Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996
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There is a benefit to this approach, which shows in broad strokes when major new information was revealed to the public, and in an alternative view when it was happening. Alas, there isn’t enough detail to use this as more than a cheat sheet, but for a quick summary it’s certainly useful. (If the text is too small make your browser window bigger, the text will get bigger, too.)
Before the ill-fated War on Terrorism there was the more-provenly ill-fated War on Drugs. One of those drugs wasn’t deco-durabolin, or HGH, or some other performance enhancing drug. But our approach to stopping the scourge of PED’s in baseball and other sports has been more akin to our failed approach to stopping cocaine coming from Columbia and heroin coming from Afghanistan than any actual strategies contemporary thinkers might have come up with.
Whether those strategies might be successful remains to be seen, but JC Bradbury’s approach has the virtue of actual incentives and our knowledge that it hasn’t failed before. I used to believe that because it was impossible to control the use of illicit drugs sports shouldn’t outlaw them, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. But I’m totally sure that if you’re going to ban illicit drugs you better come up with effective ways of getting them out of the game.
If you don’t, the whole system will collapse. As it should.
I may have written about David Pinto’s story earlier, but I know that spent much of tonight arguing the same thing. Discipline in this case is futile, for the most part, and counterproductive. The right thing would have been to embrace the information anyone would have given without threat of punishment, the better to judge what happened.
We still want to know what happened, because so many players who feared punishment didn’t talk to Mitchell.
That was a mistake.
Amazing. And they didn’t pay the extra couple of bucks to cloak the registrant’s identity.
This post is mostly to express my weariness about the forthcoming Mitchell report. Since everybody else in the world seems to have an opinion, why not me? Mine is that all discussion before the report is released, including leaks of tantalizing tidbits that don’t actually include information, should be taken in the form of PR people spinning, since at this point none of us know anything real about the report.
My ears did perk up when someone leaked that there would be surprises. I’ll be surprised (but hardly shocked) if that’s the case.
I’ve met Franz Lidz and I like him and his writing a lot. This happens to be an old story, but I still recommend it because the issues with A-Rod’s contract are huge. When Jose Guillen signs for $12M per year, doesn’t A-Rod’s new deal look cheap?
When I read that Bowie Kuhn was voted into the Hall of Fame, I yawned. Fay Vincent reminds me why I should have been mad.
I’m eternally dubious of enterprises like Yardbarker, simply because when I get there I can’t figure out what it is I want. But reading Dontrelle’s take on the trade, well, Nuthing Compares 2 It.
And I think there’s no doubt that Dontrelle wrote his stuff (no PR guy wrote it, though it was probably vetted), which changes the whole idea of news. Which, I think, is a good thing.
I say that as if news wasn’t already a version of PR.
Good stuff, Dontrelle, keep it up.
Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com
When Norman Mailer died recently I was surprised by the number of friends who told me that Harlot’s Ghost is the book of Mailer’s to read. I’m a huge fan, have read most of the major books and some of the less major, but lost interest in his later books.
About Harlot’s Ghost I remember bad reviews, but with such recommendations I’ll have to find a copy.
In the meantime, here is a short film directed by the excellent Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho) for a PBS TV show that is really a review of Harlot’s Ghost by the excellent Jim Wolcott. It makes me want to wade into those 1,400 page a little less, but is well worth watching for more than the simple review.
This somewhat rambling analysis of how to stock your pitching staff (if you’re a major league GM) strikes me as very smart. Don’t pay a lot because you need a lot. Pay a little because if you take enough small chances you can find a lot in the pool.
I think we need some real studies of what happens (namely, where the good pitchers on good teams came from) to buy into this fully, but given Rany’s survey of drafts it makes total sense to me that the best investment is in hitters.
And certainly major league teams are going this way now.