I did a very quick interview with Trayvon, mostly about non-baseball stuff but there are some interesting nuggets in there. Enjoy.

As teams have been checking in on the availability of infielders, they have found that the asking price for Beltre is no less than $10 million a year

Beltre has provided a lot of value with his glove and decent value with his bat since he left the Dodgers. If he had been signed to the extension he wanted with the Dodgers, I wonder how that would have affected the team over those years.

This is a great article written in 2004 about McCourt. Key graf:

"They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

"Recently, two top-ranking Dodger officials resigned from their posts, allegedly after reviewing the McCourt financial plan for the Dodgers, which, due to their massive debt load, leaves no room for error. In order to meet the financial needs of the club, everything must go perfectly according to plan. As we all know, in baseball, this is nearly impossible."

Everybody wants Adrian Gonzalez, Prince Fielder, or Roy Halladay, but the Dodgers can barely afford to fill all the roster spots on their team with decent players, much less trade for an elite talent and pay them adequately. It's a joke, really.

Given the financial restrictions, I believe I did a decent job at constructing a roster that could make the playoffs in 2010 and beyond, while also concurrently keeping the Dodgers long-term future in tact as much as possible.

How will the actual offseason play out? We'll just have to wait and see, but it's clear that the front office has a sizable task ahead of them.

Last year, we asked you to eat birria to stoke the curse of the Billy Goat. This year, get a pollo or turkey taco, douse it with some red salsa and imagine you’re chowing down on grilled cardinal. Hey, it worked last time!

Two components determine how nasty a pitcher’s stuff truly is: velocity and movement. We’ve had radar guns to track the league’s hardest throwers for some time (that would be Joel Zumaya, of course) But now, with the help of pitchf/x data and a local regression technique picked up from Dave Allen, we can come pretty close to quantifying a pitcher’s stuff.

Brad Penny, the hard-throwing but inconsistent righthander who was let go by the Red Sox on Aug. 26, cleared waivers this afternoon and, according to a report from ESPN.com's Buster Olney, is poised to sign with the San Francisco Giants.

Penny, who was removed from the rotation last week, asked for and was granted his release from the Red Sox, who acceded to his wishes so he could join another club before Aug. 31, when postseason rosters have to be set.