Hanged By His Own Testimony–A Washington Nationals Blog
Patience with Jim Bowden is running out.
peter
rec.sport.baseball FAQ – Rules
rec.sport.baseball FAQ – Rules
Want to know what makes an error and error? An RBI an RBI? This plainly written FAQ covers an odd couple-handfuls of questions directly and clearly. Well worth a look-see for a rules refresher.
Yard Work »
Spoof postings from baseball celebs that are actually funny. I haven’t read them all, but each writer has a different style. This Bowden post has some laugh out loud lines and a Mike Kelly joke. Very hard to resist. Mangia.
Ask Rotoman Again
Major League Baseball : Fantasy
The new one is out, with some advice if you lost Derrek Lee, thoughts about trading Carlos Beltran, an evaluation of just how good Chris Shelton is, and a survey of the best young pitchers, this year and next.
Schilling says he was willing, just not able
I certainly don’t want to fan the flames of controversy, and as best I can tell older pitchers can be more durable, but isn’t this a fine opportunity to see if there is a residual effect to high pitch count outings?
Don’t count on these starts staying hot
Obviously, there is nothing wrong with this list. Obviously.
In baseball, times change, and so do the standards
The stupidest argument of outrage in re the steroids era is the one about the defilement of baseball’s great records. Bob Ryan does a fine job demolishing it in this story in the Boston Globe.
Study Reveals Baseball’s Great Clutch Hitters
This site cites a study by Elan Fuld that uses some interesting and valuable methods to determine whether clutch hitters exist. While Fuld is able to identify a few hitters who exhibited reliable clutch tendencies throughout their careers, their numbers are so small that his ambitious study really seems to support the idea that clutch hitters don’t exist. To the extent Bill Buckner, Eddie Murray and Leo Gomez were clutch, maybe they were just a little luckier than the vast majority of players during the 30 years he looked at who weren’t clutch.
The role of psychological difference in baseball is an important one, and Fuld’s study apparently demonstrates just how narrow a swath the elite of baseball players are drawn from. That this purported science website could so misread the conclusion of this study should be an embarrassment.
Plus, they don’t even link to Fuld’s study, which you can find here.
You can also find a set of other clutch hitting studies compiled by Cyril Morong here.
This Week’s Ask Rotoman
Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Fantasy
I’ve been traveling some of Appalachia’s blue highways this week, which has brought the blog to a complete stop, though Ask Rotoman appeared Wednesday as usual. Will Travis Hafner sit again during interleague play? How much difference does it make having Roy Oswalt rather than Mark Buehrle? How do you sort our oddball categories and pick players who suit them? Clemens? Podsednick? Betemit?
Introducing Heater Magazine
John Hunt, who should need no introduction, Deric McKamey, the minor league expert at BaseballHQ.com, and Dave Studeman, of HardballTimes.com, have joined Graphical Pitcher author John Burnson to create Heater, an online magazine about baseball. While in the first issue Hunt and Studeman write fine “early season roto” columns, the heart of the Heater are the 30 pages of team statistical profiles and charts, and the umpteen more pages of position breakouts (as well as a page tracking minor leaguers).
Heater will be coming out each week, and for the fantasy player or the hard core baseball fan the wealth of charts, graphs, timelines and other details about this week, last week and next week, as well as a whole lot more stuff (I’m really just scratching the surface) is organized in an exacting and pleasing way. It’s like the back stats pages of Sports Weekly were totally rethought and reorganized to actually present the data in a way that made it easy to find trends and nuggets about players and teams. Radical.
In a word, all of it is useful, all of it is easy to understand, none of it is presented anywhere else in so fine and complete a manner. Don’t take my word for it. There is a sample copy at the link above. You’ll then have to decide if your money is well spent for this sort of thing. I’m hoping it is, because as long as they keep putting this stuff out my job is going to be a lot easier (and I’m going to look a lot smarter).