Recent Miscellany

It's official, the Braves have signed former Marlin second basemen Dan Uggla to a 5-year $62 million contract extension. The Marlins had offered 4 years and $48 million to him in November, which he turned down. 5 years seems like 2 years to many, but Uggla deserves to get whatever the market will pay for him. But if that expected post-30 decline hits (and it is highly unlikely it won't), Atlanta will be stuck with a below-average fielder who has never hit for average that it can't DH. And he'll be costing them $10+ million a year (I will enjoy the schadenfreude if he becomes an albatross on a division rival, and I won't feel guilty about that one bit).

Meanwhile, Joe Frisaro reported last month that Emilio Bonifacio, the official pariah of Marlins Diehards, could see some playing time at third base in 2011. I really really really hope Matt Dominguez is ready for the big leagues (or the Marlins wise up and pick up a replacement-level player to man the hot corner), because I don't think I can take another stint of Bonifacio as an everyday player (this is where I remind you that his career OBP is .306, while his OPS+ is 64).

Finally, I recently cast a Hall of Fame ballot for the Baseball Bloggers Association. The BBA publishes its members' voting results every this year, and this year's deserving inductees according to the BBA are Burt Blyleven and Roberto Alomar. I voted for both of them, along with Barry Larkin, Jeff Bagwell, Edgar Martinez, Tim Raines, and Mark McGwire. I also threw in a courtesy vote for Charles Johnson (and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one to vote for him). I thought about writing a long post explaining my vote, but I got lazy. Instead, I direct you to Joe Posnanski, whose quartet of HOF posts gives you more quality reading material on the subject than I could ever hope to (1, 2, 3, 4).