peter

Fantasy baseball advice for those who ask.

Patton $ on Disk 2007 is now available

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www.askrotoman.com

For those who swear by it, the release of POD07 is a big day. We’ve been squashing some bugs the past week, as it were, and everything seems to be working okay now. So, if you want the software that has my projections, Alex Patton’s and my 4×4 bid prices (actually mine aren’t in yet, but they will be by the March 1 update at the latest) and Mike Fenger’s 5×5 bids, lightning fast operation and a myriad of ways to incorporate your own ideas into the mix with ours, now is the time.

There will be updates on March 1, 15, 22, 29 and April 5. Getting all the projections and bids balanced to league budgets and up to date is a constant project for us, and the data develops as spring training progresses.

I encourage you to visit the discussion board over at alexpatton.com, to ask users about the software and your expected uses of it.

Three Citizen Critics Review Noteworthy Recent Albums — New York Magazine

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Lily Allen’s ‘Alright, Still’ – The Shins’ ‘Wincing the Night Away’ – Lucinda Williams’ ‘West’ – Of Montreal’s ‘Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?’ – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s ‘Some Loud Thunder’

Just a little non-baseball selfpromotion. Notice, by the way, the love for the new Lucinda Williams disk, which the NY Times and New Yorker have ripped in recent days. They’re wrong. I’m right.

MLB team in Ghana

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iTeam Blog–New York Daily News

This isn’t really news. MLB has made a PR move into Africa. But that’s a really good thing to do, and that they got Omar Minaya and Dave Winfield among others to go means a lot. I like Reggie Smith’s quote, that the ballplayers in Accra haven’t been overcoached. But I guess the bottom line is I think Africans would be better off is they played baseball, so I’m all for the trip.

Baseball Prospectus Goodie

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Jim Baker’s Column

I stopped my BP subscription a year or so ago, not because I didn’t enjoy the writing of many of the BP guys, and didn’t value their observations, but because it was all getting a little familiar. For free, I’d attend every day, but having to pay made it a little easy to stay away.

I’ve been surprised how few times I’ve felt like I was missing something since. I still read the newsletter and the beginnings of the stories, and I’m still awfully impressed by a lot of the work that goes on at BP, but I end up feeling like I’m already on their page, I don’t need to be hectored about this and that.

But the lede to this story is choice. Or as my friend Fleming Meeks has said, cherce. Jim Baker discovers an orphaned pool of BP stats about teams and their rate of being shut out. What I learned is that the 1981 Blue Jays were shut out 20 percent of the time.

These days that seems pretty much impossible, but things in baseball change. 1981 was the dawn of Rotisserie baseball and baseball’s age of statistics. I have no other point than at this moment I wish I could read the rest of Jim’s story.

Ryszard Kapuściński

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Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One of his books is named after a war that started because of some soccer games, but this is not a sports story. He’s noted upon his death here simply because he is one of my favorite writers. The Soccer War is a good place to start, but The Emperor, Shah of Shahs and Imperium are all fantastic books, essential if you’re interested in the topics, well worth reading even if you don’t care.

StopGlobalWarming.org

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Chase Utley: Marcher

Not only is he the top-rated second baseman in the game this year, but he’s also the only major leaguer marching against Global Warming. There seems to be some sort of contest going on, which Laurie David is winning handily, but a visit go Chase’s page is a vote for baseball fans against global warming. And they’ll be happy to tell you what more you can do while you’re there.

For one, drive less and turn out the lights when you’re not using them. Becoming more energy efficient means we’ll need fewer power plants, and rely less on oil from abroad (if you get what I mean).

Manny now more scary than scary good

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SportingNews.com – Brendan Roberts

When Brendan says that the TSN rankings have Manny Ramirez at No. 25 I thought, that’s silly. But I looked in the just-arrived Fantasy Baseball Guide and discovered that in our mock draft Manny was taken No. 30. And looking at the names that went ahead of him that doesn’t seem too far off the mark. Manny is an injury risk, he is getting older, he’s probably going to end up in Boston again (though he clearly doesn’t want to be), and he’s coming off a mildly down season. But assuming he makes it through spring training without any obvious physical problems, and that he could end up going anywhere from 12th to 35th, he’s a great pick at the low end of that range. And he might even prove to be a good one at the top end. Does that make him a sleeper?

The Scold

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Michael Sokolove – New York Times

Those of use who love sports have been dealing with the issue of performance enhancing drugs at least since Jim Bouton wrote Ball Four (that would be 1970). This is important because the Dick Pound fueled hysteria over the past few years has actually done some good (there has been plenty of attention paid to figuring out how to implement testing regimens) and some bad (like even when certain athletes test as clean they’re tarred with the PED brush).

In this story (which I believe will be available to NY Times subscribers only come Tuesday or Wednesday) Michael Sokolove profiles Pound, explains why he is the way he is, explains why his quest is quixotic, and does a fair job of laying out the path to the future of sport.

Essentially, people with like chemistry will compete against one another. There will be levels based on chemical compositions and ratios, and if you’re a PED taker or a freak of nature, your actual chemistry is what will matter.

I’m confident to predict that when this comes true, the big money league will be the one in which the athletes run the fastests, jump the farthest, hit the ball hardest. Everything else will be minor league.