Bullets for a Busy Day
Busy day:
• A Prospectus Hit List to go with Wednesday's
Hit and Run piece on struggling rotations, with special focus on the current Tigers and the historically awful Rangers, with an aside about the Yankees' failure to get innings from their starting five (5.07 per start).
• a spot on the Rotowire Fantasy Sports Hour with Chris Liss, XM 144 at 2:25 PM Eastern
• a
3 PM Eastern chat at Baseball Prospectus. Drop by and submit a question if you care to.
• Meanwhile, one article to recommend,
today's freebie at BP. In it, Nate Silver aims a bullet at Bill James'
recent, baseless allegations that steroid usage played a part in the development of Gary Gaetti and Kirby Puckett and their subsequent success in helping the Twins to a pair of unlikely world championships. James' comments come in his latest book
The Bill James Gold Mine 2008, and as offhanded as they may have been intended, the fact that someone with his stature would stoop to the realm of the fingerpointers is a dark, dark day for baseball and for those of us who hold his legacy dear. I'd already decided I was in no hurry to buy the
Gold Mine -- Steven Goldman bought one while we were on our promotional tour and we chewed on some of its rather pedestrian offerings -- and that sealed the deal.
• Drawing mention in Silver's piece is David Ortiz, as a victim of the old eyeball test for steroid stoppage, a statement that's a reliable litmus test to determine whether the person you're talking baseball with is a blithering idiot. Big Papi should have been part of my "Big Lugs and Small Sample Sizes"
entry, now that I think about it. Ortiz started the season 3-for-43 since then has hit a considerably more robust .298/.377/.532, with 14 hits in his list 11 games. It's a coincidence that the turnaround almost exactly coincides with
the excavation of a an Ortiz jersey buried in the bowels of the new Yankee Stadium. Probably.
Labels: chat, Hit and Run, Hit List, radio, Red Sox, steroids, Yankee Stadium
