Orlando Cabrera has passed his physical and took ground balls at second base today. The 1-yr deal is worth a cool million, give or take some chump change.
Speaking of which, did you know that minor leaguers don't get paid during spring training? They get room and board, which is about $25 bucks a day for food. The big league players get $125 per! Unless I was consuming a few I would hard pressed to drop that kind of coin on my gullet.
Follow this link to an outstanding piece on the relative success and failure of the kids ranked in Baseball America's top 100 prospects. The study followed the players from the 1990-2003 lists and qualified each as either bust, success or superior (based on WAR). Surprisingly, only about 30% pan out. The article throws a lot of numbers at you, but it is heartening to find that the Indians are the very best with a success rate of just over 42%. Also, unless the guy is in the top 40, it's basically a crap shoot. Check it out.
Then there's this (HB JV that might have been shot on VHS) -