I have some stories I want to share with you.  Linky Dinky Doo.

Two weeks away from Google Reader allows a bunch of good stuff to pile up.  You may have already seen some of this, but if you haven't, it's new to you.

In local news:

• Just today, Hal McCoy wonders who you'd take: Concepcion or Larkin?

  Defensively, they’re a wash. Both played 19 seasons. Larkin’s fielding percentage was .975 and Concepcion’s was .971, with Larkin winning three Gold Gloves and Concepcion five.

  The difference is offense. Larkin was a force while Concepcion was a snug-fitting piece on the Big Red Machine. While Larkin’s career average was .295 and Concepcion’s was .267, interestingly enough, Larkin drove in 960 runs, only four more than Concepcion.

  Larkin hit 198 homers and won nine Silver Slugger Awards. Concepcion hit 101 homers and won two Silver Slugger Awards. Larkin wins the on-base average contest .371 to .322. Larkin was on 12 All-Star teams to nine for Concepcion.

  I don't think it is even close.  Larkin all the way.

• John Erardi has started writing on John Fay's blog in an attempt to dig into the numbers a little more for the general public.  I suspect you've at least read them in passing, but this one is particularly good:

  It is being open-minded to the introduction of NEW numbers that I'm interested in, rather than attempting to turn baseball on its head by introducing numbers. Numbers have always been there; this is just a more sophisticated use of them, that's all.
  
  

  What's wrong with trying to elevate our appreciation and understanding of the game? And no, you will never get me to believe that baseball is nothing more than "see the ball, hit the ball." It may be that for some of the players, but it had better be more than that for the people who assemble the teams and manage them.

• Redleg Nation has an interview up with Logan Parker.  You may not be familiar with Parker, but he is a Reds farmhand who RLN got to write a regular piece for them.  It really is quite interesting stuff.  If you haven't been following it, I suggest you go check it out.
• Doug has been doing a lot of great stuff at Reds Minor Leagues.  Check out this interview with Devin Mesoraco.  And then go read the rest of his site too.
• The 2009 Bobblehead Schedule has been released.  BP gets another bobblehead, but EdE still has yet to have one.  That's disappointing.

FanGraphs has a few articles up that you might find interesting.

• RJ Anderson looks at the signing of Jonny Gomes and tries to be positive, but honestly paints a less than stellar picture of Gomes's production.  I think it's still a good signing, but I doubt we'll see much out of Gomes this year, if at all.
• Matt Carruth reminds us that walks are good, but they are not the only component to being a good hitter:

  A good degree of plate patience and discipline helps buffer the hitter from the inevitable streaks in batting average. However, just because a hitter doesn’t walk much doesn’t mean he cannot be successful.

  I point this out because the Reds are not going to walk much this year.  That seems pretty obvious.  Unfortunately, the non-walkers we have outside of Jay Bruce and Brandon Phillips don't do a whole lot else to be productive.  This may end up being a long, painful season at the plate.

• Dave Cameron has been taking a look at replacement level for each position by giving examples of replacement  level production.  It's a good series if you have a hard time wrapping your head around the concept of replacement level. Here are the positional breakdowns: C | 1B | 2B | 3B | SS | LF - that's all he's done so far.

Other sites:

• Greg Rybarczyk from Hit Tracker Online has developed a new kind of projection system based more on batted ball data and park factors.  The article is long and a bit difficult to understand, but it looks really cool.  I'm going to give it another read later after I've had time to think about it.  Here's what he came up with for Dunn based on some possible teams:

  Adam Dunn, free agent
  LA Dodgers: .394 OBP, .587 SLG, .981 OPS, 47 HR’s
  Washington: .389 OBP, .555 SLG, .944 OPS, 43 HR’s
  NY Mets: .382 OBP, .506 SLG, .888 OPS, 35 HR’s
  Atlanta: .387 OBP, .543 SLG, .930 OPS, 41 HR’s
  Boston: .392 OBP, .549 SLG, .941 OPS, 39 HR’s

• One of the big topics in sabermetrics this off-season has been BABIP.  It all started with the Batters and BABIP article at THT back in December.  Since then, lots of different writers have been trying to figure out what BABIP really means.  Rich from Baseball Analysts also took a stab.  A lot of times we blow off shifts in BABIP as luck, but that's not always the case.  Some of what we're learning is that there is a lot more going on than we first thought.
• Beyond The Box Score is having a graph contest.  This is my favorite:
  
• Um, suffice to say that I haven't enough time to get caught up on Joe Posnanski's blog, but he always deserves a link.
• Okay, I think I'm getting tired because it looks like these graphs are moving.

Feel free to dump anything else in the comments that I may have missed.  I'm sure there is plenty.