kickass media 2015

Why Aren't the Good Teams Buying?

There’s always a team or two that tries to run away with the offseason, and this year is no different, except that this year is totally different. This year we’re seeing something that might be unprecedented in what I’ll call the MLBTradeRumors era, which stretches back a decade. This year, the teams that are buying are the teams that need the most help. The bad teams....

The gap between rich and poor teams has shrunk, the middle class has grown, and now everybody can afford to buy a car. In the real world, the market would respond by creating luxury cars, ever fancier, for the rich to distinguish themselves. But there’s no factory to turn out more luxury ballplayers. The rich and the poor are mostly shopping for the same goods, and suddenly the rich can’t outspend the poor without paying unreasonable prices.

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/good-teams-not-trying-to-get-better-playoffs-tigers-010615

Obviously, that plays into the argument that you've made about the postseason. I'd have to see more evidence that "We might as well just be a 92 game winning division winner because the postseason is a crapshoot" is a prevailing perspective.

ben lindbergh, today on the effectively wild podcast: "I just found out that erotic billy beane fan fiction exists."

Schoenfield telling stories about his father-in-law growing up in Brooklyn as a Dodgers fan:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/54629/remembering-another-time-brooklyn-1952

On Twitter he said it was his favourite blog post that he's ever written.

This is fun -- via Schoenfield, a countdown of the 25 best GM's in baseball history. They're currently up to #15.

https://pursuitofpennants.wordpress.com/tag/top25/page/2/

NYcentricwise, I'd think Rickey, George Weiss, and Cashman will be on it.

Cashman is #21. Rickey is probably a good bet to be #1. I was surprised to see Duquette on the list -- he was out of MLB for ten years and his Red Sox stint was viewed as a failure (by Red Sox fans at least).

Will be very curious to see where Beane will end up on the list.

I'm guessing the top five will be Beane, Rickey, Weiss, Gillick, and Howsam in some order.

Schuerloz has to be up there for modern era.

Beane probably as important for influence as for actual success.

Butchered his name. Wanted to type lolz at end.

there's no way rickey isn't no. 1

Amused that Sabes is 14.

Beane #11. I'll have to see top 10, but I gotta say I feel that kind of misses impact of Beane on baseball as a whole in 2000's.

i guess the whole no world series thing...

You could argue that the stats revolution was going to happen no matter what, and Beane shouldn't get credit for being the poster boy for that when other GMs won games AND titles.

This list also seems biased toward GM's who worked with multiple organizations (and against GMs who didn't move around).

Beane has a good argument that the main reason he hasn't won a title was that he's stubbornly stuck with the same bargain basement budget team. Also has three different cycles of success at this point while still putting a decent team together in between (no complete rebuilds). That's pretty notable in my opinion.

a guy who's still working is always going to have antagonists.

Esp. ones who write books like Moneyball.

BP annual's Yankees article by Ben Lindbergh is terrific, from how Jeter alone made them at least $25M last year, to why buying old stars has stopped working as a strategy. (also Didi Gregorius player blurb is even funnier than Jeter's)

y'all should really buy the annual... I'd also point you to the article in the back by Russell Carleton about why some sabermetric tropes (like "better" bullpen usage in particular) might not work in the MLB ecosystem.

You can likely get a third off the $25 list price if you game the interwebs right.

http://grantland.com/features/brad-asumus-pitch-framing-dennis-eckersley

http://www.hardballtimes.com/is-charlie-brown-the-worst-manager-ever

Q&A with Mike Sandlock, baseball's oldest living major-leaguer

Who was better, Juan Pierre or Adam Dunn?

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/adam-dunn-juan-pierre-why-we-need-wins-above-replacement-stat/

on plate discipline as a 'sixth tool'

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=25773

Paul Lukas's history of face guards on helmets before Stanton's

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12413996/baseball-face-masks-crossroads-protection-fashion

couldn't think of another place to put this but thought it should be shared
http://www.banishedtothepen.com/2015-wild-four-rd1-1/

afaik you and I are the only two who listen to that podcast regularly.

I so fucking hate those "if baseball were different" questions. Instant snooze.

yeah whenever anything like that comes up during the email shows i start fast-forwarding

I listen to it; great commute material

http://deadspin.com/updated-ap-stylebook-says-no-more-dingers-1694097234?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBHMi8eVAAAwbMX.jpg

myron cope on harry caray in 1968

http://thestacks.deadspin.com/when-harry-caray-was-a-rebel-with-a-microphone-1695031810

recent under-22-yo pitcher usage, and the Jays

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/toronto-blue-jays-daniel-norris-aaron-sanchez-miguel-castro-young-pitchers-making-comeback-041415

The rationale and history behind wearing '69' on your MLB uniform

on pitcher showcases and the TJ epidemic:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12842678/why-tommy-john-surgeries-cease-soon

http://japanesebaseballcards.blogspot.mx/

kickass media 1914

http://www.newspapers.com/clip/2645269/worst_game_score_ever

It all began with Tony Paul of the Detroit News having something he wanted to say when he appeared on WXYZ's "Sports Cave."

But more than just wanting to say it, he felt compelled to -- on behalf of a struggle from which he now feels liberated.

Tony is gay. He said in a one-on-one conversation after the Sports Cave aired that he came out during his college years at Michigan State.

His disclosure, however, makes him the first openly gay sports reporter in the Detroit market.

http://www.foxsports.com/detroit/story/gage-two-victories-were-celebrated-at-comerica-park-sunday-062815

The following managerial "tree" connects all 30 current major league managers back to either John McGraw, Connie Mack or Miller Huggins, Hall of Famers who played for Ned Hanlon, "The Father of Modern Baseball."

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/13189997/the-mlb-manager-tree

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/24/425834183/baseball-writer-to-be-honored-by-hall-of-fame-but-hes-out-of-a-job

GAGE: It was before Game 3 of the World Series between Oakland and San Francisco. And I had written on the off day the only thing that can save the Giants now is an act of nature that renders the field unplayable. You know, it was just a casual lead. It was, I mean, you didn't really think there was going to be an earthquake. But all of a sudden, before another game could be played, there was an earthquake, and I got a lot of hate mail. Somebody accused me of being an evil wizard for writing that lead.

GAGE: You do have to leave yourself in a position of being critical when it's required. But by then you have to have established with the players that you're going to be fair. That's why every time I would check into one of their hotels I would make sure that I wasn't on the floor that the players were on because I didn't want to know what they were doing in their own personal time.

GREENE: Let them do what they're doing. You don't want to know about it and feel pressure to report it if you saw something.

GAGE: That's right. That's right. You know, Charlie Dressen, who was a Tiger manager in the '60s, the way that he used to police the players was that he would take down a baseball to the elevator operator at midnight 'cause his curfew was at midnight. And he would say, don't ask for autographs until after midnight. So he would then go down and check the baseball to see what names had been signed and that's how he would fine the players. Well, everybody - you know, with me, I just didn't want to know what time they were coming in and what time they were staying out till.

How bad has shortstop offense gotten?

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/7/24/9025967/shortstop-offense-mlb-decline-worst-since-1989

nice look at AVM, (moneyball before moneyball): http://grantland.com/features/2015-mlb-avm-systems-ken-mauriello-jack-armbruster-moneyball-sabermetrics/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/missing-from-baseball-fights-fighting-1438884806

We are living in an era of reliever dominance. They account for a larger proportion of innings pitched than ever before, work in short outings that allows them to throw hard, and as a result batters' relative performance against them has been at historically low levels for the last five years.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/8/13/9145581/reliever-domination-historic-level-tops-royals-yankees-blue-jays-strategy

@darenw
Here's a breakdown of how the league has done against all pitch velocities since 2008. 91 & 90 MPH is hardest hit

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQHkVVqUAAAQxjr.png:large

note: throw 52 or 54 mph but never 53

Haha I was about to say I was going to start my career throwing 57 but never 58 and NEVER 56

i don't get it though. is this counting every pitch? every strike? or every "definitive" pitch (resulting in either a hit or an out)?

i would imagine the latter but i dunno

http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2015/09/30/majority-of-baseball-brawls-are-between-players-of-different-ethnicities/

gonna put this here too because it's kind of amazing

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/trade-for-jonathan-papelbon-had-disastrous-results-for-the-nationals/2015/09/30/0aef1564-66ee-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html

on the BP podcast, recently resigned Dodgers head trainer Stan Conte

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=27733

the biggest plays ever, by Championship Probability Added

http://grantland.com/features/mlb-win-percentage-added-world-series-championship-kirk-gibson-bobby-thomson-david-freese-mariano-rivera-yogi-berra/

Two Republican senators from Arizona -- Vietnam veteran John McCain and junior senator Jeff Flake -- recently released a report explaining the underside of stadium patriotism: For the past few years, the U.S. Department of Defense and the major sports leagues have embedded military-themed programs into the game-day experience, not for goodwill, not in support of the troops, but for money. McCain and Flake call it "paid patriotism" and say the DOD has spent at least $53 million of taxpayer money on at least 50 teams to stage these events, hoping to recruit new soldiers while duping fans into believing these gestures are voluntary expressions of teams' gratitude for returning soldiers. The two senators have drafted laws to make it stop. "It is time to allow major sports teams' legitimate tributes to our soldiers to shine with national pride rather than being cast under the pallor of marketing gimmicks paid for by American taxpayers," the 145-page report notes.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/14173360/mlbs-nfl-paid-showings-patriotism-cost-fans-more-ways-one

Is the pentagon still sponsoring those NASCAR cars?

FOX's JABO is no more

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/new-york-giants-charles-victory-faust-jabo-says-goodbye-120215

stupid name and neyer has really declined

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/on-the-magnitude-of-transaction-mistakes