MLB

Appeals court sides with fantasy baseball company

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ESPN

CDM went to the mat after MLBAM jacked up licensing prices (after buying out the Players Association’s rights) for fantasy content. This federal appeals court unanimously agreed that the players’ names and associated stats are news information and can be used by fantasy gamers without a license. It seems like an obvious conclusion, but you never know.

The ruling should free innovators and entrepeneurs to get back into the game, though how stifling the consolidation of the last few years was remains to be seen. This is good news for everyone, including MLBAM (though they don’t know it yet).

Young Hitters

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Baseball Musings

David Pinto puts together a chart showing the average age for each team’s offense in 2007 based on plate appearances. Interesting to note the Diamondbacks’ youth, since they didn’t exactly overwhelm anyone this year, but even more interesting to see a difference of more than five years from top to bottom. I would have guessed it would have been less, aside from obvious outliers like the Giants.

It would be interesting to see these numbers calculated for a run of years and then compared to a team’s success over those years. Do teams get better as they get older and then crash? Do young teams inevitably get better? Are successful teams getting younger, as this year’s data seem to suggest? Just wondering.

Searching For Answers About the Mets’ Collapse Brings No Relief by Allen Barra

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village voice

Barra has the numbers to demonstrate that the Mets’ problem was the bullpen, which everyone knew, and by how much, which everyone felt. But what he also has is a memory of how the Yankees finished the 2000 season, their last World Series championship. It was a far bigger collapse, only it ended up not hurting for reasons that had nothing to do with the Yankees.

Race for NL Batting Title Goes to Extras

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Newsvine

This story has a concise rundown of the major records for this year, but it’s notable for some other comments. Chipper Jones says he’s going home to prepare for a nice postseason, a funny choice of words for a guy who should be used to playing in the postseason.

Also, to say that “Detroit’s Curtis Granderson legged out 23 triples, most in the major leagues since Cleveland’s Dale Mitchell had 23 in 1949,” ignores the fact that 23 and 23 are the same. When did someone have 24 triples? The correct sentence would be: Detroit’s Curtis Granderson legged out 23 triples, most in the majors since Pittsburgh’s Kiki Cuyler hit 26 in 1925 (Cleveland’s Dale Mitchell had 23 in 1949).

Of the Top 25 triples totals only Granderson, Mitchell and Stuffy Stirnweiss (1945, NYA) rank from the post World War II era.

Probables

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Major League Baseball : Scoreboard

I was in a bar tonight having a beer with someone I’d just meant. He said that his father was rolling in his grave while the Mets faded, and you can see why. A collapse befitting the Cubs has befallen the Mets and I never realized how many die  hard Mets fans I knew.

Apart from the historic size of the crash, which is unprecedented, the stinging moment comes when one recalls how the “easy” Mets schedule in September would allow them to wrap things up  early.

Recent  history is no tonic for a Mets fan, but in this weekend’s matchups the Mets pitcher has a better ERA than every Marlin pitcher, and each Philly pitcher has a worse ERA than the Nationals pitcher he’s facing.

That isn’t a guarantee that my new friend’s dead dad can lie easy, baseball doesn’t work that way, but despite their recent travails I still like the Mets. (Just as I did when I got Ed Kranepool and Ron Swoboda’s autographs on the LIRR Mr. Met Whistle Stop Tour, nearly a lifetime ago.)

It’s Not Getting Any Ethier

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Bleed Cubbie Blue

I believe this story, which is why I’m linking to it. I’m not sure how much it matters, but I feel it does.

My experience with ballplayers is that they feel very privileged, which major league players are, and protected, which they usually are, that all the inhumanity that falls on them erupts in surprising ways.

Surprising because you can’t predict who is going to blow.

Assuming the facts are right, Ethier was an asshole. I know from watching queues of autograph seekers that ballplayers have good reason to be suspicious of every aspect of them.

I’m don’t have a solution. I guess players who can figure out when they’re being exploited and resist it will do better than those who mindlessly conform. But the player who does best of all is the one who presents a solid facade, gives what’s asked, but can recognize a scheme.

In any case, as fans we’d like ballplayers to be real people. My advice, if you want that, is to go watch Cape Cod League games.

Once they get on treadmill, only the most extraordinary are going to show human characteristics. At last admirable ones.

Jonathan Mayo on the top Fantasy Rookies

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MLB.com: Fantasy 411

You can’t argue that Ryan Braun is the Rookie of the Year. He’s had an incredible run which will almost certainly make him overpriced come March.

On the pitching side, I was shocked to discover that Brian Bannister qualified as a rookie. He’s been great despite modest “stuff”, until the last week or so, and I think Jonathan rightly picks him (though one more pasting may change that).

The city of brotherly losers

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Bruce Buschel | Salon News

Bruce has written for the Fantasy Baseball Guide, but I didn’t know until just now that he wrote a piece for Salon about the Phillies losing 10,000 games faster (if you can call it that) than any other franchise. Bruce is promoting his book Walking Broad, in which he walks the length of Broad Street and revisits his home town, his history, it’s history and all the people who share their histories and lives there.

I bring this up because the book is a good one, even if you’re not particularly interested in Philadelphia, but also because he mentions that the Atlanta Braves are only 300 loses behind the Phillies. But does that count? Does the accumulative history of losing carry over from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta?

This matters because all sorts of baseball history is tied up in the towns we live in, and the teams we root for there, and it does a disservice to the localism to tie records to the legal entity of the franchise. Is Andre Dawson really the premier home run hitter of the Washington Nationals?