Via Deadspin, I saw this particular gem out of Chicago. Apparently, they honored Kerry Wood’s time with the Chicago Cubs so much that they’re not going to assign his locker to anyone else.

In defense of the Cubs, the decision *is* cheaper than giving him the money he wanted. Also, more injury-proof.

In case you had an unfortunate accident yesterday wherein a giant boulder rolled right on top of you, you might have missed that the Netherlands beat the heavily favored Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic.

No, that’s not a repeat of the other time the Netherlands beat the Dominicans. This time, it hurts more, since the WBC is a double-elimination tournament, at least in the first round. (Figuring out how the tournament works is damn near impossible from the WBC site. MLB loves usability experts as much as Marty Brennamen loves Adam Dunn.)

The Dutch advance thanks to the incompetence of Chicago Cub Carlos Marmol. That’s right, in the bottom of the 11th, he must have had a goat in his eye when he threw wildly to first, allowing the tying run to advance all the way to third. After that, I had a feeling he was toast. Cubs don’t exactly have a history of succeeding, especially in the face of adversity.

A foot of snow dropped on the Midwest last night. I spent all day shoveling the driveway–next year: snow blower–but it looks like a Cardinals fan in St. Louis saw the chance to make a masterpiece.

So, those Reds traded Ryan Freel, eh? Might actually be a decent move, I suppose, but against the backdrop oft he cluster that is Dusty Baker’s management, it’s hard to see this move as anything other than more of said cluster.

In any event, the massive level of annoyance that it aroused in the Red Hot Household was enough to shake us from our three-month long podcasting malaise. This ought to motivate us for at least a couple months, at which time I guess they’ll have to trade Brandon Phillips to the Nationals in order to raise my ire enough to create more audio content.

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Award Non-rookie 4th Place in Rookie of the Year Voting

See that little table just above here? That’s the results of the 2008 Rookie of the Year voting, as performed by the Baseball Writers of America. The writers did manage to get the top two correct, as there was no doubt the Cubs Geovany Soto was the best rookie, with the Reds Joey Votto a close second. Congratulations to both of those players who had breakout years in the bigs.

However, see that little asterisk next to the name of Edinson Volquez in fourth? That’s there because he wasn’t even a rookie! It’s really nice to see the writers doing their best to ensure that criticism of their intelligence and voting ability has no basis in baseball blogs. Maybe they can follow this up by voting for Babe Ruth for Cy Young.