Seattle has traded young pitching star Michael Pineda, projected as the No. 1 overall pick in our league’s draft, for young slugging prospect Jesus Montero of the New York Yankees, himself projected to be the No. 5 overall pick.

But does Pineda’s stock drop now? He moves to a smaller ballpark, and to a tougher division. Meanwhile, Montero’s chances at a full-time spot in the lineup for 2012 have just shot up dramatically. What do you think of the trade?

If history is any indication, the ratings ‘disk’ (now a download) should be available next week. Last year it was available on Jan. 10, the second Monday of the year, so a corresponding date this year would be Monday, Jan. 9.

Also, tickets for some spring training games, including those hosted by the Atlanta Braves and Detroit Tigers, go on sale this Saturday at 10 a.m. We’ll be doing the usual group purchase technique as soon as the Internet will allow on Saturday morning to get the best possible seats. It’s helpful to have several managers assisting with this task, to help spread the initial cost, and to parcel out the seats into manageable sizes.

Watch for an e-mail coming soon regarding spring training games you’re interested in.

Meanwhile, for which player on your team are you most eager to see card ratings?

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,300 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Use this toolkit to:

* Analyze free agents, with real life 2011 stats, age and Strat fielding ratings
* See at-a-glance how your team offense and pitching looks
* Check out how your club compares to others in the league
* Get real-life 2011 stats for your players: Overall, vs. righty and vs. lefty

The stats come courtesy of the Strat Fan Forum, and were shared publicly by a contributor named Bryan. We’ve taken them and tweaked them slightly, adding OPS columns for hitters, then adding in players’ I-75 League affiliation and sorting by those teams.

Within each team, hitters are sorted alphabetically; pitchers are grouped by starters and relievers, then starters are sorted by lowest opponent batting average.

So at a glance, rosters come to life, and you learn things such as:

* Hickory only has one starting pitcher
* Springfield has an awesome starting pitching staff
* Michigan has an all-1 infield and center fielder
* And much much more!

Use the toolkit to scope out trading partners or draft strategies. One word of caution: Computer-only players who will not be carded are also included in the toolkit; I did not take the time to carve them out one-by-one.

Please do not manipulate the shared Google doc version of this; don’t apply colors, or move your players around, or update it with trades — we will rewrite the document with updates periodically. If you want a version to manipulate, watch your e-mail for a spreadsheet you can monkey with.

Let’s draft!

Having finished a distant third in the Northbound Division, the Nuts’ postseason run included conquests of three consecutive higher-seeded teams, not unlike the 2011 Cardinals, a wild-card winner who earned their playoff spot on the last day of the regular season.

It was the first-ever postseason crown for Hickory, which joined the league in 1991.

Down 2-1 in the series to Southbound playoff champion Margaritaville, the Nuts scored back-to-back key victories, pounding the Volcanoes 18-2 in Game Four, then squeaking out a 7-6 win in 10 innings in Game Five on an RBI single by Kendry Morales.

After Margaritaville forced a Game Seven with a 2-1 win in Game Six (both runs scoring on David Wright solo homers), the Nuts spotted the Volcanoes a 3-0 lead and came back to win 9-4. A four-run sixth inning swung the tilt in Hickory’s favor.

Hickory had earlier defeated second-place Bushwood and first-place Superior in playoff battles.  The seven-game win over Bushwood included road victories in Games Six and Games Seven. The win over Superior took six games, including a bounce-back from a 2-1 deficit.

Congrats to the 2011 league champion Hickory Nuts and manager Mike Wilson!!!

The fielding range ratings will be released in full in mid-December as they usually are, but starting Monday, they’re also going to release a couple of tidbits every few hours on Twitter until the ratings for two players from every team have been revealed, which should take until Wednesday or Thursday.

If you’re on Twitter, you’ll need to follow @StratOMatic.

If you’re not on Twitter, you’ll need to go to twitter.com and create an account, and then follow @StratOMatic.

It’s a genius marketing move by Strat, if you ask me.

Bushwood

BOO:   Starting Pitchers  31.2 IP, 41 hits,  28 runs, 26 earned 7.39 ERA
YEA:    Bullpen  30.1 IP, 21 hits,    5 runs,  3 earned 0.90 ERA  (WOW–Dave should have gone to his bullpen after 3 runs immediately!)

BOO:  Thome, Hart, Pujols and Utley hit a combined 17 for 101 for .168 BA and 8 RBIs
YEA:   Rolen, Hammy and Delmon Young went 26 for 78, .333 and 16 RBIs

Hickory

BOO:  Wainwright 0-2 5.65 ERA; Casilla and Clippard 5.1 IPs, 7 earned runs, 5 HRs 
YEA:  Hernandez 25 IPs, 24 hits, 12 runs, 8 earned, 2.88 ERA

BOO:  Mora, Jackson, Pedroia, Headley: 10 for 73 for .137 BA. 2 errors
YEA:   Suzuki, Tabata, Huff, Werth:  32 for 86 for .372 BA 14 runs scored and 12 RBIs

Let’s take the two recently concluded MVP votes and apply them to players currently on I-75 League rosters to determine everyone’s MVP quotient. What do we learn?

Wisconsin and Springfield are stacked.

The Warhawks boast Ryan Braun, NL MVP, who collected 388 points in voting, as well as 229 for Prince Fielder, third in the NL. Four more Warhawks earned votes: Roy Halladay (52) and Carlos Beltran (3) in the NL, and Robinson Cano (112) and Paul Konerko (11) in the AL. That’s a total of 795 votes.

Springfield came up just short of that at 788 votes, but it had eight players represented, one more than Wisconsin, and that doesn’t count Mark Teixeira, who got five votes but was let loose in the expansion draft. Springfield’s cause is led by AL MVP Justin Verlander (280) and NL runner-up Matt Kemp (332).  But then there is seemingly the rest of the Isotopes’ protected list too: Michael Young (96), Clayton Kershaw (29), Ian Kinsler (25), Shane Victorino,  James Shields (7) and Carlos Ruiz (1).

Applegate ranks third at 498, with a 2-4 finish in the AL for Jacoby Ellsbury (242) and Curtis Granderson (215) and NL points from Jose Reyes (31) and Hunter Pence (10).

Here’s how the rest of the league ranks:

4. Margaritaville, 373:  Jose Bautista (231), Joey Votto (135), Victor Martinez (7).

5. Satellite Beach, 214: Justin Upton (214).

6. Superior, 197 : Miguel Cabrera (193), Asdrubal Cabrera (4).

7. Bushwood, 174: Albert Pujols (166), Pablo Sandoval (7), Joey Hamilton (1).

8. Chatfield, 161: Lance Berkman (118), Ian Kennedy (16), Evan Longoria (27).

9. Hickory, 117: Troy Tulowitzki (69), Dustin Pedroia (48).

10. Bismarck, 107: Adrian Gonzalez (105), Miguel Montero (2).

11: Iowa, 44: Ryan Howard (39), Mark Teixeira (5).

12. Savannah, 27: Cliff Lee (12), CC Sabathia (10), Michael Morse (5).

13. Michigan, 23: Adrian Beltre (9), Ben Zobrist (7), John Axford (7).

14. English, 3: Yadier Molina (2), Starlin Castro (1).

15. South Grand Prairie, 1: Mike Stanton (1).

There are four players who received MVP votes who are free agents and eligible to be taken in the March draft: Alex Avila (13), Alex Gordon (3), David Robertson (1) and Craig Kimbrell (1).

Still a student at Iowa State, where he is majoring in chemical engineering, John displaces Dan Wilson as the youngest manager in the league, but in so doing becomes the second second-generation manager in the league.

The fanatacism that his father, Mike, showed in Strat began to rub off on John in his teen-age years, and so while John is a managerial newbie, the terminology and gameplay are things he has lived with all of his life.

Read John’s complete managerial profile here.

That remains to be seen, but the Ohio native did earn a living as a financial consultant before semi-retiring in 2011 to spend more time learning how to play Strat.  You will recall that he shared managerial duties with John Renbarger at the helm of the orphaned Detroit Demolition Dogs.

A childhood pal of Dave Renbarger’s from their time together at both North Farmington High School and the University of Michigan, Ken has been subjected to second-hand Strat via that relationship for more than 30 years. An avid follower of the Detroit Tigers and major league baseball, Ken hopes the enjoyment of that crosses over into Strat-O-Matic. He even vows to replace his Commodore 64 with a real computer in time for next season and to have Netplay and Hamachi humming on all cylinders by March.

Read Ken’s complete profile here.