Two news reports on the same day this week raised questions not of critical importance but of matters worthy of discussion and debate:

• Is Jamie Moyer, the ageless marvel of the pitching profession, out of his mind for planning to follow ligament transplant elbow surgery with a year of rehabilitation at the age of 48 and a resumption of his career at 49?
• Did Troy Tulowitzki, Colorado’s dynamic young shortstop, sell himself short by letting the Rockies lock him up for most of the rest of his career for just under $16 million a season?

These matters, of course, are personal to the players involved in them, and no one should presume to tell them what they should do. But baseball, more than any sport, produces great debates and everyone has an opinion.

Moyer injured his pitching (left) elbow last July, then worked hard at rehabbing it with the idea of pitching winter ball – what 48-year-old pitcher ever pitched winter ball? – to prepare for next season. But he reinjured the elbow in his first start in winter ball, shattering those plans and learning that if he was to resume pitching at some point, he would need Tommy John surgery.

He could easily and understandably have foregone the ordeal but opted not to. The man wants to pitch again, and he will do what he has to do to fulfill that desire.

I recall encountering Moyer in 1993. He had endured five consecutive losing seasons following the start of his major league career in 1986, and now, pitching for his fourth team, Baltimore, he was in the midst of a good season.

I asked him why he was now pitching well, and I think I offended him by my question’s suggestion that his previous seasons hadn’t been good. He said as much. But he went on to have a bunch of good seasons, highlighted by a three-year span with Seattle, 2001-03, in which he twice was a 20-game winner and had a 54-21 record.

But that was then; this is now. What can he reasonably expect to achieve coming back from Tommy John surgery at the age of 49? He has no idea because no one his age has ever had the operation. Does a 49-year-old elbow respond the same way as an elbow 20 or 25 years younger and with 20 or 25 fewer years of abuse?

When John was the first to have the operation in 1974, he was 31. Hundreds and hundreds of pitchers have had the operation since. In recent years many have been teenagers who incurred elbow damage in high school or college.

Only one pitcher is believed to have come back from the surgery in his 40s. That was John Franco of the Mets, and he was a reliever who began a post-surgery, career-ending three-year stretch in 2003 at 42. He pitched 95 1/3 innings over 121 games and wasn’t particularly effective.

Before Moyer will be able to test his effectiveness, he will have to get a job, and he doesn’t figure to find that task easy. With pitching always in demand, some team may give him a shot, but there will be far more skeptics than sympathizers.

If he is offered a contract, it will be a minor league contract with terms established for a major league deal if he wins a major league job. It will pay him a low salary, most likely the minimum, and will be heavily loaded with incentives based on games and/or innings pitched.

It won’t be his best contract ever, but it will be the best a 49-year-old pitcher has ever had. Moyer will obviously not – well, should not – care about his pay; he will presumably care about pitching one more season and ending his career as an active pitcher, not one on the disabled list. Whatever anyone thinks of his age and his effort, Moyer deserves the chance to go out his way. He has earned it.

What has Tulowitzki earned financially with the early years of what should be a brilliant career? More than he accepted from the Rockies, I believe, but he introduced extenuating circumstances into the proceedings.

The young shortstop had three years remaining on a six-year contract he signed in January 2008, when he had only one year in the majors. It was a good deal at the time based on the idea that a young player benefits from a multi-million dollar contract because it sets him up financially for life.

Subsequent contracts are not viewed the same way. Agents seek value for their clients equal to or in excess of contracts signed by players of similar status.

The Rockies and Tulowitzki’s agent, Paul Cohen, negotiated a 10-year contract that retained the salaries from the last three years of the existing contract totaling $23.75 million. That contract also had an option year with a $2 million buyout, meaning Tulowitzki was guaranteed $25.75 million.

The Rockies added seven years for an additional $132 million, creating a 10-year, $157.75 million package and an annual average of just under $16 million. The added years average to a shade under $19 million.

In the last previous big contract signed, Minnesota’s Joe Mauer averaged $23 million a year (8 years, $184 million), a deal he gained a season before he could become a free agent. Derek Jeter was in a similar time frame when he signed a 10-year, $189 million contract with the Yankees in February 2001.

The timing of those contracts makes it difficult to compare with Tulowitzki’s new contract because Tulowitzki is not close to free-agent eligibility. In addition, this contract was fueled by the shortstop’s desire to play for the Rockies his entire career, a la Cal Ripken with Baltimore and Kirby Puckett with Minnesota.

It’s difficult for a player to tell a team he wants to play for it the rest of his career, and then dictate the terms of his contract.

So Tulowitzki, with no leverage, was willing to give up some millions more that he could have made had he waited, say, to complete his six-year contract and become a free agent.

LONG-RUNNING SALE

Nearly a year ago the president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company acknowledged that it was taking longer than expected to dispose of the company’s 17.5 percent interest in the Boston Red Sox. Last week the executive, Janet Robinson, told Reuters the Times company was talking to a variety of prospective buyers and expected to reap a profit when it sold its remaining 16.6 percent share.

Entire teams have been sold in the time the Times has been trying to sell its minority share.

The times have not been financially kind to the Times, and the company is selling its share of the Red Sox because it is probably the most profitable piece of property it owns.

The recession and the decline in the newspaper industry have hurt the Times as much as any newspaper, but the company has hurt itself as well. Its $1.1 billion purchase of the Boston Globe in 1993 stands out as the epitome of poor business decisions.

But Robinson alone made at least one other poor decision when, in 2001, she gave away an exclusive story the Times had on the company’s inclusion in the John Henry-Tom Werner group that would buy the Red Sox.

Robinson knew I had the story because I called her for comment on the Times company’s involvement. With some other exclusive stories I was reluctant to call a principal for comment because I feared he would give the story to other reporters. George Steinbrenner was good at that practice.

But I had no trouble calling Robinson because she was the Times, and she wouldn’t give away the story. But she did, giving it to the Globe. She later explained her act of folly by saying it would not have been right for the story to appear in the Times and not the Globe, whose home team was the Red Sox.

To me, giving away an exclusive story is the worst newspaper sin of all.

LOOKING TO BECOME ROYALTY IN THE DESERT

Of the half dozen or so players who have been traded in the first month of the off-season, Zach Duke could benefit the most. Liberated from the Pirates by the Diamondbacks, the 27-year-old left-hander needed a change of scenery, and there can’t be more of a change of scenery than going from Pittsburgh to Phoenix.

As a rookie in 2005, Duke demonstrated talent that identified him as a future pitching star. He had an 8-2 record and a 1.81 earned run average in 14 starts, a great start to a major league career. In five seasons since, he has had five losing seasons, a 37-68 record and a 4.80 e.r.a.

For some inexplicable reason, the Pirates wanted Duke to change his delivery after the first season and new never worked as effectively as old. Duke never recovered. Now he goes to Arizona, where the Diamondbacks look for the desert climate to create a change in Duke’s pitching fortunes.

IT’S MILLER TIME

Marvin Miller gets his fifth chance of being elected to the Hall of Fame Sunday. That’s when the 16-man veteran committee will vote on Miller and 11 others on the “expansion-era” ballot. Miller, the former head of the players union, has failed four times in the past eight years, twice in votes by Hall of Famers and twice in votes by 12-man committees.

Miller gained 63 percent (up from 44) of the needed 75 percent in the second vote and seven votes (up from three) when he needed nine in the fourth vote. “Every time I get close, they change the system” he has noted.

This time he needs 12 of the 16 votes, and it figures to be close. Results will be announced Monday.