Outside The Confines: Silent Night

And we hope everyone had a merry Christmas.

This feature is dedicated to bringing you all the latest baseball news. Baseball news is always tough to come by over the Christmas holiday. It’s especially thin when there’s a lockout going on. But I’ll try to bring you some post-Yuletide cheer.

• Not everyone got what they asked for on Christmas. Zach Crizer has some teams that are still looking for gifts under the tree. Or in other words, they still have business to finish after the lockout is over.
• Mike Axisa has every team’s top Christmas wish. I don’t know if it’s number one, but “Frank Schwindel being for real” is certainly near the top of every Cubs’ fans list.
• MLB.com has the best gift every team has ever gotten. As always with state media these days, all of these wishes involve retired players, but the Giants beat writer managed to go all the way back to Christy Mathewson. That is kind of taking it a bit too far, isn’t it? Couldn’t she have just written “Buster Posey falling to the 5th pick of the 2008 draft”?
• Bradford Doolittle ranks every team by how well they fit for free agent shortstops Carlos Correa or Trevor Story. (ESPN+ sub. req.)
• And David Schoenfield writes about the reasons a team might not want to sign Correa. (ESPN+ sub. req.) Basically, it’s his track record of injuries and inconsistency.
• Darragh McDonald compares free agent sluggers (and former Cubs) Nick Castellanos and Kyle Schwarber.
• We’ve got one rumor. The Mets are planning on making infielder Jeff McNeil available for trade offers after the lockout ends.
• Nick Selbe looks at five players who had surprisingly great 2021 seasons and how likely they are to repeat that in 2022.
• Yankees first baseman Chris Gittens has signed with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.

• Peter Gammons explains why new Mets manager Buck Showalter will be a positive force for fixing the Mets culture. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Teams like the Diamondbacks are facing water issues as the West continues to deal with years of drought. The decision to change to an artificial surface in 2019 looks pretty good at the moment for Arizona as they saved 4.5 million gallons of water in one year.
• More classic mlb.com material about retired players. Chris Haft has the top ten moments of Carlton Fisk’s career.
• And he also has the top ten moments of Ozzie Smith’s career.
• Jason Mackey has the story of the McKeithan family, three brothers who are all members of three different NL Central organizations. Tim is the Pirates’ assistant hitting coach, Joel has the same position with the Reds and Aaron is a minor leaguer with the Cardinals.
• And finally, Derrick Goold has the story of the lost baseball that was Daniel Descalso’s first major-league hit and how it was returned to him this past season.

Spread joy and cheer all year ‘round. End the lockout, commissioner Manfred.