Ivan Rodriguez is mired in a pretty ugly slump at exactly the wrong time for the Detroit Tigers -- can the magical mojo of the Photo of the Day help him out?

Tonight will be the truest test of the POTD effect.  Here's a photograph of Pudge rounding third after hitting a home run against Toronto:

There will be no labour dispute this time around as the owners and players agreed to a 5 year deal.  The deal essentially continues the status quo, with a few minor changes. Elements of the deal include:

1.   no contraction during the life of the deal,
2.   thresholds for the competitive balance tax were raised significantly,
3.   there will be compensation for clubs that fail to sign a first or second round pick, and
4.   free agent compensation was reduced in a number of ways- no type C free agents; the compensation for type B free agents is changed to a sandwich pick only, and fewer type A and type B free agents by tightening the performance criteria.

That one day that I was able to photograph the Detroit Tigers at Rogers Centre was probably the most perfect day in terms of light for dramatic pictures of batters standing at the plate that I could possibly imagine. For pitchers, well, that was some ugly light.  But as Omar Infante demonstrates below, it was very flattering for the hitters:

Today Baseball America released the most up-to-date list of minor league free agents that I've found on the web. It's complete with some of our favourite names of the past few years, including Frank Menechino (??), Tom Wilson, Alberto Castillo, Gookie Dawkins, one of the Bobby Joneses, Tony Torcato, C.J. Nitkowski and Mac Suzuki.

Back in June, I went wandering through the history of all 30 active franchises. I was interested in each team's all-time record - were they winners overall or were they losers? What was each team's highest mark above .500, what was the lowest? If they have a losing record, when did they fall below .500? Stuff like that.

Ichiro! is an icon. This makes it hard to look at him objectively. But, try we will. 2006 was an interesting year for Ichiro. His batting average and isolated power were down, and his strikeout and pop-up rates were up. On the other hand, he was hitting more balls in the air, and stole 45 bases in 47 attempts. Was this the first year of a decline or a transition year on the way to Ichiro developing more power? He certainly has the strength to do it, and I would not bet against him. We shall see.

Another day, another Tiger.  Who wants to place a bet on how many will make Photo of the Day before the series ends?

Today we feature Brandon Inge:

At the close of the 2006 baseball season, there were 11 active pitchers with 200 or more career wins. With the possible exception of Roger Clemens, all are currently scheduled to return for the 2007 season.

Okay, maybe David Wells (3-5, 4.42) is done, too, but it's possible that all 11 will be in uniform next season, and joined in the "200 Club" by John Smoltz (who has 193) and Andy Pettitte (186).

What's so unusual about all this? Well ...

Well, we've moved past Friday the 13th and all the usual triskaidekaphobia stories and wisecracks, but we're still stuck on the #13 here in Baseball's Hall of Names ...

In fact, as we contine to build up a Hall of Names roster for each of  the 25 most-common male names in North America, we move to the 13th most common of those names, the name of a man who wrote some pretty famous letters (epistles, even); and on the baseball diamond, the name of another man they dubbed "Big Poison."

And with a nod to the former of those two, we can even give this team the name of a "real" professional (independent league, anyway) baseball team, as it's time to meet ...

I was writing about the Tigers the other day, puzzling out how this year's AL champs were assembled. Some of the players were drafted, some were signed as free agents, some were obtained in trade - just like everybody else.

Has there ever been a bigger birthday for MLB than October 20? That's a real question, and not just because today is my dad's birthday and we did an All-October 20 team a year ago.

Consider ...

In the early 1980s, Warren handed over his NL APBA to me, as his AL team (the Quebec Avenue Separatistes-"the Seps") kept him too busy. Terry Kennedy, Jason Thompson, Juan Bonilla, Dave Concepcion, Bill Madlock, Rick Monday and Mario Soto were the fixtures on my club, the Annex Anarchists, that went to two APBA World Series, losing both times, but the best club belonged to Rick with Tim Raines, Jose Cruz Sr. and Dale Murphy leading the way. Raines was the star in APBA, and Rick developed a special, slightly obscene, way of shaking the dice when Raines came to bat. It seemed to work, as Raines was a tremendous hitter, particularly in the clutch, in APBA.

Later on, in about 1984, Warren and I made a bet. He said that Rickey Henderson would develop more power, and I put my proverbial nickel on Tim Raines. I guess that Warren won that bet. But then, I wasn't exactly an unbiased observer (full disclosure statement).

So, the matchup is now complete: the Tigers will face the Cardinals starting tomorrow night for the big silver wedding cake.

Sorry, Coach -- I'm rooting for Detroit.  And here's Nate Robertson:

At about this time last year, I devoted a fair amount of attention to the striking discrepancy between Toronto's won-lost record and what their actual runs scored and allowed should have led us to expect. This year, of course, things returned to normal.

It would be bad luck to post a photograph of a player and request captions that poke fun at them going into that player's World Series run, right?

Well, it's a good thing that Chris Shelton was left off of the Tigers' playoff roster!