Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Studes is the man

If you haven't already, check out The Hardball Times. It's a collection of baseball writers to rival all-baseball, and eventually (?) Baseball Prospectus.

Studes' latest effort for 'the Times' is a great introduction to his Win Shares Above Replacement idea. A must read.

Monday, March 29, 2004

More on Ellis

Susan Slusser is reporting on the Gammons rumor. Billy Beane is suggesting that the Gammons report is premature - "We really just don't know."

After all that, the best tidbit in the whole article is this:
One option the team won't pursue: Gung-ho outfielder Eric Byrnes volunteered to take grounders at second. "It was tongue in cheek,'' Macha said. "I think.''


Mark Ellis

All reports seemed to indicate that Ellis would miss 6-8 weeks, until Gammons had to come along and rain on the parade: "Mark Ellis is out for the season with a torn labrum..."

I wasn't really worried before. One or two months isn't that big of a deal, but losing a whole season of Gold Glove-caliber second base play could be a big blow. I sure hope Gammons is wrong on this one.

AthleticsNation is on the same page as me here.

Friday, March 26, 2004

Thursday, March 18, 2004

More Penguin Madness

God bless the Pingu. Check out the new game

Monday, March 15, 2004

It's About Time!

I'm ecstatic.
At last, the A's will prevent one of their own homegrown stars from leaving town as a free agent.


Read Susan Slusser's whole article.

(I should give credit to Baysball, where I first saw the news)

Great Ad

Check out this ad, courtesy of Will Carroll.

Anyone know who this is an ad for? Who the f*** is "4" ??

Friday, March 12, 2004

Religion V. Red Sox

Yahoo!'s featuring an article about the Red Sox' opening day, which happens to fall on Good Friday.

"I think it's very insensitive to the huge number of people who are Christians and fans." said the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne. The church, by the way, won't give anyone a special dispensation to eat meat - so no hot dogs, sausages or Meat-Beer.

Oh, wait. There's no meat in beer? Ohhhhh. OK.

I think calling this "very insensitive" is a little dramatic. Inconvenient, perhaps. But it's opening day at Fenway - I don't think Good Friday's enough to keep the crowd away. And those that do attend will get drunker. Less money spent on $4 hot dogs will mean more money spent on $5.50 beers.

(Doesn't the church have bigger things to worry about?)

Monday, March 8, 2004

Silence

This site has been silent for what feels like the longest time since its inception in late-November. I wish I had something exciting to tell you about my inactivity, but all I've been doing is jumping from site to site, hitting refresh all day long, looking for the announcement that Chavez has been re-signed.

It's now been three weeks since Will Carroll teased us with "Chavez and Blalock both sign for five years at vastly different amounts...Chavez's seems pretty fair and ends speculation that he'll join the Yankees next season.," and I, for one, can't take it no more. I want Chavez signed, and I want to know about it today. I want less jibber-jabber and more signatures on contracts.

Please.

Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Drinking Buddies

Glenn Dickey has this nugget in his article today:
My favorite Lon Simmons story is the one he tells about his early days on the Giants' broadcasting team. Russ Hodges told him, "When the Giants lose, the rule is that we drink after the game to drown our sorrows. When they win, we drink to celebrate victory. The only time we don't drink is when there's a tie."

Then, there came a time in Philadelphia when the Giants and Phillies ran up against the city's blue laws and a tied game had to be halted in the 11th inning because of the curfew.

In the broadcasting booth, Hodges turned to Simmons and said, "Tonight, we break a rule."


Monday, March 1, 2004

Blogging is Gathering Steam

Yahoo!'s running an article about a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The result of their study? Blogging Still Infrequent It's an interesting article that seems to downplay the prevalence of blogging in general, but it also points out, "That survey [in May '03] found only 2 percent of users keeping blogs, although a preliminary analysis of follow-up surveys from early 2004 showed the figure increasing to about 7 percent."

Two percent to seven percent? If I was writing this article, I might feature that 250% growth more prominently. I think the message from the study is clearly that blogging is gaining a lot of momentum.

Take a look at A's Blogs alone. I launched my site in November, but didn't post anything about the A's until 12/2/2003. AthleticsNation's first post came on 11/7/2003. Baysball, now part of the all-baseball family, originally launched (as far as I can tell) in 3/03. Barry Zito Forever (BZF) launched with their first post in August of 2003. Elephants in Oakland is a dinosaur by comparison, with his first post coming way back on 8/1/2002.

So, you've got one site launching way back in late 2002, one in early 2003 and three in late 2003. To me, that's the beginning of a trend. But the Pew study is right, however, that the (growing) number of A's blogs is still quite small when compared to the total number of A's fans on the internet.