More fun morning linkage: over at The Platoon Advantage, The Common Man has the second installment of what is shaping up as a regular feature: tracing baseball transaction family trees.
The idea is simple: player A is traded for player B who leaves via free agency with the compensation pick turning into Player C and on and on until you reach a current player. You’ve probably engaged in such exercises yourself in the past. The Common Man just expands it over time and breadth and makes actual graphical transactional trees.
Last week TCM did it with the Twins and Chuck Knoblauch and the Astros and Glenn Davis. Those were fun, but they only go back to the 80s. This time he does it with the Mets and John Matlack, that titular 4th round pick of the 1967 draft, tracing how he ultimately became David Wright. So to speak.
This is the kind of thing you can get lost in after a while. But that’s OK. I talked to your boss and your significant other and they both told me that you got nothin’ better to do.
