The Winter Meetings start today in Nashville. It's a time for major-league executives to get together, chat about the game, and maybe play "let's make a deal." It's nice, because in a world starved for baseball for more than a month now, there's actual baseball news being made. Or at least rampant rumor-mongering, which is almost the same thing. There are mystery teams and... OMG, was that Theo Epstein walking by with a cup of coffee?

Let's talk about Adderall. For those who haven't heard, Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz has been suspended for the first 25 games of the regular season after testing positive for an amphetamine, widely reported to be the prescription drug Adderall. Adderall is commonly prescribed for the treatment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and, less commonly, narcolepsy. As someone who has treated a number of kids and teens with ADHD, I want to talk a little bit about the medication and why someone might misuse it. 

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Let's get a little silly. The Gold Gloves, Cy Youngs, MVPs, Managers of the Year, Hank Aaron Awards, and the Greg Spira Internet Baseball Awards (may Greg's memory remain eternally) have all been given out. It's time to appreciate the befuddling side of baseball. The awards that should be given out, but aren't.

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Quick, which player had the greatest change in on-base percentage from 2011 to 2012? Did you say Houston Astros pitcher Aneury Rodriguez? In 2011, Rodriguez went 0-for-9 with two sac bunts. In 2012, Rodriguez appeared in only one major-league game, but he came to the plate once and got a hit. Rodriguez went from a seasonal OBP of .000 to 1.000. It doesn't get bigger than that.

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If you'll excuse me for a moment while I put on my other hat.

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The construction of the modern bullpen is silly. It starts with a junk stat (the save) and works backwards from there. There’s an anointed “closer,” his deputy (“the set-up guy”) who pitches the eighth inning, a couple of “match-up” relievers for the seventh inning, and some middle and long-relief guys who suck up innings four through six, as needed. In a close game, the relievers on the team with a lead are generally deployed in the (perceived) reverse order of their effectiveness as the innings unfold, with the apparent aim being to slowly choke off the other team’s chances of winning as the game goes further along. And to record a save.

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A couple of months ago, I got on a plane to Orlando, not to see an anthropomorphic mouse and a duck who doesn’t wear pants, but to do actual work. It’s not often that I travel for work, but I do enjoy a good plane ride, because it’s one of the few times that I can sit down and read a book without feeling guilty. On this trip, my companion was Dirk Hayhurst’s Bullpen Gospels, which had been sitting on my shelf for a while. For those who haven’t yet read it (what are you doing with your lives?), Hayhurst discusses his travels through the minors and the real life that happens in between the last out and "play ball!" (and yes, I got that right). It could double as an anthropological field study of a very curious culture: the minor-league baseball player.

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Let me pull back the curtain on how BP articles are made, at least at my house. This article came about when I was washing the dishes. It's my thing. I like to listen to podcasts and scrub down pots and pans. It's wondrously therapeutic after a long day at work, and BP alumni Joe Sheehan and Rany Jazayerli were keeping me company as I struggled mightily with the remnants of mac and cheese from my daughter's lunch plate.

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Depending on the day, Robinson Cano is often the third- or fourth-most-talked-about member of the Yankee infield.

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On last Friday's episode of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, our own Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller (and guest Marc Normandin) discussed Buck Showalter's decision to start Joe Saunders in the AL wild card play-in game against the Texas Rangers. They noted that Saunders—who'll get the call again tonight in Game Four of the Yankees-Orioles ALDS—does not have amazing stuff and allows a lot of runners to reach base, and also that he does not have an exceedingly high groundball rate. Still, he seems to induce more groundballs at opportune times, and as a result, he gets a lot of double plays to bail him out of some major jams. Perhaps Saunders changes his approach with a runner on first and no one out in an intentional bid to get a groundball. It would make complete sense that he would do so.

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Over the weekend, there were plenty of end-of-season retrospectives from columnists who cast non-existent ballots for the MVPs, Cy Young award winners, and Rookies of the Year. As might be expected, many of the columnists brought up the WARP (Mike Trout) vs. Triple Crown (Miguel Cabrera) angle. There was a common theme running through the pieces that argued for Cabrera: WARP is a complicated and math-heavy stat, and because it is so complicated, how can we be sure that Trout was actually the better player?

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"He just needs another year."

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