below average ERA+. I wonder what his next contract will be for. I’m not sure, but I can bet Scott Boras won’t still be his agent.

Though a Mets fan, I sided with the Yankees in the initial dispute with the Devil Rays (yes, I still call them that. P.C. ridiculousness can, generally speaking, kiss my rear end). There’s no reason to run over a catcher in an exhibition game. Call it "playing hard" if you want, but the fact is the catcher is hung out to dry on this play and is always at a risk for injury. And if you believe for a minute that Don Zimmer’s attitude would have been the same if he were still with the Yankees, then you don’t realize what a clown Zimmer is, and pretty much always has been.

But with that said, somebody needs to remind Shelley Duncan that he is little more than a boil on baseball’s collective ***. The guy may think he’s the next Mickey Mantle, but 20 Ks in 74 ABs last year suggest he’s not long for this baseball world.

If you want to see what a real leader Joe Girardi is going to be, see how he handles this. Somebody better calm this idiot down, because if he pulls this in the regular season, it won’t be him that teams retaliate against. Is it worth getting Jeter cheapshotted on a takeout slide and missing a few months with an ACL tear so Shelley Duncan can tell his friends down at AAA – where he’ll likely be by season’s end – that he was the Yankees enforcer?