Daily Links - Turkey Coma Edition

There's nothing like eating so much turkey you can't communicate. That's what Thanksgiving represents, right? The freedom to make yourself ill on so much food that other countries would literally kill for half of it. So enjoy your feast, OTM, and may the stomach pains help you all remember what makes this country great.

Link time!

It's MVP day and even though he doesn't get a real vote, the Providence Journal's Tim Britton soldiered on and admirably voiced his opinion anyway. It's an interesting ballot which is a nice way of saying I don't agree with it, but then what fun would agreeing with it be? It'd be like being happily married, right? And who wants any part of that!

Rob Bradford of WEEI.com gets down and dirty with David Ortiz's perception around Major League Baseball. As we've discussed here at OTM before, the market for DHs isn't what it once was as teams have learned their relative value is less than that of players with defensive value. That said, a run scored is a run scored. The Red Sox history with Ortiz means they have a leg up should any signing derby break out. The likelihood is that Ortiz will sit on the market until his perception of his value meshes with that of the Red Sox.

Our Red Sox blogging compatriots over at Fire Brand of the AL review J.D. Drew's season, what little there was of it.

The manager search is heating up! And then cooling down, but then heating up! And then cooling down again. It's like a parade of cheerleaders holding gophers (you decide who is hot and who isn't in that scenario!). The point is, after taking a week off for a foot massage, the Red Sox are ready to jump right back into the manager search by interviewing managerial genius and ESPN talking genius Bobby Valentine. Valentine might just be the front runner for the position right now, according to Gordon Edes, or he might not be, according to Gordon Edes. You just never know. What? Things are complicated, alright?!

Finally, I don't often link to the Globe because I figure most of you probably read it regularly anyway, but since this piece was posted on the weekend and we know that nobody here reads jack squat over the weekend, well, I figured you might want to see this. Peter Abraham posted a nice summary of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the owners and the players. The agreement provides five more years of labor piece (eat that, NBA!), raises the minimum salary, institutes HGH testing, screws with the draft, and requires all those attending games to wear underwear on their heads. Still reading? Didn't think so.