Friday Links: Looking Back at the Week Gone By

The off-season can be both wonderfully exciting and terribly slow at the same time. In what follows I’ll take you on a trip through some of the better posts I found on the interwebs over the course of the last week.  Happy Friday everyone, get your weekend on!

Cheer up, it’s Friday!

The calendar has turned over and we have made it through the first week of Movember. The good fellows over at The Art of Manliness can teach you how to grow a handlebar mustache has you help raise awareness for male-specific cancers. The Platoon Advantage gives you some important dates to add to your calendar this off-season.

Beyond the Boxscore takes a look at the negative relationship between BABIP and strikeouts, and followed that up with a look at the history of Tommy John Surgeries through the years.  Fellow SB Nation Blog Twinkie Town takes a look at the Twins 2012 arbitration eligible players.

The North Dakota Twins fan wonders if it’s too late for Joe Benson; I’m not so sure. On election day he also posted a 2013 Line-up voting card, make sure to write in your votes in the comment section.

The Twins Trivia blog takes a look at the complete history of the Twins trades in a sortable table. It’s interesting to see who the Twins have, or have not, made trades with through the years. They followed that up with a post looking back at how the Twins have fared against each and every American League opponent. Twins Trivia has a lot of interesting Twins history to catch up on, which is especially helpful for younger fans like myself looking to get into the past.

There are trade rumors flying everywhere. Drew Silva at NBC’s Hardball Talk wonders if the Twins are considering making a deal for James Shields. Hardball talk also posted the Veteran’s Committee Hall of Fame nominees.

Alexi Casilla was claimed off waivers by the Baltimore Orioles. The guys over at Knuckleballs take a look at Sexy Lexi’s time in Minnesota.

A lot of the articles over at the Fangraphs main site are a little over my head with statistical analysis, but the posts over at NotGraphs, while typically only loosely related to baseball, are always worth a click. Last week they posted their Top 10 free agents and welcomed the Houston Astros to the American League. If you do the whole podcast thing (and I hope you are already subscribing to the Talk to Contact podcast), I highly recommend subscribing to the Fangraphs Audio podcast, especially for the weekly Dayn Perry episodes.

The Canadians up at Getting Blanked take a look at the 2012 cast of minor league free agents.

Over at Rant Sports, they think the Twins are sellers this offseason. What do you think?

Yesterday the Silver Slugger awards were announced, the Twins Josh Willingham earned the award in LF. And over at Twins Daily, John Bonnes makes the case for trading Denard Span.