The Texas Rangers have signed right-hander Jason Jennings to a 1-year deal worth $4 million. The story to date: Jennings was pretty good as a rookie with Colorado in 2002. Then he had three seasons of extreme blahness, followed by a terrific showing in 2006, after which the Rockies shipped him to Houston, where he pitched poorly and got hurt.
Jennings went 2-9 with a 6.45 ERA for the Astros in 2007. He underwent elbow surgery in August and is expected to be ready by Opening Day.
Jennings owns a career record of 60-65 with a 4.91 ERA; he spent much of …read more

This is it. The final day of the regular season. Four teams are fighting for the final two playoff spots in the National League. Baseball Prospectus is tracking the odds as each game finishes this weekend, while David Pinto keeps us posted on his massive tie scenario.
Meanwhile, here are the games that matter:

Marlins at Mets, 10:10 a.m. PT — Dontrelle Willis vs Tom Glavine. I can’t think of a better pitcher to make this start for New York than Glavine. To say the guy is well prepared for this situation is to make a colossal understatement. He’ll face a tough …read more

Jeff Sackmann has an article up at The Hardball Times (full disclosure: I am a contributor to THT) called “The New Inefficiency.” In it, Jeff identifies risk acceptance as the current market inefficiency. Identifying and exploiting such inefficiencies is a key strategy employed by “small-market” teams to help reduce the effect of budgetary imbalances between them and their richer counterparts.
For example, as chronicled in Moneyball, the Oakland A’s at one time were able to exploit teams’ lack of demand for players with high on-base percentage. Now that this is common knowledge, they are no longer able to use that particular …read more