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Baseball Digest Daily e-zine

By Marc Normandin

The Baseball Herald, Baseball Digest Daily's monthly magazine, should be coming out sometime today or tonight. I contributed to that as always with an article detailing the players in the majors today who I think have a legit shot at making themselves into Hall of Famers (if they are not already at that point). Of course, I happened to be finishing it up when I received word that Rafael Palmeiro had tested positive for steroids, but did not have the heart to go back and edit any of it to asterisk the hell out of it (mostly because I don't work that way). Here is an excerpt from the upcoming article; I'd appreciate it greatly if you took the time to read it and get back to me either through comments, diary or e-mail.

David Schoenfield of Page 2 at ESPN.com recently wrote a two-part article on 40 active players he thinks will or should make the Hall of Fame. There are some parts of the article I agree with, others I am not so fond of, and some I wanted to take a look at to double check before deciding what I thought. I ended up compiling my own list of players who I feel should or have a chance to make the Hall of Fame. I broke the players up into different categories depending on when they entered the league, to avoid what Schoenfield did on occasion. He threw everyone together, and omitted players like Scott Rolen and Chipper Jones at third base in favor of David Wright and Hank Blalock, who have barely scratched the surface of their careers yet. This will help with the comparisons as well, as we can see how far ahead certain players like A-Rod are to players who entered the league in the same period as he. I broke them up into 3-year periods, starting with 1984 (Roger Clemens' first year in the big leagues, and the most tenured player on the list).

You'll notice in the story I accidentally typed Scotto Rolen rather than Scott...maybe me and Dan need some time apart to sort some things out, like my apparent obsession with his last name.

By the way, we're in the midst of planning something pretty schnazzy and big that includes Beyond the Boxscore and its writers, but I cannot divulge any information yet. When the time comes my friends, I will share. I just like to put people on the edge of their seats (because I'm sure that was your reaction, right?).

I'll be back tomorrow with regular posting; I'm working on something and with 40 hours of work this week (at a place with no computer no less) I do not want to force something this morning. Linkage is what you will get!

Rich Lederer on Daniel Cabrera

Marc Normandin on the Blue Jays Playoff Chances.

The interesting thing about that article (I honestly think its poorly written, back from when I started blogging all of 3-4 months ago, so no criticisms for that!) is how I was more in tune than many at the Blue Jays playoff chances. I mention this solely because I was viciously attacked (ok, I'm exaggerating) for believing the Blue Jays had a shot at the Wild Card this year. I don't want to pat myself on the back too hard though, because I said the team with the next best chance after that was Seattle (that worked out well). You win some, you lose some. Toronto's run differential might eventually catapult them all the way into second place though, as no team with the best run differential in a division has ever finished lower than second. Always time for a first time though. Hopefully this will tide you over for the time being until tomorrow.

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