Really interesting links

Written by Bill

Thursday, 04 March 2010 09:00

This is a first for this blog. I'm running a links post, not because I'm short on time, but because there's cool stuff out there that you just need to see today. Without further ado:

I love just about everything there is about ESPN's new baseball blog, TMI. I love the name, which stands kind of hilariously for "The Max Info," and the acronym is particularly apt in this age of sudden sabermetric burnout (one example of what I mean, by the [otherwise?] excellent John Sickels, here). I love the writers they've been getting to staff the thing so far, headlined by the brilliant Tom Tango (I think every time I've mentioned Tango on this blog, the initial mention has been preceded by "the brilliant"), and Dave Cameron and Matt Carruth of FanGraphs. I love the topics they've chosen and what they've written so far. I did love that, even though it's Insider-only, they were putting full posts up via Google Reader...but apparently that's a loophole that has now been closed. Gotta say, though, this might actually convince me to give in and join Insider again. Well played, espin.
This might be the coolest thing the Internet has ever spit out (especially apropos for fans of my The Metrics System series): Baseball Analysis 101. It's not a "primer" blog post or any kind of blog post at all--it's an actual on-line course, with seven discrete 10-25 minute "lessons" on the basics of sabermetrics. The course consists mostly (maybe entirely) of articles from Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, Joe Posnanski and elsewhere, but they're great articles, and they're arranged in such a way as to really give you a good grounding in what it's all about, and with good transitions. I like it, and plan to read through the whole thing myself sometime soon. (h/t @akneeland and Pinto.)
Kevin Goldstein has released his Top 101 Prospects list (also subscriber-only, but you can see the Top 20 here). I like Goldstein a lot -- not just as a writer, but he does the BP book talk in Chicago every year and is hilarious in person -- and his list is intriguing. Most of the names at the top are the same ones you'll see everywhere else, but he's relatively very low on Orioles pitcher Brian Matusz (who is comfortably in the top 10 on Keith Law's and Baseball America's lists, but KG puts him at #16) and relatively high on several others. Five of my Twins' farmhands make the list, including Ben Revere at 46, which makes me happy (people were very quick to give up on him). The Rays have seven of the top 101 and are going to be good for a very long time. The Yankees have just one, but he's a damn good one (if he can stay at catcher). The Astros have just two -- #s 97 and 100 -- and are going to be bad for a very long time.
Sometime, be sure to take a good stroll around Google "News" searching for your favorite team. It's kind of amazing how much misinformation and mischaracterization you can find just by, say, obsessively checking for an update on Joe Mauer contract talks (sign that thing already!). Take, for instance, this piece by Brad Pinkerton on the Sporting News website (actually just a stub; you have to pay them money to read the whole thing). Quoth Pinkerton, in the first sentence:

For the most part, the Twins laid low this offseason, making only a few subtle moves to replace small holes around their core players.
Come on, man. I'm sure you've got a deadline and a hundred other things to do and everything, but this is the first sentence of your piece. One which the Sporting News is trying to use to make people spend their own money. You can't come out with stuff like that. The Twins' payroll has increased by about $30 million. They've acquired an All-Star shortstop and an All-Star second baseman and spent real money on a starting pitcher. A very quick internet search shows tons of articles like this one -- even some from something called The Sporting News -- about how active and successful the Twins' offseason has been. "Lay low" is one thing I know they didn't do.