SEAT LICENSE RENEWALS It's almost spring
when a young man's thoughts turn to... those expensive
seat licenses. An online cash advance can help relieve the anxiety.
Though it's just a five-minute walk from here, I didn't make it over to the plaque at 215 Montague Street, the location of the Dodgers' old headquarters where Branch Rickey signed Robinson to his first contract. I'll share the photo of it instead, and pay my respects as I often do, by watching Chapter Six of Ken Burns' Baseball tonight.
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Today at Baseball Prospectus and ESPN Insider, I've got an article on strength of schedule which uses BP's PECOTA-based Projected Standings and adjusts for the home field advantage (stay-at-homes win at a .550 clip) and the AL's advantage over the NL in interleague play (the Junior Circuit wins at a .580 clip). I won't give away the whole butcher shop by running the numbers for all 30 teams, but here are the opponents' winning percentages for the AL East clubs, as well as a couple points from the article related to the full-season numbers and the monthly and half-season splits:
Team Opp W% Orioles .514 Blue Jays .513 Red Sox .504 Yankees .501 Rays .500
Among contenders within the same division, full-season strength of schedule effects are overstated in the grand scheme of things. Only in the NL Central do the top two teams have more than three points (.003, or half a game over the course of 162 games) of scheduling difference between them; the nine-point advantage in that division equals roughly a game and a half over the course of the season. In the AL East, the difference between the Red Sox and Rays' schedules is four points, roughly two-thirds of a game. The AL Central's top trio are separated by three points, and the top pairs in both Wests are effectively even. The NL East's top trio, who have the toughest schedules of any contenders, are separated by just two points. Like heart surgery, those distinctions aren't minor if they pertain to your chances, but in the big picture, injuries, reliever leverage, and players dramatically over- or under-producing relative to expectations will go further to shape the final standings.
...As far as September/October schedules go — this year the season ends on October 4 — the Yankees have a slight advantage in the AL East at .507, compared to the Rays at .510 and the Red Sox at .512. Note that the Rays host the Yanks for the season's final three games, while the Sox host the Indians. In the AL West, the A's (.475) have a large advantage over the Angels (.495). In the NL East, the Phillies (.479) get the favorable draw relative to the Mets (.491) and Braves (.493), and in the NL West, the lights are with the Dodgers (.463) instead of the Diamondbacks (.496).
Meanwhile, it's worth noting that because they play the top-rated Yankees six times as well as the Red Sox and Rays three apiece, the Mets wind up with the toughest interleague schedule (.611 with all the adjustments).
Elsewhere at BP, intern Ben Lindbergh, whom I had the pleasure of hanging out with in Washington, DC recently, takes the baton on an old book chapter and column concept of mine, the Replacement Level Killers, focusing on players whose ungodly awful performances may have kept their teams from the playoffs or at least contention. No Yankees make the first team, but Jose Molina, Melky Cabrera and a herd of pinstriped fifth starters -- Sidney Ponson, Darrell Rasner, Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, et al -- earn Dishonorable Mentions for their 2008 performances. As well they should have. Young Mr. Lindbergh, whom colleague Steven Goldman refers to as "Colonel," has been doing strong work on catcher fatigue and defensive efficiency of late, and may have the inside track on Matt Wieters for Rookie of the Year.
"The Strategy Room" turned out to be a frenetic hour-long roundtable discussion in which Steve and I were joined by host Brian Kilmeade as well as humorist (that's what the chyron said) Geno Bisconte and one Richard "Big Daddy" Salgado, an insurance and estate planner for athletes (over the last five years, his company "has insured twenty-five 1st Round picks for disability and career ending insurance," according to his website). As members of this motley crew, we were expected to hold court not only on baseball but also football, golf, and other sports (surprisingly little if any basketball was discussed), and for an entire hour at that.
The show was a bit of a free-for-all. While Kilmeade pitched us topics -- giving the BPers first crack at the baseball questions, Big Daddy the football questions -- we did have to compete for air time as we rolled through CC Sabathia, Joba Chamberlain, Jose Canseco, Joe Girardi, Ben Roethlisberger, Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Warner, Plaxico Burress, Tiger Woods, Jon Daly, the Greg Norman-Chris Evert power couple, and other topics. Seated between the high-energy Bisconte, whose gleeful mugging for the camera, tweaking of the host, and on-camera sending of text messages suggested he was a veteran of this setup, and the imposing but genial Salgado, a mountain of a man, on my left, I was in danger of disappearing into the woodwork. In this four-minute clip centered around the Yankees' slow start (0-2!!!) and the possibility that Girardi might be fired, you can see my similarly slow start. I struggle to get a word in edgewise until finally seeing the opening and running to daylight.
By the end of the hour, I had loosened up and might have even strained my jaw from laughing. It turned out to be ridiculous fun, even if I was a little out of my element, and I wish there were more clips to share. Instead you get screenshots:
Anyway, it made for an enjoyable afternoon, but not until I was back home later in the evening, signing off from recording a segment with Mike Ferrin of XM's "MLB Home Plate," did I realize the day's significance: eight years ago I laid the cornerstone for this site with a clumsy but heartfelt piece on the passing of Willie Stargell. When I started out jotting down reminiscences of my childhood baseball heroes and opinions on the action of the day, who knew that years later I'd reach the point where being on TV, radio, newsstands and in books and even bookstores -- to say nothing of multiple times per week on Baseball Prospectus and occasionally on ESPN.com -- while talking about or writing about baseball would become almost routine? It's not all about FutilityInfielder.com anymore, it's about being lucky enough to occupy this niche with so many other writers I admire and friends that I've made.
Every time I pass this milepost I'm reminded of what a fantastic ride it's been, and how much fun it continues to be. I'm deeply grateful to all you for sharing it with me.
That almost certainly wasn't Chass' only public gaffe in recent years, but it couldn't have helped his cause much when it came time for the New York Times bean-counters to reckon with their dwindling inventory of staplers and paper clip holders. Reportedly, Chass is in the process of being bought out (he refuses to characterize it as involuntarily), potentially ending a run at the paper that began in 1969, the year I was born.
Now, I was prepared to forego dancing on Chass' professional grave by letting this pass without comment, but then I saw his latest diatribe. The deathless topic of Bloggers versus Mainstream Media has been in the news again; along with many a stressed-out beat man taking his swipes, higher-profiler hacks like Bob Costas and Rick Reilly have been taking their hacks at the blogosphere, apparently unanimous in belief that their status as high priests of sports media is threatened by (talk about a lack of originality -- they all use this one) guys in their underwear. Costas, generally the most reasonable of this bunch (and also the one for whom the written word isn't a meal ticket), was forced to chug a mug of STFU and admit he'd overstepped in his generalization.
Anyway, Charley Steiner of XM Radio's Baseball Beat had Chass on his April 3 show, and amid the conversation, Murray the Grey got a bit cranky when it came to a certain medium:
"I hate bloggers." "Worst development in media business, anyone can be a blogger." "No credentials required, just spouting off their opinions." "Our wives could go on and do it if they wanted to." "I know they're not going away but I wish they did."
Oooo-kay. Not sure why he introduced sexism into the equation, but clearly Chass feels even more threatened now that the wolf is at his door. One wonders how well his attitude will go over when his next employer asks him to augment his next column by keeping a blog.
Chass' segment was followed by one from Dodger Thoughts' Jon Weisman, a man well equipped to understand the blogger/MSM fry, having spent a few years as a baseball beat reporter long before building one of the best blogs around. Weisman elaborated his take on Chass and the issue in general:
Today on Baseball Beat with Charley Steiner, I was asked to offer my perspective on the issue of blogger credibility and credentialbility. I understand what's prompting the questions: There's increasing discussion on whether bloggers should be allowed locker-room access, in a world where moments before my introduction, New York Times columnist Murray Chass had expressed the all-too-common view basically comparing bloggers to the Ebola virus. Nevertheless, it's fascinating to actually find a need to defend an entire class of people -- especially when the attacks are coming from a class of people that is supposed to be professional, insightful, objective and open-minded. (Yes, that passes muster with the Irony Committee.)
...But beyond self-preservation, it's important to realize that condemning a medium, at least in this case, is bush-league. The medium doesn't decide whether to tell a story in a thoughtful, responsible or entertaining fashion; the messenger does... trust me: There are good and bad messengers everywhere.
...If I've done a good job as an outsider looking in, I expect respect, not dismissal. First, some of the analysis done by bloggers is flat-out better than anything you'll see from a major paper -- and it's done without the support system of a major paper, often without any renumeration whatsoever. In some ways, it's harder work.
Second, while there's value in interacting with the players and management of a baseball team, I can testify that there's often value in not interacting with them. It can give you a level of objectivity that is often missing from mainstream reporting. And at a minimum, many kinds of analysis don't require a locker-room presence, yet can be of tremendous value when done right.
There is no good reason for an Us vs. Them mentality when it comes to mainstream reporters and bloggers. The readership benefits from their combined presence, and really, short of the sportswriter who doubles as a great blogger, one isn't going to take the other's job away. (You certainly won't see me on the Dodger beat for a local paper anytime soon.) Bottom line: A multitude of opinions and a more open debate of the issues are good things. We aren't witnessing the downfall of written baseball coverage; we're witnessing a flourishing, a tremendously rich era to live in. We should cherish this time.
Bless Weisman for rising above the fray while some of the rest of us are content to snark away. While I'm still tempted to tappa-tappa-tappa over Chass being run out of the Times, the larger point is that the days when the traditional media held the key to understanding in any field -- or at least sports, politics, and entertainment -- have been over for quite awhile.
Access and a budget don't add up to automatic insight, and the fragmentation that's taken place via the rise of the blogs is a reaction to the mainstream media's limitations of space, and a lack of respect for its constituency. In broad terms, to the extent that baseball fans read blogs, it's because they -- I mean you -- are not getting that kind of coverage from the mainstream outlets at your immediate disposal (exemplars like Pete Abraham and Joe Posnanski notwithstanding). Perhaps you're bored of the jock-sniffing quote monkeys or the soapbox derby champion columnists who bore you to death with their righteous pontifications on the local nine. Perhaps you're hungry for analysis using sharper tools than batting average, RBI, pitcher win-loss records and manager hunches, wiling to search for a bit of innovation in the service of insight. Or perhaps you simply want to have a few laughs to puncture the staid seriousness of the sports page. If so, it's not hard to find a handful of good blogs that fill the requisite niches, particularly as the medium has matured.
As the seven-year anniversary of this site arrives today, I'd like to think this blog remains one of them. It's no secret that The Futility Infielder ain't quite what it used to be, given how much of my energy is devoted to my paid work at Baseball Prospectus and Fantasy Baseball Index, not to mention projects to be named later. Particularly as I've backed away from covering the Yankees so closely, a good chunk of this site's regular readership has found other outlets for its fix, and deservedly so, as there's good coverage to be had out there.
In the dead of winter, weeks between entries, I pondered whether keeping this blog running was still a worthwhile venture. The conclusion I came to in my heart of hearts was a resounding yes. While it's not going to supplant the work I'm doing at BP or beyond, there's no place where I feel more at home than when I'm writing here. As the exhaustive season previews give way to the peanuts and Crackerjacks of the regular season, wrangling even a short blog post or two is an exercise I'm planning to maintain on a daily basis. I hope you'll continue along for the ride.
