Ryan leads to Rivera

Bruce Markusen envisions the Yankees coming up with around $30 million for a new setup man to bridge to closer Mariano Rivera in his most reccent installment of the Rumor Mill. That man is the nastiest left-handed reliever in the American League -- B.J. Ryan. The addition of Ryan would help take some of the workload off Rivera as well as place the Yankees right in the middle of the 2006 playoff hunt.

In the same article Markusen imagines a Met bullpen with free-agent Billy Wagner closing games and Aaron Heilman serving in the setup role. Markusen says it would offer one of the best lefty-righty bullpen tandems in the game. While Wagner certainly is a known quantity (and a possible future hall of famer) the soon to be twenty-seven year old Heilman has had exactly one good year in his three year major league career. I believe the jury's still out on this guy.

In St. Louis they're tearing down Busch Stadium. Wikipedia has their say on the history of Busch. More coverage here, here and here. In the last 'here' link there's a nice "Busch Demolition Gallery" of pictures. Busch Stadium generally played between a 97 and 104 park factor over the course of it's four decade history. Over that history there was a park factor pattern of being under 100 for three or four years and then being above 100 for three or four years and then back again.

On the free agent front the consensus appears to be that the class of players selling their wares this off-season are not too strong. Paul Konerko, B.J. Ryan, Billy Wagner and Brian Giles are the standouts. Mix this fact in with the stated position of some front offices that they have a lot of money to spend in the market this winter and you can imagine that the players are going to grab some very hefty contracts. Seattle, Toronto, Kansas City, Atlanta and Baltimore have all publicly stated that they are willing to spend for free agents. These are ballclubs that have been fairly tight with the purse-strings over the past two or three seasons.