1. How many innings does Schilling have to pitch to qualify for his $3 million?

2. We’ve already written about the “weight clause” in Schilling’s new deal. But nowhere has it been stated that Schilling must lose weight, simply that he will be weighed six times throughout the season.

For all we know, the clause could basically say that he needs to stay under 350lbs or something. This way, Boston looks good by not guaranteeing him more than $8 million and Schilling can look good by not demanding more guaranteed money AND making it seem like he gives a rat’s ass about conditioning.

So what’s the deal, Curt? Are you really gonna slim down? Or is this all just a clever ploy?

3. If Schilling is going to lose weight, how is he going to do it? Slim Fast? The South Beach Diet? Or just good old fashioned exercise?

Will his weight loss adventure be the subject of a future reality show, to be broadcast on MLB.TV? Will we be treated to blog post after blog post about how Mr. Bloody Sock is sooooo craving chocolate right now?

My guess is Schilling hires a personal trainer, which I would totally do if I had millions of dollars. I guess it’s a little lame to pay a guy to yell at you while you strain to touch your toes, but whatever it takes, right?

Just as long as Schilling doesn’t get the same guy Tony Gwynn hired.

NOTE: ESPN.COM says “Schilling would get a $375,000 bonus for pitching 130 innings, and an additional $375,000 for every 10-inning increment up to 200. He also will have the random weigh-ins, one per month, and get $333,333 each time he maintains his weight.”

Of course, that still doesn’t tell us what weight Schilling is expected to maintain. The problem wasn’t that Schilling got fatter as the 2007 season went on. It was that he showed up fat and stayed fat.

UPDATE: As a few commenters pointed out, Tom Verducci reports, “Schilling will get bonus money based on periodic weigh-ins. To collect he must be no heavier than 230 pounds, a weight he’s had trouble staying under in recent years.”

Rumors were flying all over the baseball world last night that the Dodgers have all but decided to fire manager Grady Little and replace him with Joe Torre.

As a Dodgers fan I would have mixed feelings if this whole thing actually goes through. On one hand, I have no particular love for Grady Little, who in two years at the helm of the Boys in Blue proved himself to be a borderline incompetent in-game manager, but even worse, completely lost control of his clubhouse down the stretch this year.

In this day and age of high-salaried, high-maintenance ballplayers, a manager’s biggest job has become managing the egos in the clubhouse (second biggest job: dealing with the media), and Grady decisively proved that he couldn’t do that.

So I’m not sad to see Grady go at all.

But on the other hand, Joe Torre is a supremely overrated manager. Granted, he was adept at performing what I just said were a manager’s top two jobs of managing the egos and managing the press, so credit where credit is due, but where the overrated part comes in is all the additional credit he gets for all the World Series titles that the Yankees won.

The fact is that Joe Torre was blessed with supremely talented teams for all twelve years he was with the Yankees. All twelve of those teams were the best team on paper heading into the season, and all twelve would have been expected to go far into the playoffs, no matter who was managing.

Joe Torre lived up to what we would have expected from any manager under those circumstances. He did an okay job. In the first five years (with no small amount of luck - Jeffrey Maier, anyone?), he won four World Series, but in the last seven years he didn’t win any.

Moreover, any sort of close examination of Torre’s in-game managing calls reveals that he was a less than stellar tactician, extremely rigid in his use of the bullpen and the bench, abusive with his star relievers to the verge of ruining careers, and prone to irrationally overplaying personal favorites.

Look, I’m not trying to say that Torre was a terrible manager by any stretch of the imagination. As I already said, he was good at PR, and he also brought a sense of dignity to the team and was popular with his players and the fans. And those are all good things.

But what it boils down is, are Joe Torre’s managerial skills really worth between $15 to $20 million over the next three years? I mean how many extra wins a year was Torre worth to the Yankees? 1? Maybe 2 at most? How many wins did he cost by playing Miguel Cairo at first base? Wouldn’t the Dodgers be better off spending all those millions on a starting pitcher, or three stud relievers, or a third baseman?

To me this is just more evidence that Frank McCourt and Ned Colletti really have no idea what they are doing and continue to be afflicted by one of the worst cases of big-name-itis in the majors.

I would much rather see the Dodgers spend big money on actual ballplayers, or scouting, or player development, than on a big-name manager. There are lots of baseball guys out there who could make players feel good and not say stupid shit to the press, but there are decidedly fewer guys who can hit 30 homers a year or throw 95 mph with movement.