December 25, 2012

BP Unfiltered

Christmas for Free Agents

by Ben Lindbergh

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Courtesy of Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference, here’s a list of every professional free agent who has ever signed with a team on Christmas day:

2008: Scott Mathieson

2005: Tim Salmon

2004: Brian Falkenborg, Jose Lima

2003: Matt Duff

2002: Mark Corey

1996: Lee Hancock

1984: Ricky Adams, Mark Gilbert, Mike Griffin

The best player ever to sign on December 25th is Tim Salmon, who went on to be worth 1.0 WARP for the 2006 Angels and to retire as the answer to two terrible trivia questions. (He's also the player who hit the most home runs without ever making an All-Star team.)

Basically, don’t bother checking transactions today: history suggests Michael Bourn is not about to sign. You might actually have to talk to your family for a few hours, because it’s going to be tough to be distracted by baseball news.*

*Unless this turns out to be the day that Kevin Towers finally deals Justin Upton. While a trade has never been consummated on Christmas, Towers still talks about trying to top that crazy Christmas when he brought in Brian Falkenborg.

Ben Lindbergh is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @benlindbergh
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