Mid-holiday respite bullet time.

• Great article in the New York Times (RR) about online media outlets gobbling up talented print media columnists, leaving those defenseless newspapers and magazines with little recourse. Intertube goliaths like ESPN.com and Yahoo! have money coming out of their googles and are spending big bucks -- reportedly, ESPN is paying Rick Reilly, formerly of SI, $3 million annually -- and the struggling print media industry simply can't compete with the money being thrown around.
• At Baseball Analysts, Rich Lederer has picked up the case for Tim Raines's hall of fame candidacy. I talked briefly about Raines last month when this year's ballot was released, but Lederer digs quite a bit deeper into the stats and such. One particularly striking argument for those who seek to exclude Raines because of his lack of gaudy counting stats:

  Had Raines gotten 3,000 hits and walked 935 times rather than accumulating 2605 hits and 1,330 walks, do you think there would be any question as to whether he was worthy of the HOF?

  While we're at it, Rich had a nice Q&A with Tracy Ringolsby about the latter's involvement in the BBWAA as well as his HOF ballot.
• At The Hardball Times, Dan McLaughlin (of Baseball Crank) takes his crack at Raines's chances.
• Also at THT, Studes looks at A-Rod's new contract with the Yankees.
• Cal Ripken would vote for Brady Anderson. Hrm.
• ESPN.com has been running head-to-head debates on certain players. Here is Big Mac and Goose. I would vote for them both, which I'm sure helps their respective families sleep well at night.
• Our buddies at The Good Phight ask if Jimmy Rollins is a hall-of-famer. Feh. At MetsGeek, Zubin Mehta asks the same of David Wright. It's a bit early for both of them, but Wright is certainly off to a better start than Rollins.
• Mark Prior is a friar, signing a one-year, incentive-laden deal with the Padres. There is still some speculation that Prior might not even pitch much this year, but if he does, and if he performs well, he has set himself up to hit free agency again next year.
• Not baseball-related, but Gene Wojciehowski has a really fun article on Cardinals' head coach Dennis Green's now-infamous "The Bears are who we thought they were!" remark from 2006.