First up, a quick injury report: I'm day-to-day with a nasty case of Wii Elbow. I appreciate all of your letters of support.

In Arizona: Angel Salome went 0-for-4 with a walk and a strikeout, drove in a run and scored one in the Javelinas' 8-7 win over Surprise yesterday. Brae Wright pitched a perfect inning and picked up his first hold. Box Score

In Hawai'i: It's probably a good thing you didn't stay up to catch the CaneFires last night, as I can't find a single Brewer prospect who played in the game, and as a result karma kicked their ass and they lost to North Shore 13-6. Box Score

The Javelinas have a home game against Phoenix that starts at 9 pm in Milwaukee, and the CaneFires play North Shore again tonight at midnight central time.

If those three paragraphs weren't enough AFL excitement for you, be sure to check out Taylor Green's blog from Arizona. In his first post, he gives a little background on himself, and how he got to the Fall League (replacing Mat Gamel).

Today is report card day for the Brewers. Here's the JS grades for 2008. By my calculator, the Brewers were given a 2.5 GPA but a B-plus overall grade. The Brew Town Beat has individual grades for players. Tom H. also has a few individual grades and wants to make sure you know that grading performances is hard.

Also, if you somehow missed the entire season, Tom H. had some space to fill has a full recap.

On the transaction front, four pitchers who spent time in Nashville in 2008 have been invited to spring training next season: right hander Joe Bateman and lefties Lindsay Gulin, Sam Narron and Chris Narveson. There's no one in that list that I'd expect to contribute in 2008.

But, if they make it to the big club coming out of spring training, they'll probably get to run on the new grass in the outfield. Apparently the new infield grass is great, so now they're putting it in everywhere.

No Sabathia Smorgasbord today, but there is one link on Ben Sheets: his agent is comparing his elbow injury to a hamstring pull and says no real treatment was needed. If that's the case, then Sheets was either:

A) Lying about having a torn muscle two weeks ago, and making an excuse for not being able to pitch in the postseason, or
B) Lying about it now, and no one on Earth will sign him without a physical, so they'll find out anyway.

By spring training he'll be someone else's headache.

So the Mariners have interviewed the first five candidates for their open GM position, but Jack Z. was not one of them. They're still expected to talk to more candidates next week, but it sounds like Kim Ng of the Dodgers is the early frontrunner. (h/t Baseball Musings)

As the Mariners search for a new GM, it's becoming perfectly clear that there's no tried-and-true formula for selecting a good one, as evidenced by the GM's of the four remaining playoff teams.

Only one piece of hot stove news today: Reds utilityman Jolbert Cabrera, who returned to the big leagues in 2008 after spending 3 seasons in the minor leagues, refused an outright assignment to the minors and became a free agent yesterday. He's 35 and has less than 200 big league AB's since 2004, so I'm not entirely sure where he thinks he'll do better.

Oh, and the broken water pipe in the visitor's dugout at Chavez Ravine is only the latest in a long and storied history of Cubs smashing things after losing.

Drink up.