The Dutch Oven: Braising the Tender Cortex of Your Brain

Why the dutch oven? Because the term 'hot stove' needs to be retired. This feature will attempt to give you a listicle-driven source for all sorts of off-season baseball rumors. If you have any suggestions, rumors, or recipes that I can cook in my dutch oven, email us

• Japanese-Owned Mariners to Hire Manager With Japanese Sounding Name: According to the good people at the KING 5 TV channel, the Seattle Mariners have narrowed their managerial search to one gentleman, former Oakland A's bench coach Don Wakamatsu. Don Wakamatsu? I had that in my bento box yesterday. Delicious.
  
  
• The Rich Get Richer and Slightly Overloaded With Veteran Arms: The Yankees are allegedly on the verge of making Real Live Contract Offers to A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe, bringing their total nut to $250 million for those two jokers and CC Sabathia. Add in Joba Chamberlain and Chien Ming Wang, and you've got a five-man rotation. Sounds like this whole Phil Hughes experiment has pretty much hit the crapper.
  
  
• MLB.com Pushes Microsoft Out of Digital Video Bed, Opens Legs Wide for Adobe Flash: Good news for those of you who were unable or unwilling to install the Microsoft Silverlight application to watch video on MLB.com, because the good people at MLBAM have ended their relationship with Microsoft. Flash is the underpinnings of YouTube, I think, so you shouldn't have to install anything extra if you run Firefox.
  
  
• Schilling Uses Blog Platform to Defend Jason Varitek's Shitty Season: Citing a tough divorce and a couple of bad viral infections, Curt Schilling defended former teammate Jason Varitek's rough 2008 season. "I will tell you that what he had to endure physically and mentally absolutely impacted him in a negative way performance-wise. People don't know that he twice last year had a serious viral sickness. He was completely wiped out on two different occasions." This is even lamer than the time Julio Lugo claimed he had worms.
  
  
• Despite Not Waiting One Hour After Eating, Giants Make Initial Splash in Free Agent Pool: The Giants signed free agent reliever Jeremy Affeldt to a tidy two-year deal worth about eight million dollars. He'll set up closer Brian Wilson. It's Affeldt's fourth team. He gets around.