Let’s take a few news stories from the past few days and dive deeper into them:
— Greg Bird elected free agency rather than an outright assignment to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Bird turned out to be Nick Johnson 2.0 for the Yankees — a lefty-hitting first baseman with power and patience who showed initial promise but just could not stay off the injured list.
Johnson never completely solved the health issue. But he did stay fit enough in 2005-06 — his age-26/27 seasons — to play in 278 games with a .919 OPS and 8.6 Wins Above Replacement.