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From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday -- it's running Friday this week.

Earlier this week, Brad Lidge's nightmare 2009 season continued, when he allowed a walk-off homer to Andrew McCutchen. Ed Price covered the outing the following morning. The abysmal performance by the Phillies' closer underlines the only weakness of the defending World Series Champions.

Federal authorities have asked seven Major League Baseball players -- Greg Maddux, Bernie Williams, Johnny Damon, J.D. Drew, Andruw Jones, Carlos Pena and Jay Bell -- to return millions of dollars that they received from investor R. Allen Stanford as part of a payout in his alleged Ponzi scheme, according to a report in the Washington Times.

The players -- all clients of Scott Boras -- did not commit any wrongdoing, but, as early investors in the Stanford Financial Group, are believed to have received dividends from Stanford financed by investors that came after.

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

Meet the ...
Team that decided not to spend big bucks in the offseason. Reversing course from the normal offseason spending spree in New England, the Red Sox team headed into 2009 looks remarkably similar to last year's squad. You'll recognize all nine hitters in the starting lineup and a majority of the starting rotation. Key acquisitions were made in the bullpen, bringing Takashi Saito from the Dodgers and Ramon Ramirez from the Royals. John Smoltz will look weird without a Braves uniform, but should make a major contribution to the pitching staff when he returns from shoulder surgery. And if Brad Penny can return from injuries to his 2007 form, he should provide a nice spark to the rotation as well.

From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

While there is still time left in the Hot Stove season, and there are a few high quality players left on the market -- Ben Sheets, anyone? -- the Yankees have been the team who has made the biggest splash in all of baseball thus far. That splash was seemingly a reaction to missing the playoffs for the first time since the strike-shortened 1994.

It's easy to group the Red Sox and the Yankees together. Heck, during the Rays' amazing run last summer the two ancient rivals almost became one word. ('Can the upstart Rays really hold off the YankeesandRedSox?'). And the rush to mash them into one Northeast superpower makes sense, at least on the surface.

Rabid fanbases that are more alike than they would like to admit. Century-old tradition. Deep coffers. Expectations of success that would seem ridiculous anywhere else. There's no doubt the franchises have plenty in common.

But from a baseball operations standpoint, it's getting harder and harder to see numerous similarities. Consider the players Boston has signed this winter: Brad Penny, Josh Bard, Rocco Baldelli and John Smoltz. CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett those guys ain't.

Of course, the Red Sox are still big spenders. They were something like $12 million short in the Teixeira sweepstakes, depending on who you believe, and they've given out a few whoppers over the years like the Daisuke Matsuzaka ($103 million between the posting fee and his contract) and J.D. Drew ($70 million) deals.

Our MLB editor files dispatches from the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas in Notes From Sin City.

Just when it looked like it was going to be a very quiet Winter Meetings, CC Sabathia, the biggest fish of all in a large free-agent pond, comes off the board. As they say in my home state of Maine, if you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes.

Here's a scattering of thoughts on the Sabathia deal as we wait for an official announcement from the Yankees, something which might not even happen today.

- In the end, the interest from the West Coast that Sabathia was so hoping for never materialized. He might have told Ned Colletti that he wanted to be a Dodger on Sunday, but L.A. never got serious about him. The Giants simply couldn't offer him the length of contract that he wanted and the Angels are still chasing after Mark Teixeira.

In fact, the Yankees' initial offer seems to have worked exactly as intended -- it blew everyone else out of the water, leaving the Brewers as the only team who kinda, sorta waded into the market and they simply couldn't mount a real challenge.

- The opt-out clause is interesting because it guarantees one of two thing -- either Sabathia's contract is going to become an enormous albatross or we're going to be repeating this scene three years from now. Seriously, when has a free agent with an opt-out clause ever not opted out if he's healthy. Alex Rodriguez, J.D. Drew and A.J. Burnett are the three most recent examples, and it simply makes no financial sense to stick with your original deal with the way inflation works in baseball.

- This almost certainly takes the Yankees out of the Mark Teixeira market, but they are far from done adding pitching. The guess here is that CC's teammate in Milwaukee, Ben Sheets, joins him in New York before Christmas. As for the Teixeira market, nothing is going to happen here in Vegas, but it should progress quickly in the next two weeks. He too wants to settle on a team before the holidays.

Dayton Moore's busy offseason continued on Wednesday as he made another trade, acquiring outfielder Coco Crisp from the Red Sox in exchange for reliever Ramon Ramirez.

Crisp had been on the trading block for awhile, ever since the emergence of Jacoby Ellsbury in the Boston outfield. He's a career .280 hitter, who draws a decent amount of walks, doesn't have much power, and is a threat to run, with 20 or more stolen bases in each of the last three seasons. He had a brilliant year defensively in 2007, but was just in the years before and after; overall, it looks like he's a slightly above average center fielder.

Crisp goes from one crowded outfield to another, as the Royals already have Mark Teahen, David DeJesus, and Jose Guillen. This move, which comes three weeks after Kansas City picked up Mike Jacobs from the Marlins, suggests that Moore has yet another transaction in mind, and that Teahen, or even DeJesus, could be traded to free up an outfield spot.

The Red Sox dealt from a strength -- they still have an excellent starting outfield of Jason Bay, Jacoby Ellsbury, and J.D. Drew -- and received an asset you can really never have enough of, in a quality bullpen arm. The 28-year old Ramirez has an excellent season in 2008, with a 2.84 ERA in 71.2 innings. Some of that success won't continue though, as he allowed just two home runs despite allowing an average number of fly balls.

He was very good in other areas, notching 70 strikeouts, a rate of 8.8 per nine innings. Ramirez joins an increasingly strong Boston bullpen; Jonathan Papelbon is one of the best closers in baseball, and they now have four above average relievers to bridge the gap to him, with Ramirez, Hideki Okajima, Manny Delcarmen, and Justin Masterson.

The Red Sox ended their season one win short of another improbable comeback and their third World Series trip in the last five years. Considering all the success they've experienced this decade, it'd be easy to call 2008 a failure.

But that would be folly, a twisted Boston-flavored version of the Steinbrenner Doctrine. You can't define success in the era of the three-tiered postseason by championships. There's simply too much parity and too much variance in a short series to expect any team to wind up in the World Series every year.

So instead, let's take a quick look at what the Red Sox accomplished this year and spin forward to 2009.

Despite major injuries to David Ortiz, Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, Julio Lugo, Daisuke Matsuzaka and J.D. Drew, lost seasons from Jason Varitek and Clay Buchholz and the departure of the team's best hitter, Manny Ramirez, at the trade deadline, Boston managed to win 95 games. There probably isn't any other team in baseball who could have gone through all of that and still had the organizational depth to qualify for the postseason in the AL East.

The Red Sox have several question marks heading into the offseason. Varitek is a free agent and Boston will have to make a very difficult decision about its captain with his best years behind him. GM Theo Epstein will need to figure out what to do with Lugo, who has been displaced at shortstop by Jed Lowrie, and once again deal with the logjam at center field created by having Jacoby Ellsbury and Coco Crisp on the same roster. And, of course, the tempation will be there to upgrade via the free agent or trade market, with CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and Jake Peavy just a few of the big names out there.

But all in all, there isn't that much for Epstein to do. Making a big free agent splash after falling one win short of the World Series is a solution for the turn-of-the-millennium Yankees. The Red Sox have one of the best farm systems in the game. They won't be shy about splurging for a big free agent if he's the right player -- Matsuzaka being a perfect example -- but most of their improvements are going to come from within.

That's been Epstein's vision since he took the reins as general manager, and it will keep Boston in contention for years to come.

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

The World Series cannot possibly live up the ALCS.

Please don't misconstrue the above statement and assume I'm being negative. It's actually the complete opposite. That was one incredible ALCS. If you are a baseball fan, but a fan of neither the Rays nor the Phillies, you are bound to be disappointed by the World Series. Don't expect an encore. Obviously, I can't accurately predict the future and tell you who is going to win and in how many games. I can tell you that while this upcoming series excites me, I also realize it just can't reach the lofty bar which was set over the past week by the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays.

Let's just revisit some of the drama we witnessed over the course of seven stellar games.

In the Playoff Pulse series, our MLB editor takes on a hot October topic.

In the end, there was a great deal of justice in the American League Championship Series. The better team -- the one that out-scored the Red Sox 43-28 in the series -- moved on to the Fall Classic. The team with fresher arms, with a deeper bench, with more of a right to represent the AL in the World Series at this point in the season will be there on Wednesday.

The defending champs weren't denied their dignity either. It looked like they would be, down 7-0 and on the brink of elimination in the latter innings of Game 5, but they staged one of the most improbable comebacks in playoff history, then got gutsy performances from Josh Beckett and Jason Varitek -- both unable to perform up to their own lofty standards to that point -- to push the series the distance.

With all apologies to the Phillies, these were the two best teams in baseball all season long, and the ALCS was a fitting conclusion to the year-long clashes between the AL East rivals.