Month: January 2008

Steroids, Other “Drugs”, and Baseball

by

Eric Walker

A huge site that could use an editor, that makes all the cases that steroids are not the menace they’re painted to be.  If you have an interest in the topic you will be challenged and informed by Walker’s arguments. I’m not sure he demolishes the notion that PEDs can improve baseball performance, though he seems to think he has, and I think the argument that they’re relatively safe is relatively disingenuous.

Which simply means there is more work and arguing and convincing to be done. But this is a fairly rational and exhaustive look, with evidence, at the issue without the hysteria, and well worth checking out no matter which side of the debate you find yourself on.

Point/Counterpoint: Johan Santana

by

Mets Geek

My friend Steve Hubbell and his host, John Patterson, debated on January 18th whether a Santana trade would be good for the Mets, or a disasterous miscalculation. The die is now cast, apparently, and the Mets made a slightly better deal than Patterson anticipated (Gomez not Martinez). I suspect this debate will have entertainment value for years to come. Nice job, guys.

2007 Payroll Efficiency

by

The Baseball Analysts: Rich Lederer

The official numbers are out and Rich Lederer does us the favor of plotting the team salaries and games won on a chart, along with a sensible discussion of the implications. I’m assuming that revenue sharing numbers aren’t included, which would skew the chart in interesting ways. The Yankees would spend more per win. The Marlins would make more money per loss. But that’s not what’s at play here.

Click the link and find out how your team did converting dollars to wins.

On the other hand, the final numbers show that player salaries were less than 45 percent of total baseball revenues, a drop of nearly 10 percent since 1994’s cancelled post season, which was in large part a fight over a salary cap at something like 50 percent of revenues.

New Ballpark Webcam

by

The Official Site of The Minnesota Twins

Construction is underway on the Twins new ballpark, and it was announced this week that despite cost overruns (already!) that the Twins themselves will make up the difference.

Meanwhile, my wife, author of Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, tells me that the stadium is being built less than 1,000 feet away from a giant trash incinerator that will be releasing all sorts of toxics from the materials it burns. The upper deck of the new yard will be at about the same height as the smoke stack of the incinerator.

This link is to the report analyzing how many of those metals will end up in the playing field, how much players and fans will inhale and ingest (there is actually a formula to determine dirt ingestion in the report), and how that compares to EPA and other (many elements don’t have established harm levels yet) standards.

So far, things look good, though the discussion of the effects on a Child Season Ticket Holder fired my imagination, if not any sense of imminent alarm.

It’s good the builders and the county government and the Twins are thinking about these things. Let’s just hope they get it right.

Nate Silver on Fantasy Baseball

by

Baseball Prospectus | Unfiltered

I should probably check what I posted last March, but I don’t remember reading this insightful Nate Silver piece in BP Unfiltered last year. And if you didn’t read it then you should.

If you play fantasy baseball in a league with other people who think and pay attention, Nate’s VIP plan makes a lot of sense.  I don’t like Nate’s use of the phrase “leading indicators,” however, when it comes to player projection.

Walk rate and strikeout rate and home run rate aren’t leading indicators. They can help identify periods where a player’s other stats are out of whack with expectations, and should regress to the mean. But a player whose walk rate goes up one year isn’t likely to improve in the future, which would be the case with a true leading indicator.

Expert Mock Draft Analysis Podcast!

by

LennyMelnickFantasyBaseball

I’ve known Lenny Melnick a long time and he’s a good fantasy player. He’s got a website now devoted to using his smooth voice for unsparing but congenial fantasy baseball analysis. Yes, he makes podcasts.

Regular readers may know that I don’t think there’s time enough in the world for podcasts, but this week I participated in a so-called experts mock draft at mockdraftcentral.com (thanks Jason and Geoff), and Lenny and Paul Greco (of fantasybaseballguy.com) covered it live (and did a nice job).  You can find the link to that mammoth production at Paul’s site.

In the link above Lenny breaks down the draft, team by team, and while there is plenty to quibble with in terms of judgments, the process does show what goes into making a good fantasy draft and team. Those are the same analyses that those who participate in lots of mocks when getting ready for the season tell me they go through.

If only there were more time.

The man making the case for steroids

by

ChicagoSports.com

Norman Fost is a scientist who makes many of the same arguments I have at various times against steroid hysteria (and in some sense in support of steroid use). He seems to go a step further, actually promoting steroid use, though I think that’s something of a rhetorical device. He wouldn’t get the attention he covets if he was less extreme.

The question for debate is really where we draw the line between enhancement and innovation. Ben Johnson using Winstrol may be comparable to a swimmer with a technologically better bathing suit, but I think we can decide to say it is not. Similarly, our belief in equal rights for those with physical handicaps (like no legs, let’s say) doesn’t necessarily mean that we should allow those with prostheses to compete in the same events as those with natural legs.

But how about having those with prostheses competing with those who take steroids?

Just wondering.