But there’s still no doubt in my mind that, as we reported yesterday in the AJC, Griffey has decided to be a Brave. A conversation with Chipper Jones 15 minutes ago only underscored that belief.

"All signs are good" said Chipper, who's talked to Griffey daily for the past week. "But I'm not going to smile until he's signed."

For the record, Chipper smiled as he said that.)

--7:23 a.m., Atlanta Journal-Constitutional

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Atlanta Braves officials denied Wednesday they have signed outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. and believe Griffey is leaning towards signing with the Seattle Mariners.

--9:38 a.m., WSB

"I really don't know,'' [Braves GM Frank Wren] said. "I think he's contemplating the decision, so we're waiting to see what he decides.":

--10:41 a.m., Larry Stone

Jeff's note: being that I'm flying out tonight, don't expect much in the way of new content for a little while.

Spots are filling up fast, faster than I thought they would. We're down to 75 or so spots left, so I wouldn't dally any further if you are planning on coming but haven't signed up yet.

Original Post

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Last Minute Details

The library will be providing coupons at the event for $5 parking if you park in the garage. So, if you’re driving to the event and don’t know where to park, you can park there for $5. The garage is on Spring St between 4th and 5th.

Also, while there’s going to be an open Q&A where you guys get to fire questions at our guests, Derek and the LL boys are going to be asking some questions as well that they feel will be of interest to everyone. If you leave a question in the comments, they will pick what they feel are the best ones, and those will get asked tomorrow.

And, for those who don’t know, here’s a short bio of each of our guests for tomorrow:

Tony Blengino: Asst. GM, head of Department of Baseball Research. Jack’s right-hand guy, member of SABR, heavily involved with pushing the organization forward in the use of statistical analysis and technology, the guy who hired Tango. Came with Zduriencik from Milwaukee.

Tom McNamara: Director of Amateur Scouting. The guy in charge of the amateur draft and all the scouting related to draft-eligible prospects for the organization. Came with Zduriencik from Milwaukee.

Carmen Fusco: Director of Pro Scouting. The guy in charge of the team’s scouting of professional players, from the minor leagues all the way up through the majors. Ran his own academy in Pennsylvania after leaving the Mets in 2002, where he’d worked as scouting director and Asst. GM. Played college ball with Zduriencik at Austin Peay.

UPDATE: If you are having any issues with signing up, you can email me or drop a line on the USSM folks. Derek provides some tips:

- If you don’t want to pay through Paypal for whatever reason email us and we’ll work something out.
- If you’re bringing a guest, email us with the name you donated under and your guest’s name.
- If you paid through PayPal via check, you don’t show up on the list until the check’s cleared. This takes a while. Please do not email us about this. We can’t make checks clear faster.
- If you paid and your donation doesn’t show up instantaneously, please do not email us about this. Give it some time.
- If something went horribly wrong, email us.

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To be held at the Seattle City Library, Central Branch on the afternoon of Saturday, January 10th. Scheduled to start at 1:30pm and last until around 5:30pm or so.

Guests will include most of the LL and USSM crew who will be on hand to answer any beer related inquiries.

Guests you might ask baseball questions to include GM Jack Zdureincik's top two assistants who he brought over from Milwaukee; Tony Blengino, our new czar of statistical analysis and other goodies and Tom McNamara, our new scouting director and possible Strasburg selecter.

The schedule for the event is simple, Blengino and McNamara will be there for a large, if not the entire, period of time. I cannot stress how awesome that is.

Cost is at the bargain basement price of $10. Click the pledgie icon to sign up. When you do, please DO NOT check the box to donate anonymously. We need your name to appear so that we can keep the list straight at check in.

Do it! Do it now!

Lookout Landing/USS Mariner meetup at the downtown Seattle library.

Be there, or be elsewhere. Details will be forthcoming.

Matthew's Addendum: Seriously people, you're going to want to be there.

Graham's Addendum: Unless of course you have a dislike of things which are awesome, in which case fair play to you.

CONTEXT

The Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies will face each other in the 2008 World Series, which begins tomorrow night. The Rays have advanced this far by defeating the Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox. The Phillies have advanced this far by defeating the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Both the Rays and Phillies managed to defeat their opponents by outplaying them in a short series.

KEY PLAYERS

Tampa Bay:

Roster

Philadelphia:

Roster

Both the Rays and Phillies are filled to the brim with possible difference-makers. The 50 listed above will likely be the most important.

KEY QUESTIONS

Can the Tampa Bay Rays outscore the Philadelphia Phillies?

They can.

Can the Philadelphia Phillies outscore the Tampa Bay Rays?

They can.

Will one of the Tampa Bay Rays and Philadelphia Phillies outscore the other four times?

Most certainly yes!

X FACTOR

The Rays will play a maximum of four games at home, while the Phillies will play a maximum of three games at home. The home crowds may or may not help. I imagine there are also intangibles somewhere.

CONCLUSION

Both the Rays and the Phillies are good teams. The Rays are a little better. If you re-played the World Series a million times, roughly 55-60% of the time the Rays would be crowned as champions. This World Series will be played once. One of these teams will win four games. The other probably won't. The outcome will mean everything, and nothing.

A comprehensive rundown of the Mariners most valuable hitters this year so far, as determined by bRAA^

1. Raul Ibañez, 21.7
2. Ichiro Suzuki, 9.2
3. Jose Lopez, 4.8
4. Willie Bloomquist, 3.1
5. Greg Norton, 2.3
6. FELIX HERNANDEZ, 1.2

^ bRAA = (wOBA for player - wOBA for league) / 1.15 * PA.

¡HAPPY FELIX DAY!

We have our work cut out for us as Washington is truly a horrific team, but besides the AL advantage we get that I mentioned before there is another key aspect that could affect this race; the trade deadline.

Washington has zero enticing assets so they're pretty much going to stay as they are. However, of the other three teams, Seattle probably has the most pieces to deal. The Rockies really only have Fuentes and the Pads might slough off Wolf and/or Maddux, but the Ms have already ditched Sexson (which actually helps us Strasburg-wise) and could lose the services of Washburn and Ibanez within the next few weeks which would be the rare win-win; helping us lose now and win in the future.

There's one last bit of mixed news as well and that comes from BaseRuns. The good news is that according to it, The Padres have actually played like a 74 win team and the Rockies a 75 win team; both well above our own 68 win performance. The bad news is that the Nationals are at a 59 win pace and there are two other teams to keep an eye on, the Pirates and Astros at 63 and 67 wins respectively.

This weekend series is sneaking up on us, so if any of you are going to be around and feel like meeting up, either leave a comment or send me an email. Looks like we're on pace for the following matchups:

Friday: Washburn vs. Baek, 7:05
Saturday: Silva vs. Wolf, 7:05
Sunday: Felix vs. Peavy (!!!), WHY 1:05

Assuming the Mariners don't do anything funny with the rotation what with their offday on Thursday...yeah, next Sunday looks incredible. Next Friday does not.