Blogs

Should be: The Indispensible Baseball Musings

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Baseball Musings


DAVID PINTO WROTE: “Update: Jason Marquis is allowed to take a beating for the second time this year. He gives up two hits in the sixth before he comes out of the game. Just to finish his night off, the bullpen allows the runner they inherited from Jason to score. He’s charged with 12 runs. He allowed 14 against the White Sox earlier this season. Almost 30% of the runs Marquis allowed this year came in those two games.”

Pinto has created a baseball news site with fantasy relevance, excellent data tools, and it’s all free. Unless you do the right thing and pony up some cash, if you feel the way I do. I sent money last year and I’m not bragging, it wasn’t really enough. So I’m sending more this year.

Highly recommended.

As for Marquis, he’s killing me. Or Tony LaRussa is. I’d been riding the matchups the last couple of weeks (since the last time he was left in to take a beating) and it’s worked out well, so I didn’t see the spot to dump him. Mercy.

RotoRob

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A New Baseball (and other sports, too) blog.

Rob Blackstien has been writing and editing the Fantasy Baseball and Football Guides for a couple of years now, so I wasn’t surprised how well written and good looking his new site is. I’ve been travelling and I’ve also been surprised how often I’ve checked in just to get Rob’s take on the latest stories. Check it out, click some links, buy some stuff, and if you like Rotorob like I do, support a good writer who loves (and plays) baseball.

WasWatching.com:

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It’s A-Rod Season!

Presents evidence that A-Rod is having a really crumby season when the Yankees are trailing by one or two runs, but it’s only 54 plate appearances. Everybody seems to have an opinion about whether A-Rod is always so bad in the clutch (though it should be noted, as the writer here does, that A-Rod has four hits after the seventh inning that put the Yankees ahead, while Justin Morneau leads the league with five).

Last year A-Rod had a couple of game score situations in which he didn’t hit nearly as well as in all other situations. One of them was down by two runs, but the other was up by two runs. He had a 1.096 OPS when down by one run.

In 2004 he was incredible in down by one run (1.416 OPS), fair when down by two runs (.910 OPS), sucked when down by three or up by two (.701/.556) and not so hot when the team was up by five runs (.724).

My conclusion? I love baseballmusings.com and David Pinto’s amazing database. Unconvincing attempts to impugn A-Rod’s clutchiness? Not so much.

Names change, drugs remain — Affidavit starts witch hunt

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BostonHerald.com – MLB Coverage:

Clever stuff, and makes me feel a little dirty.

BTW, does baseball really need to save itself? Haven’t these steroid allegations been out there for a few years now? Did anybody think that testing was going to make the game totally clean? Aren’t millions of people going out to the ballyard in every major league city? Isn’t everyone making so much money they aren’t even discussing the possibility of a strike/lock out when the basic agreement expires after this season?

That’s all. For now.

Ps. I found the Boston Herald link through deadspin.com.

Baseball Musings:

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SI’s Luft on Grimsley

David Pinto goes to the place I think all discussion about PEDs has to go, but in a comment far down the page Keith Levenberg takes it one step further. Well worth reading down the page if you have set ideas about drugs and the games.
I was going to link to Deadspin’s sober speculation of the contents of the redacted information in the Grimsley affadavit (about him, not by him), but the link from the affidavit to Albert Pujols’ trainer, Chris Mihfield, is too tenuous. Anyone who has hung around with professional athletes in the last 20 some odd years (and probably longer) knows that all follow the supplements, vitamins, and enhancement products to some extent. Mihfield recommending a guy to Grimsley who had bennies is a far cry from a smoking gun pointing at Pujols.

But then I think we need a lot less hysteria.

Baseball Buzz Bot!

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Ballbug

I don’t think I’ve given proper respect to Ballbug, an excellent news feed aggregator. Ballbug collects the big baseball stories of the day from the mainstream media, and augments them with a healthy collection of related blog entries. It sometimes takes a little longer than I would like for the latest news to cycle to the top of the page during the day, at least sometimes, but it’s a great place to start your daily baseball reading. Highly recommended.