The 2007 roster is beginning to take shape, but its final construction is likely to depend on what actually happens in Florida this spring. Which isn't something we saw last year...

Dan Szymborski has posted the 2007 ZIPS projections for Toronto.  The projections, both for the pitchers and the hitters look quite favourable.  Can you guess which hitter has the best projection?

John Thomson (and his good buddy at the Sun, John Thompson) wasn't the only one to sign recently.

Mulder re-signs with the Cards and the SS Loogy signs with the Mets. Apparently Schoeneweis isn't worried about Paul LoDuca.

John Thomson was signed by the Jays today. Thomson had rough seasons in 2005 and 2006 due to a blister and shoulder problems respectively.  It is generally a good idea to have around extra veteran starting pitching, but anything Thomson delivers will be a bonus in light of his health issues.

Thanks to TA for the tip.

Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken were elected to the Hall of Fame, each with over 95% of the vote.  Goose Gossage fell narrowly short with 70%, while Mark McGwire garnered under 25%.

Gwynn and Ripken were pretty obvious selections. The vote next year should be very interesting when Tim Raines is added to the ballot.

With Goose Gossage seeming to have increasing popularity as Hall of Fame candidate, I thought that a preview of my thinking about relievers for the Hall Watch series was in order.

Looking at the 1982 California Angels

Sometimes my Hall of Names travels and travails cause me to fall into "wander" mode on the greatness of BaseballReference.com; that happened to me tonight and at the end of it all, random clicking led me to the team page for the 1982 California Angels.

This was a good ball club -- they won 93 games (though their Pytagorean results called for 95) and the AL West pennant by three games over the Kansas City Royals ...

You might recall that a while back -- actually, way back in June of '06 -- we introduced a new Hall of Names category focused on players born in a particular year. We met The Bicentennial Men, players born in 1976, and readers chipped in by adding teams for players born in 1957, 1980, 1982 and 1983.

It's a new year and a new group of MLB players is turning 30 this year, so let's take a gander at players born in 1977 (there have been more than 200, at least so far) as we meet ...

ESPN.com is reporting that Randy Johnson has, indeed, been traded from the Yankees to the Arizona Diamondbacks, for Luis Vizcaino and two minor leaguers. The story is here.

Pineiro to BoSox; Ponson to Twins
Neither has ever made an All-Star team, but as recently as 2003, they combined for 33 wins and were each seen as young front-of-the-rotation building blocks. Now Sir Sidney Ponson has signed on with the Minnesota Twins while Joel Pineiro is going cross-country from Seattle to Boston.

Will this do anything to the AL pennant race(s)? Got any other news or commentary to provide?

A dozen college pitchers to look at that should go in the first few rounds, of which 8 are left handers.

Almost lost in the hulabaloo of last week's execution of Saddam Hussein was the death of 93-year-old Gerald Ford, the only man to serve as President of the United States without being elected to a position in the U.S. government's executive branch.

And though Ford wasn't the baseball fan his predecessor Richard Nixon or his Republican successor Ronald Reagan were, the fact that he was an outstanding college football player while at the University of Michigan landed the story of his passing some time on ESPN and Fox Sports News. And now, Baseball's Hall of Names nods respectfully to the man who was the White House's ultimate relief pitcher -- he replaced both Spiro Agnew AND Nixon, after all -- by introducing not one but two all-name teams. To start, let's meet ...

It is the middle of winter and minor league baseball news is almost non-existent.  Baseball America and John Sickels' prospect books are a month away from my mailbox so to keep me going I thought I would look at the Jays minor league system one more time.  This time I decided to put myself in JP Ricciardi's shoes and ask myself What help is likely coming from the system in the next couple of years?  Which prospects should I count on and which ones should I discount?

Everyone all recovered from a night of New Year's revelry? Good -- then let's look to the (immediate) future and fill a thread with our predictions about the 2007 baseball season. (Hey,. every newspaper columnist in every paper in the free world is writing this story today. Why not us?)

Just a few minor "rules" ....

Last year -- okay, yesterday, but that's still last year -- we built a Hall of Names team of players born on New Year's Eve, Dec. 31. Today, New Year's Day, has been more prolific in producing big league talent, with 48 players to the previous day's 28. That, of course, means ... uh, something.

And actually, it's 47 players and one manager who never played big league ball in Bill McGunnigle, who led the 1889-90 Brooklyn Bridegrooms to back-to-back league titles in two different leagues, the 1889 American Association and the 1890 National League. Could he lead this New (Year's) Age team to such success? Let's find out as we meet ...

When you search the greatness of BaseballReference.com for MLB figures born on Dec. 31 -- New Year's Eve babies, as it were -- there are 30 names returned. However, two of them -- one a manager (Jim Tracy), the other a Hall of Fame umpire (Tom Connolly) -- were never actually players, so we are looking at a list of 28 options to build a team.

All that means, of course, is that we must be steadfast and, uh, resolute, in our team-building of ... (wait for it) ...