Jeff Passan does the heavy lifting
This is a most readable survey about the medical and legal status of hGh, by a very good sportswriter. No hysteria, no overblown conclusion, mostly facts and arguments that simply put it all in perspective.
Recommendations
Things Rotoman likes.
Baseball Buzz Bot!
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.
Giving up on the Royals
It isn’t like this needed to be said. Folks have been giving up on the Royals for years now, but Joe Posnanski says it with passion and power. What are they doing out there?
One Night At The Trop – Deadspin
One Night At The Trop – Deadspin
The link takes you to a music video shot by the Gawker media critic at the Trop this past Wednesday. It’s funny.
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.
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).
Balls, Sticks, & Stuff:
A wide-ranging look at Jimmy Rollins before the streak started, and since, from a Philly-based blog that has a great style and actual activities (a reading group!). Okay, the reading group is tackling Mike Schmidt’s book this month.
A Nice New Blog
Trade rumors are usually worth the electrons their published with, but this new blog has a genial approach that suggests it will hold up as long as its author remains interested in being interesting. Worth adding to your feed, for now.
Dan Shaughnessy Watch
Notes on a Boston Globe Columnist
A blog dedicated to taking the gas out of Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy. If you’ve spent time reading the Red Sox sports pages, er, I mean the Globe sports pages, you’ve encountered Shaughnessy and almost certainly gasped. DS is a town crier for Red Sox Nation, but he also embodies some of the Stockholm Syndrome excesses the Red Sox provoked in recent years. Not anymore, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to mock him anyway.
Stats Geek
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – Pittsburgh Pirates
Pittsburgh has an analytical sabermetric baseball columnist! Plus he writes well, thinks clearly about the game, and has a sense of humor. Excellent!