Fantasy Baseball: Fantasy Baseball ’01 Stadium Stats

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Fantasy Baseball: Fantasy Baseball ’01 Stadium Stats

Now that the Stats Red Book is no more, established ways of finding important information have to be reprogrammed.

Today, when I saw that Rick Helling had been signed by the Orioles, I was curious what difference the new ballpark might make for him. While I’m sure somewhere out there someone has complete park effects, I don’t know where that is.

So for now, I turn to this page at ESPN.com, which gives you some tools for evaluating the differences between parks. Not as many as the red book, mind you, but enough to let me feel comfortable saying that Helling isn’t going to get killed this year because of the change.

The American Book Center

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The American Book Center

The other day a longtime reader now living in the Netherlands asked if the magazine was available online. It isn’t, because shipping costs either raise the price too much or eat away any profits. But I offered to send him a copy if he’d pay the hefty freight overseas. Instead, I heard back this morning:

Peter:

I bought a copy of the magazine yesterday at the American Book Center in Amsterdam, apparently it had arrived saterday. Thanks very much for the offer, though. By the way, the magazine itself is great.

Bo

I think it’s very cool to be found on the rack in Amsterdam. I’m wondering if the regular Rotoman readers in Kazakhstan, Vietnam and the Phillipines (or other points abroad) have had similar luck.

Amazon.com: Music: Pink Flag/Chairs Missing/154 [BOX SET] [IMPORT]

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Amazon.com: Music: Pink Flag/Chairs Missing/154 [BOX SET] [IMPORT]

So, I’m assuming you know that if you buy stuff from this site through Amazon the site earns a commission. And you no doubt know how much I appreciate it. I think the commissions last year earned about $50, which thanks to the good folks at your-site.com (if you sign up with them tell them I sent you), covered most of the web hosting.

What you might not know is that if you buy, let’s say, Ron Shandler’s latest Forecaster, and you buy something else, I get to see what it was. I don’t get to see who bought it, rest assured there are no Admiral Poindexters here at askrotoman.com, but I do get to live vicariously.

And today I happened to be going through the logs and what did I find? A reader bought a Wire box set.

All I can say is, Bravo. Wire isn’t to everyone’s taste, to be sure, but there was no more economical yet extravagant, abstract yet organic, punky but arty band to come out of anywhere than Wire.

I’ve got the vinyl versions of Pink Flag and Chairs Missing down in the basement, but I don’t know the music on 154. I’m not even sure why not.

All I know is that there aren’t many days that go by when I don’t start humming, “Saw her in a mag, kissing a man. Saw her in a mag, kissing a man,” which inevitably leads into, “I knew a girl name Nikki…” But that’s a different band.

Welcome to Player Profiles at Patton & Co

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Player Profiles at Patton & Co are coming. [I posted yesterday, a bit prematurely, an invitation to the site, but some problems have come up that our crack programmers are dealing with. I’ll post a message here when the site is back up.]

This is brand new and very exciting. Essentially it’s 1,800 individual message boards, one for each of just about every player you can think of having any baseball presence at all this year.

You can ask questions about them. You can report the latest news on them. You can banter about them. This is RotoWire and RotoWorld, in a way, but instead of being a spectator you’ll get to be a part of the information processing.

Hear a rumor? You can post it. Have an insight? Run it by some of the smartest baseball fans we know. At Patton and Co. you are in the mix, and the mix is all the richer for it.

Plus you get Alex Patton’s bid prices and price scans.

The idea was Alex’s, and I’m chipping in because I think this is the next wave of baseball information. So Pattonandco.com will be where you’ll find me writing about players during spring training and the season.

Check it out. For now all it takes is a login name and password to get access. Starting on March 10 there will be a small fee, $10, which Alex hopes will pay for the rather large bandwidth charges he ran up last year.

In any case, you have a month before you have to decide. Come read, come write. I think you’ll enjoy it.

ESPN.com: MLB – Yankees’ payroll reportedly comes in at $164 million

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ESPN.com: MLB – Yankees’ payroll reportedly comes in at $164 million

Move the Expos to New York!

I don’t remember where I read this idea first, it certainly doesn’t originate with me, but the events of the offseason certainly support the idea that the market most needful/potentially supportive of a franchise is New York.

And heck, it makes sense for a third NY franchise to split time between the city and San Juan.

ESPN.com: MLB – Marlins land Pudge Rodriguez for one-year, $10 million

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ESPN.com: MLB – Marlins land Pudge Rodriguez for one-year, $10 million

The big news here is that Pudge won’t be able to DH. And since it seems unlikely that he’ll be able to catch 140+ games, his value is diminished some. Or rather, he’s likely to put up numbers right in line with his numbers the last two years.

Kind of. Pudge is another year older, Pro Player Stadium is not nearly as conducive to offense as The Ballpark at Arlington, and the Marlins’ line-up is not nearly as powerful as the Rangers has been. Oh, and throughout his career Pudge has been better on turf than grass.

All of which suggests a year like 2002 is more likely than than either of the two previous years of injury. Not bad, but not great the way he once was.

Also of interest, the stores of AL catching are very thin now. The flagging Jorge Posada is far and away the top guy, with AJ Pierzynski a distant second. I’m not a big fan of position scarcity, not in leagues drawing deeply from only one major league, but suddenly guys like Toby Hall and Mitch Meluskey (if he qualifies at catcher in your league) seem very strong.

Heck, all of a sudden I’m trying to remember how to spell Nilsson.