Baseball – Jim Northrup, Yoenis Cespedes, Marco Scutaro, Stan Musial

Jim Northrup (b. 1939) was a solid outfielder who played most of his career with the Detroit Tigers, and was a key player for their 1968 World Championship team.  That year he hit five grand slams, including three in one week.  Northrup was known as the "Silver Fox" because of his prematurely gray hair. http://fairandunbalancedblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/baseball-losses-in-2011.html  

Yoenis Cespedes has a track record of hitting, both in Cuba and during international tournaments. Cespedes' performance at the 2009 World Baseball Classic (where he ranked No. 6 on our Top 20 World Baseball Classic prospects list) in particular seems to have made an impression on scouts and helped convince them of his ability to hit high-level pitching. He has excellent bat speed and has repeatedly shown the ability to smash a fastball, so there isn't much doubt about his ability to handle premium velocity. "He's got a very balanced swing," said a Latin American director. "His lower half is very balanced. He doesn't load very much but he's strong and his hands are pretty quick. There weren't any of those crazy types of swings where the guy's just trying to hit the ball out of the park." http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/2012/02/scouting-report-for-as-outfielder-yoenis-cespedes/

Marco Scutaro - Marco has been handed the 2B job of the Rockies after being traded by Boston for Clayton Mortenson. Scutaro has put up decent numbers averaging about 10 HRs and a 0.285 AVG with Boston over the last 2 seasons. While the 36-year-old is not a spring chicken, he projects to hit around 0.275 with 9 HRs. While he is not an offensive power by any means, he is better than what the Rockies recycled through the 2B spot in 2011. They tried 7 different players at 2B last season. The seven players had a 0.256/0.304/0.351 triple slash line compared to the N.L. average for 2B of 0.258/0.319/0.380. Scutaro looks to be a significant improvement at 2B for the Rockies. http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/scutaro-descalso-and-greene-2b-movers-and-shakers/

So you think showing a squirrel on a Skip Schumaker Topps baseball card is controversial? How about printing baseball cards for seven years between 1951-57 and never offering a Stan Musial baseball card? In the first series of its 2012 baseball card set, Topps has printed two cards of St. Louis utilityman Skip Schumaker. The common card shows an image of Schumaker sliding. The other card, which has been released in limited supply (driving up demand and price), shows only Schumaker’s shoe as the so-called “rally squirrel” dashes across home plate http://retrosimba.com/2012/02/14/how-topps-finally-got-stan-musial-on-its-baseball-cards/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed