The lack of free agent news out there, along with reports that Jake Peavy would be willing to be traded to the Los Angeles Angels, has sparked this scenario:

Could the Angels be going for the best rotation ever?

An MLB.com story presented that Wednesday. The Angels seem to be the leader for free agent CC Sabathia, and they already have John Lackey, Joe Saunders, Ervin Santana and Jered Weaver.

So if they deal Weaver to the Padres as part of a package for Peavy - the 2007 NL Cy Young winner - then could we see a rotation of Peavy, Sabathia, Lackey, Saunders and Santana in 2009?

That's three No. 1 starters and two solid No. 2s, in my estimation. And they're all 30 or younger. That's easily the best since Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz-Millwood of the late 1990s in Atlanta, and probably better.

"Man, I'd love to be part of something like that. Who wouldn't?" eight-time Gold Glove center fielder Torii Hunter told MLB.com. "... Great pitching wins championships."

The free agent signing period started a week ago in Major League Baseball, but from the relative lack of action, you'd never know it.

Just one player has changed teams so far: Reliever Jeremy Affeldt, who threw well in relative anonymity in Cincinnati, is now in San Francisco. Now Jeremy is a pretty good setup guy, but I need more to base an entire blog post upon.

So why is there no activity? Because nobody has set the market. And because the economics of baseball (and everything else in the world) is in such a world of flux, nobody wants to be the first to set that market. And that's on all sides - players, their agents and management.

Heck, a couple of lawmakers in New York want to rename the Mets' new ballpark to Citi/Taxpayer Field. (And maybe they're not just trying to make a point.)

Eventually, a free agent signing will happen. Somebody will give CC Sabathia that big contract - my money is on the Angels right now - and the chips will begin to fall. But I can't really see Mark Teixeira getting that 10-year deal.

But right now, it's Affeldt, the Pirates signing two Indians - from the country, not Cleveland - who won on some kind of reality show, and the Red Sox's pursuit of Japanese right-hander Junichi Tazawa. That's the definition of a slow news week.

The big signings probably won't be coming until after we all carve up our turkeys on Thanksgiving.

Click here for the free agent scorecard, and the breakdown of this year's class.

We'd all like to go out on top, and it appears that Mike Mussina is doing just that.

Nothing is official, but several news services are reporting that Mussina has decided to retire after 18 big-league seasons, the final one producing his only 20-win season. He'll turn 40 next month.

“His legacy is going to be one of the best pitchers to ever put on a uniform, a guy who was able to do it in the American League East his whole career,” said Yankees teammate Johnny Damon, to the New York Times. “We all know how tough this division is, and to go out on top, winning 20 games; I was proud to be a part of that. I think it’s a nice sendoff, and hopefully in five years, he can get a lot of people supporting him for the Hall of Fame."

And that's the next great debate for Mussina. He went 270-153, a stellar .638 winning percentage. He pitched in a power-hitting era and had a decent career ERA - 3.68. That's not bad, but not Hall-like if you look at the Cooperstown roster. He never won a World Series and never won the Cy Young, but nine times finished in the top six in the balloting.

So what's the verdict? (You can vote above.) My take: He'll make it to Cooperstown one day, but will have to wait between 5-10 years to muster the support. So sometime around 2020, keep an eye on it.

The Boston Red Sox's Dustin Pedroia was named American League MVP, capping the awards season with probably the most interesting vote of the season.

The baseball writers - two per city - gave the award to an AL second baseman for the first time since 1959. It wasn't a landslide for Pedroia, but he did have the majority of first-place votes. And two teams that didn't win their division had players in the top four spots (Pedroia and third-place Kevin Youkiulis of the Red Sox and second-place Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins).

And pity poor Evan Grant, who didn't vote for Pedroia in his top 10. And before you claim an anti-Boston bias, take note that the Dallas Morning News writer voted Youkilis first. He spent all day Tuesday on the talk-show circuit defending his ballot, and said in retrospect that he was wrong and he should have had Pedroia in the top five.

But he's still a little feisty on the topic. From Grant's blog:

I will have you know that Pedroia was 18th in OPS, 27th in RBIs, 30th in batting average with runners in scoring position and 53rd in on-base percentage with runners in scoring percentage. I am aware he tied for the league lead in hits, led in runs scored and was second in batting average. But in the stats that to me suggest production and clutch hitting, he was dwarfed by the other players on the list.

Give him a break, Boston fans. He might have gotten a little too cute with his ballot and his analysis was a little skewed, but he did it honestly. (I personally would have voted for Francisco Rodriguez, and only one writer agreed with me. Pedroia would have been in my top five, however.) And keep in mind that it didn't cost Pedroia the award.

Grant responded to Masslive.com in an e-mail about his ordeal.

I know it won't be satisfactory to a lot of people, but all I'd ask is that people read it and consider my thinking. They are all free to disagree with me. But, in general, I think I'm a fairly well-informed baseball writers who takes my responsibility seriously. Doesn't mean I can't have an out-of-left-field opinion sometimes and clearly this one was deep, deep in the alley compared to my colleagues.

St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols is the National League Most Valuable Player for a second time, edging out Philadelphia's Ryan Howard after another superb season.

Pujols was the pillar in the middle of a Cardinals team that wasn't supposed to contend, but hung around in the NL Central race into September. He hit .357 (second in the NL) with 32 homers and 116 RBI, was first in total bases and had the best OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging) of his career at 1.114.

There's no doubt that Pujols' resume already is something special, one that is almost inevitably heading to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Pujols has finished fourth or better in MVP voting an incredible seven times in his eight big-league seasons. (He was ninth in an 2007, when he only hit .327 with 32 homers.)

And he's now one of only 11 players who have won multiple MVPs in the NL. Eight of them (Carl Hubbell, Ernie Banks, Stan Musial, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Mike Schmidt) are already in the Hall of Fame. Another has the statistics to get there for sure (Barry Bonds). Only Dale Murphy, whose career flamed out early, isn't likely to make the Hall.

(It's incredible to believe that Hank Aaron only won one MVP award, by the way, but that's the case. It shows that after the color barrier was broken to get on the baseball field, there were still many others to clear.)

Pujols is still just 28, and will turn 29 in January. Baseball-reference.com compares batters at similar stages in their careers, and those compared to Pujols are Jimmie Foxx, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Lou Gehrig and Ken Griffey Jr.

St. Louis fans are enjoying seeing one of the greatest hitters of all time, no doubt about it.

Click for more awards coverage.

Is professional baseball ready for another female pitcher?

There have been a few in the past. Jackie Mitchell was the first, signing for the minor-league Chattanooga Lookouts in 1931, and she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game. In more recent years, a left-handed pitcher named Ila Borders pitched for two men's teams in the Northern League, an independent league.

There's a prohibition from signing women's players in major-league baseball that's been on the books since 1952, despite the presence then of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the league made famous by the 1992 movie, "A League Of Their Own."

But in Japan, an independent league has drafted a 16-year-old girl - all 5 feet and 114 pounds of her - to compete for the Kobe 9 Cruise. She's the first female professional player in the country.

And her calling card as a pitcher is quite unique - a devastating sidearm knuckleball. She had a tryout last month and fared well against male hitters.

"I always dreamed of becoming a professional," Yoshida said in a news conference to the Associated Press.

The recession is affecting everybody, except perhaps the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have pulled up spring training stakes from Vero Beach, Fla., and are now based in Glendale, Ariz. How else to explain going ahead with charging $90 for tickets to games that don't count?

"They're similar to the dugout seats at Dodger Stadium," Dennis Mannion told the Associated Press.

Yeah, except it's not in Dodger Stadium, and many of the games will feature players who toiled in Jacksonville and Las Vegas last year.

To be somewhat fair, the tickets are VIP tickets, which include parking, a $20 merchandise/food coupon, a gift and complimentary water and sunscreen. But the $90 price tag is almost double of what any other team charged for a spring-training ticket last season. The cheapest reserved seat for the Dodgers is $18, which is $2 more than the White Sox and Reds charged for their best spring tickets last season.

And the Dodgers rescinded away their offer to Manny Ramirez, too.

In other ticket news, the Tigers are raising regular-season ticket prices despite a disappointing 2008 season and a Michigan economy that's been hit even harder than the rest of the country. Drew Sharp of the Detroit Free Press calls it a Dontrelle Willis tax.

"We put a great deal of thought into this," Tigers president and GM Dave Dombrowski told the Free Press. "When you look through it, there's very little adjustment taking place. It's still a tremendous value for families and individuals."

But not as much as it used to be, that's for sure.

Most trades make sense for both sides in some way. But the Matt Holliday deal from the Colorado Rockies to the Oakland A's defies conventional logic.

The 2007 NL champs just dealt away their best player for Street and Smith (players, not the magazine) a center field prospect who might be decent someday (Carlos Gonzalez). Huston Street was once the A's closer, but hasn't pitched well enough to earn that job back in two seasons. Greg Smith is a run-of-the-mill lefty.

The A's get a great hitter for one year, and then he's a free agent. It would make sense for a team that's one hitter away from being formidable, like the Dodgers or the Indians or the Cardinals. But the A's? Maybe he's the difference between finishing 12 games behind the Angels or 20 games behind the Angels.

And for the Rockies? Let's let Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus sum this dud up:

This was the kind of deal that you make at the trade deadline, when you know you're not signing the player, you know you're not contending, and getting something back is better than losing him for the draft picks. To make this deal on Nov. 10, when you have all offseason to strike a better one, when you can go to Las Vegas next month with a left fielder who plays both ways -- unlike all the free agents -- and find at least half the industry interested, is just a bad move. If this was the best offer available, [Rockies GM] Dan O'Dowd needed to turn it down and pocket his asset. He's dealt away Matt Holliday without getting enough in return, and that's the kind of mistake you just can't make.

Many baseball fans know the name, but only in passing. They might know Herb Score was a hard-throwing left-handed pitcher for the Cleveland Indians who won the 1955 Rookie of the Year, who won 20 games a year later, who was hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees' Gil McDougald a year after that and was never the same again, developing arm trouble.

At 5-11, Tim Lincecum isn't the shortest winner of the Cy Young Award. Pedro Martinez is the same height, Greg Maddux is just an inch taller and Yankees legend Whitey Ford is actually an inch shorter.

But Lincecum's height stands out because of the way he pitches. Because while it's easy to see why Randy Johnson could throw 97 mph at 6-10 because of simple physics, it's amazing to watch Lincecum throw 97 mph. And the fact that Lincecum is 24 and has the baby face of a 14-year-old has an effect as well. I've seen older-looking pitchers throwing in Willamsport, Pa., every August.

As Ann Killion of the San Jose Mercury News pointed out:

He stands out: He's too little, too lithe, too young to be throwing his wicked pitches and owning major league hitters. "He's certainly not the profile scouts are looking for in a major league pitcher," said Mike McCormick, the only other Cy Young winner in Giants history.

Lincecum has grown-up stats - 18-5 with a 2.62 ERA and a big-league-best 265 strikeouts for a team that went 72-90. Only Steve Carlton of the Phillies (27-10, 1.97 ERA in 1972) won the Cy Young while pitching for a worse team. The 1972 Phillies were 59-97.

"I don't remember anybody in my time who had that style of pitching, who put that kind of torque on his body," said McCormick, the 1967 Cy Young winner, to the Associated Press. "I think that article in Sports Illustrated that called him a freak probably sums it up."

Check out the voting here, and a summary of the awards season.