Daily Links - Personal Sewage Jars? Edition

Portland is an odd place to live. Each morning it's 60 degrees and cloudy. By 4pm the sun has come out and it's warm and perfect out. Of course that's when the Red Sox games start. As a result your humble author is as pasty white as a porcelain sink. I won't get skin cancer, but I may develop rickets any day now. Go Sox?

Link time!

A while back I noted on Twitter that Adrian Gonzalez spends half his time as Babe Ruth and the other half as Tony Gwynn. I mention this because in his newest article the incomparable Alex Speier makes the same comparison. Great minds think alike, I guess. Or, as my grandfather would say, even the sun shines on a dog's ass every once in a while. Take your pick. In any case, as Mr. Speier notes, the comparison is apt in a number of ways and even though Gonzalez is being paid to be the hulking slugging first baseman, hitting .350 means we have no grounds to complain. Complaints are only admissible when the singles stop falling, and with a .390 BABIP that could be any day now. Marc could likely address this more completely but at least this season Gonzalez has gone on some power binges and then purged the homers from his game. Here's his homers by month:

April: 1
May: 9
June: 6
July: 2
August: 0 (8 games)

What does this all mean? Likely nothing.

OTM's own Marc Normandin, writing at Baseball Nation, discusses the Red Sox run at a historically great offense. Using some weighted statistics, Marc determines that the Sox are in the running for the best offense of the expansion era. What's holding them back? Well, the Yankees actually.

Charlie Saponara at Fire Brand of the AL wants to know if it's time to talk turkey with David Ortiz. Considering Ortiz's age and position it's hard to imagine he and the Red Sox agreeing on a deal without testing the market to some extent. Ortiz likely wants a multi-year deal, as he's been very productive for the Red Sox this season and of course in seasons past. From the Red Sox standpoint, you don't give multi-year contracts to old DHs when the market is flooded with them. There is almost certainly some middle ground to be had here, but the likelihood of finding it without any assistance from learning Ortiz's market value is probably less than we'd all like. The end result of all this is likely to be no more than a two year deal for Ortiz, but probably at larger dollars than he'd get on the market. After all, as Mr. Saponara notes, Ortiz is a Red Sox legend.

Over at Fan Graphs, Marc Hulet takes a look at how the Red Sox 2010 draft class has played in the last year. The results, limited as they are, aren't pretty. The big hauls of the Sox draft class, Anthony Ranaudo and Bryce Brentz are either struggling in A ball or have significant holes in their game. Or both.  I'm not nearly as down on the high school picks as Mr. Hulet seems to be, but then again he's a minor league expert who gets paid for his opinions and I'm just some dolt who likes italics and lives in his mom's pudding filled basement with with his computer and collection of personal sewage jars.

Finally, have you ever wanted to step in the box against a Cy Young winner? Here's your chance.