Mood Music - No Reply at All by Genesis

Mariano Rivera - Indestructable
All signs from the surgery to remove the polyps that had grown on Rivera's vocal cords (the hell is a polyp?) seem to indicate a full and speedy recovery, with the Yankees closer hoping to be fully cleared for next season after one more trip to the doctor. From what I have read, it seemed possible that such a condition could have included cancer, but everything has been found to be benign and fixable.

Hiroyuki Nakajima - Lowballed
Now that the Yankees have fallen out with Nakajima, a few more of the details of the negotiation have leaked out. Per Jon Heyman in the link above, the Yankees offer to Nakajima was a one year deal worth approximately $1MM. While that is not an unreasonable contract for a back up infielder and Nakajima seemed willing to play for that amount of money, the Yankees also wanted to be able to treat Nakajima as a rookie (six years of team control), and not grant him free agency after the 2012 season. That's driving a pretty hard bargain and again makes it seem as if this pairing was never right for either side.

Bernie Williams - Postseason!
With Bernie now on the Hall of Fame ballot, I thought this was a pretty cool piece over at Fangraphs that leads to some interesting musings. How much weight do you give postseason performance when evaluating a career? None? Some? Lots? Bernie Williams hit .275/.371/.480 in 545 postseason plate appearances, adding up to nearly an entire season of production.

While that has to count for something, Bernie got all of those trips to the plate due to the good fortune of playing on the perennially contending Yankees. Therefore, it's hard to have any kind of fair evaluation of playoff performance when different players have such different opportunities, but it doesn't make any sense to wipe away the most important games of the year either.