Rick Paulus has been writing about fantasy baseball writing for a few years now in McSweeney’s, and he’s pretty funny. Especially so in this Super Scouting Report of Excessive Keeper Leagues. I’ve already signed URF, so don’t bother.
peter
Ask Rotoman at MLB.com
The new one is out, with a look at keepers in draft leagues and why you should keep Ryan Zimmerman over Manny Ramirez next year, Pedro Martinez’s return anticipated, and some suggestions for September call ups to get the heart a pounding.
Braves demote Wickman
I think this move means that the Braves have a suitor in line for Wickman, though it’s hard to see how starting the clock can improve trade leverage.
If they don’t, and they’re just dumping his sorry self, especially since Dotel isn’t ready to step up, it is very much a break from tradition.
Who becomes the Braves’ closer?
Rafael Soriano wins in the near term, but this sure seems like it’s tied to another move.
We shall see.
Cole Hamels Goes on Disabled List: Due Back Sept 1
The Official Site of Major League Baseball: News: Major League Baseball News
My early season naysaying about Hamels was based primarily on his fairly regular injury history until last year. Those who didn’t bite, or who bit at a lower price, benefited, since until now Hamels has been an excellent starting pitcher. This injury, which has been described as minor, doesn’t vindicate my earlier call. Hamels has done too much to shame my preseason precaution, but it does go part of the way to explain why we don’t pay full value for pitchers. They do a dangerous job.
Tony Wilson, dead
Some time ago I read and became enthusiastic about Griel Marcus’s amazing book Lipstick Traces, which found punk impulses in a series of historical figures going back to medeival times, but mostly concentrated on Guy DeBord and the French Situationist International. DeBord and the SI were a small group who by design spent lots of time in cafes drinking, but who also developed a post-Marxist critique of modern society that in many ways is a shockingly apt description of our celebrity culture and the primacy of entertainment when it comes to keeping people fat and happy.
Smitten with Marcus’s book, I went to Berkeley to meet him and, I hoped, talk him into giving me the rights to make a docucrama TV version that I dreamed would play on some PBS affiliate of MTV. Greil was smart and generous and smartly skeptical, which meant I walked away with a most-treasured mix tape of the music he talks about in Lipstick Traces, an invaluable VHS of the Sex Pistol’s last concert at Winterland in San Francisco, and his suggestion that if I needed money to do this I should talk to Tony Wilson, who, he explained, was the guy who owned Joy Division’s label.
I mention this because for me part of the power of 24 Hour Party People is knowing just how accessible all these people were, at the time, and the recognition that it was my own fear that kept me from phoning Wilson and getting this project off the ground. DIY should mean I should have made that call. Wilson’s death also reminds me about how great Winterbottom’s movie is, and is a reminder that some day Malcolm McClaren will die, too, at which point we will rehash all this stuff again, in spades. And double dutch.
If you are interested in the Sex Pistols and McClaren and the Manchester scene and any or all of London punk, you should read Lipstick Traces, which really is a great book. But tonight we toast Tony Wilson, a man who didn’t wait to meet someone to find a way to express all the stuff that was churning up inside himself. Cheers.
Feats of Clay
An exhaustive profile of Clay Bucholz, the Red Sox phenom who has just been staked to a five run lead in this afternoon’s makeup game. His fantasy utility, even if he makes it stand up, is limited now, since he’ll be sent back to Pawuckett after the game, but expectations are sky high for the not so long run.
Also today, Detroit phenom Cameron Maybin was promoted and stalwart struggler Craig Monroe was designated for assignment. Monroe is one of those guys who seemed to bloom at a late age, and who is now fading early. Maybin is up for good if he can get on base, as a 19 year old, which is a big deal indeed. Or will be, if it works out. He’s played just four games at Double-A (homering three times).
Bonds passes Aaron as baseball’s home run king
On August 2 I linked to a baseballmusings.com chart showing the Mike Bacsik was the pitcher who threw to contact most this year, and noted the odd spell he seemed to have over Barry Bonds (who was 1-15 against Bacsik in his career at that point–that one hit a homer).
Since then Bacsik threw the pitch which Bonds hit to break the record. What are the odds of that?
People’s Voice: Bonds polarizes –
Dan Wetzel – MLB – Yahoo! Sports
I’ve written a few times about the ridiculous screeds of Dan Wetzel, but held off (for the most part) after he wrote an article about how Bonds breaking the record was “Hollow, not hallowed.” (He’s the guy who used the degree by which Bonds broke Maris’s record as proof that he was juiced.)
What’s interesting is that he comes off as a much more sensible, thoughtful and serious guy responding to people’s criticisms of that piece. He actually acknowledges all the gray areas he ignores when he puts down a column, and is clearer about what is known, not known, and why that matters.
Good for him.
Baseball Prospectus on Bonds
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6570
I haven’t actually paid much attention to Bonds breaking the record. The superficial reasons are because I’ve been busy with my family, and my life, and something has to give.
Also, big career records are the result of circumstance. Nobody broke Babe Ruth’s career record in the 50s or 60s or 70s or 80s or even 90s because people didn’t hit so many home runs then. Is that because there weren’t great home run hitters then? Or is it because fewer home runs were hit? You be the judge.
But plenty of homers were hit in the 90s and 00s, and while that was happening to many hitters Barry Bonds eventually hit more major league home runs than anyone else.
When you read the BP tales linked to here you’ll have to decide whose smart ideas are valid and whose are crap. I admired that guy Ehrhardt’s 12 Monkey’s approach, though it’s pretty much a stunt. But he’s right that the question isn’t really worth our memory.
So I offer my take: All baseball records reflect the era in which they were set. This is inevitable. The dead ball is different than the live ball. Mound heights changed, expansion happened again and again. Ballparks got bigger. Ballparks got smaller. The DH. And certainly PEDs have played a role. So when we compare records across eras we’re inevitably comparing apples to papayas.
I find it incredible that some people still offer up Cy Young’s 511 wins as baseball’s most unbreakable record. Um, yeah.
Bonds’ achievement came within a context that also created A-Rod and Junior and Slammin’ Sammy and Canseco. I read a story the other day that talked about the percentage increase in Bonds’ record over Maris’s, without talking about the intervening records of McGwire and Sosa. [Sure, they might all be tainted by ‘roids, but they happened. Bonds did not break Maris’s record.]
There will never be a Davenport Translation that eliminates PEDs from the record. Not everyone used, and no one knows how much help the drugs are. I think it suffices to look at such things in the context in which they were created. If Clay Davenport (and Will Carroll) tell me that the contextual adjustments make Ruth No. 1 Career Home Run hitter and Bonds No. . . . Whoops, I don’t recall what they tell me about Bonds. That he’s either second or third all time, and either is fine by me.
But that’s what our statistical evaluation can do. If Bonds were the only steroid user his advantage would be incalculable. He would soar over everyone else. But we know others used, and we have no evidence that he used more than them. We know that many of them (at least half) were pitchers. In any case, all of that comes out within the context. Bonds setting the record looks more like Bonds establishing that he’s the best home run hitter of his era. That he set the career mark as well is trivia.
Of all the BP essays in this package, the one I admired most is Christina Kahrl’s. She’s an ambitious stylist, but in this case I think she also gets the race thing right. Maris beating the Babe (in baseball’s first expansion year) was the triumph of man over legend. Feh, the traditionalists said! Legends don’t fall to flawed men. Asterisk, please.
Aaron has always been derided for his lack of flash, for the duration of his career, for never hitting lots of homers in one season. But now, illuminated by Bonds’ strange light, he’s the paragon of self-esteem and integrity, the wounded party when Barry Bonds’ nouveau race man comes to town. Christina says it much more elegantly than I am here. How much hatred accrues to Bonds because he’s (probably) used steroids? How much because he’s broken the record? How much because he’s uppity?
None of us knows the exact answer, but I agree with Christina that the issue still bites and is still in play here.
I’m here to say that in my book Ruth is the greatest home run hitter, based on 1921 and 1927, but that Bonds deserves all the respect you can stomach giving him. And if that’s not a lot, then a lot more. He’s clearly a driven talent with both skills and dedication enough to set gargantuan records. If you think it’s the drugs that put him over the top, you still have to admire all that he accomplished without drugs. And it makes more sense to devalue the record than to decry Bonds’ achievement besting an arbitrary number into some sort of symbol of moral decay.
At least I do.
Long Ball: Yankees’ New Hitting Coach Has A-Rod and Team Back in Top Form – WSJ.com
Allan Barra profiles Mike Long, the Yankees hitting coach. And he does a great job, as usual, of telling the story. Except for those pretentious WSJ style issues. [thanks to sportsfrog.com].