Remembering Monte Irvin and honoring Pronk

Tribe-Related

Danny Salazar is a trade candidate - Beyond the Box Score - Everybody seems to want the Indians to trade pitching.

Sports analytics deep into the numbers - Cleveland Jewish News: Les Levine - Lou Boudreau, the Cleveland Indians player-manager, had to think of something. It was July 14, 1946, and the Indians just lost the opening game of a doubleheader, 10-9, to the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park.

Biesiot, Hafner, Lamoureux twins earn spots in ND Hall | Lexington Herald-Leader - Pronk to be inducted into the North Dakota Sports Hall of Fame.

What free agent would the Cleveland Indians sign if no strings were attached? Hey, Hoynsie | cleveland.com - If the Indians had money and draft picks to burn, who among the unsigned free agents in this year's class would they sign?

Monte Irvin

Monte Irvin dies at 96; Hall of Famer had the chance to break baseball's color barrier - LA Times - Monte Irvin, a Negro leagues star who turned down a chance to break baseball's color barrier but went on to a Hall of Fame career with the New York Giants, has died. He was 96.

Baseball lost a great player and great person in Monte Irvin | FOX Sports - In his wonderful book about Buck O'Neil, Joe Posnanski suggests that Monte Irvin was "the only star in both the Negro Leagues and the Major Leagues."

Willie Mays Remembers Mentor Monte Irvin : The Two-Way : NPR - Irvin, who died Monday at 96, was one of the first black players in Major League Baseball. He showed Mays the ropes when Mays entered the league. Irvin, Mays said, was "sort of like my father."

Around the Horn

Why this MLB offseason makes absolutely no sense in the outfield | FOX Sports - The Rockies have too many outfielders. The Angels sure need one. And guys like Cespedes and Upton need a home. So what the heck is going on?

The Decline of Carlos Gonzalez: Star Player | FanGraphs Baseball - It’s tough to admit that time has begun to pass you by.

Ahead of the curve: The career path of Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins - Sportsnet.ca - "I’m like, ‘Let’s go eat today, and we’ll figure this out tomorrow,’" Atkins recalls. "I took them to Applebee’s and they said, ‘This is a restaurant? We thought it was a clothing store.’ Then they opened the menu and were like, ‘There are pictures of the food? All we have to do is point?’ That’s when I was like, ‘God, there’s got to be a better way of transitioning Latin guys.’"

SweetSpot- ESPN - A look at the three best bullpens of the 1980s, when the conventions on relief pitchers continued a dramatic transformation.

The Last Expo - Bleed Cubbie Blue - It appears we now know the identity of the last Montreal Expos player active in the major leagues.