AndrewKoch.com

Recognition for the Boss

Marc Cenedella, CEO of TheLadders, was named #21 in the Silicon Alley 100. Kudos, Marc!

CSFBL - In Limbo

Astonishingly few people even know about CSFBL - Computer Simulated Fantasy Baseball League - but those of us that do know love it. The basic idea is that you create or adopt a fictional baseball franchise and manage it season after season - leagues vary from 2 games/day to 8 games/day.

You have control over your 25-man major league roster, a roster in the high-minors and a third roster of up-and-comers in the low-minors. You can adjust your lineup, your pitching rotation, your managerial style, your spending on scouts, training, development and you draft new players each year. After each game, you can check the box scores, and check the compiled stats for the year, of for all time. It's not quite as polished as whatifsports.com and the feature set isn't as rich - but it's free. For someone like me that can only check it for a few minutes a week, it's the perfect baseball fix for the offseason. You only need to invest as much or as little time as you'd like...

Nerdy? Or course.
Fun? Absolutely.

So, why is it in limbo? The site has been down since 1/22, the server has moved from an ISP to the proprieter's basement and there's really no telling when things will be back up and running. Their outage blog suggests that they'll be up by Monday, but this is a hobby, rather than a business. There's no guarantee there.

So, what's next? If CSFBL is going to survive, they need to make a business out of this. Much like whatifsports has done with simulated baseball, like Match.com has done with personals and like we've done with executive job search over at TheLadders.com, they need to offer a simple basic version that gives people a taste of the product and encourages people to upgrade to a paid version for full access, features, etc.

Whatifsports has proven that the business model can work for sports, and it's really not that different from the fantasy sports behemoths - CBS Sportsline, ESPN and Yahoo. The revenue from the run-of-network ads on CSFBL wasn't enough to make the site anything more than a hobby, and the donations through Amazon.com's Honor System haven't done the trick either. As sad as it will be for us freeloaders, it's time for CSFBL to get serious and try to make some money off the quality engine they've built.

They've hinted at the idea a bit in a blog post, suggesting (in a FAQ format) that the level of donations by a particular league might determine whether or not they get migrated to the new, improved version of the site. But it's not going to be enough. I guess I just don't understand why they're so reluctant to turn their baby into even a small business. It's a no-brainer.

UPDATE: In the few brief hours since I posted this, the CSFBL site has been revived!

Motherload Victory!

Well, I destroyed my previous high score and bested Marc. That's 73.8 million in motherload. And with that, I'm announcing my permanent retirement from the game.

Damn You Marc!

Yesterday, Marc emailed me a link for Motherload. It's a fun little game that you can really sink some time into.

I played for a while last night, staying up well past the witching hour. I took a little screenshot of my progress before I called it quits:

I thought my score of 1.2mm was respectable, until marc emailed me his high score: 53 million! Good lord, that's dedication.

Holy Smokes

My mom has a website! Check out RuthKoch.com - she's got all her watercolor paintings up there for the viewing. I think Silver Breeze is my favorite, but the low-res image here doesn't do it justice. I recommend you buy a print!

Congrats Mom, and welcome to the internet.

(note - this post was originally authored, posted and taken down on 3/28/06)

Nerd Heaven

Web 2.0 or Star Wars Quiz

(I got 32 out of 43 correct)

Entrepreneurial Vision

OnlyOnce: Memory Lane or Dark Alley?

At the same time, it was pretty painful to look at some of our original projections for market size and of course business size -- not to mention some of the marketing efforts, Powerpoint templates, logos, and names that fell by the wayside.

That's Matt Blumberg, CEO of ReturnPath, talking about the unpredictable evolution of a start-up. As I approach my two-year anniversary as a full-timer here at TheLadders, Matt's post is particularly interesting, in part because our experience at TheLadders, the definitive source for executive jobs, has been different. We've had our fair share of silly ideas and bad designs, but we've gotten the big stuff right. Marc's original powerpoint from July of 2003 is shockingly similar to our current business.

(Thanks to fellow upper-westsider Fred for the link to Matt)

Good Tidings

Please stop by and offer a hearty welcome to blogging newcomer, friend and coworker mrshafrir. Here's his first post.

And reminiscing, my first post from November 2003. "Is this thing on?" is a strangely popular first post in these parts.

Anyway, I look forward to many mrshafrir postings popping up in my bloglines feeds. Happy internetting!

Nothing says "HR" like "Get Laid, Stay Paid"

As I understand it, the business model over at SimplyHired is to attract job seekers to the site (mostly by scraping jobs off the internet and surrounding them with "web 2.0" tools) and then essentially re-sell that traffic to corporate HR types. Today, most of the ads are from Google, but the long term play is to get recruiters bidding on keywords like "software engineer" directly on SimplyHired's own system.

So, if your plan is to reach out to corporate HR people, wouldn't it make sense to have a site that shows you understand them?

Then why in the world are you promoting "GET LAID, STAY PAID" on the
Simply Fired blog? I just visited the site and was greeted with the following: "FIRED for eating out with the boss' daughter" and "I walked in on my boss while he was having sex with one of my co-workers. He fired me..."

This kind of stuff might entertain the job seeker, but I suspect corporate HR folks are not going to identify with this. This disconnect between business model and brand smells like trouble for SimplyHired.

Another Timesink

jay is games: Cubefield

"simple but highly addictive"

Absolutely. My high score after a few minutes is 217,005. Scanning through the comments on jayisgames, I'm merely a novice.

More Planarity

Semi-mindless fun with Planarity this evening. Made it through Level 15 without skipping any levels and piled up 5,641 points.

The last couple levels have taken about 15 minutes each. I think I better stop before my addiction goes to far...

Conundrum

I'm in quite a pickle over here. What do you do when your CEO calls you out for not playing addictive internet games enough?

On Stone, Marc compels me to "Beat that, Kocher!" - referring to his 2,646 score on gridgame.

What to do... what to do...?

UPDATE 11:10 am -- 2934!! Right back at you Marc!

Google Maps, but Better?

Yahoo released their answer to Google maps today: the new Yahoo Maps Beta. Doesn't have the satellite imagery that Google Maps has, but otherwise seems as good if not better. Perhaps the best part is the integration to my Yahoo profile. It knows my saved locations and recently used locations to make my life easier.

Only downside right now is that it seems a little sluggish. Hopefully that'll improve as it comes out of Beta.

AP story here.

Grid Game - Surprising Time Sink

This game is super-simple, yet surprisingly addictive: Grid Game

My high score is 1437. UPDATE: 1755

FINAL UPDATE: 2420

(Thanks to GMSV for the link in yesterday's newsletter.)

Update: DAMN YOU GMSV. I can't stop!

Sanity

BeyondVC: Web 2.0 Bubble

Frankly I do not care if you are Web 2.0, Web 1.0, etc. All I care about is what your service or product does, why it is valuable to the end user, why it is uniquely different from the competition, what the barriers to entry are, and how you plan on reaching your customers and how you will ultimately make money.

Well said.

Cool Mappings

Radical Cartography has some pretty cool maps:

Place-Name Etymology

Area Codes, over time

Interesting stuff...

Founders, a Perspective from a VC

A VC: Founders

Founders contribute something to companies that is very special. It's the core DNA of most companies. Many founders step aside at some point from the CEO role. Many times that happens at the urging of the VCs. Many times they do it on their own, recognizing that they don't enjoy actually running a company.

But the tricky part is keeping the founders engaged and involved once they'd stepped down from the CEO role.

...

But how do you get someone of the caliber of Jerry Yang or David Filo to stick around and keep working on moving the company forward.

I saw this at HotJobs (CEO/Founder Richard Johnson left the company and quickly disengaged) and I co-founded a start-up myself, so these questions feel particularly relevant. I agree wholeheartedly with Fred - the importance of the CEO/Founder's vision and enthusiasm cannot be underestimated. Marc is unlikely to toot his own horn on this one, so let me do so here: Toot! to the CEO of the worlds best $100k+ job search engine.

More on Omniture

More in-depth thoughts about the Omniture deal from Daniel Primack on Private Equity Week in his weekly update, It's A Big Deal.

Company CEO Josh James says that the issue is one of flexibility. An IPO, he argues, could stifle Omniture’s ability to invest in sales, marketing, R&D, etc. To James, public=profitability pressure, and he doesn’t believe that he can build a market leader while always being concerned about moving from red to black (the company was once profitable, but currently is not due to the aforementioned growth initiative).

(Thanks to Chris Selland for the link)

Search Rankings - Tricky Business

From MSN Search's WebLog - New Operators Explained:

"We shipped 1.0 with the Link: keyword, which allows you to find pages that link to a single page, ala link:search.msn.com."

When you actually perform that search to see who links to MSN Search, the very first listing is for Viagra (or is that an ad? I can't even tell). And down at seventh is search.microsoft.com. It's nice that they've introduced the "link" operator, but for now, Google and Yahoo are better at it.

The same search on Google actually returns a list of sites that make sense. Yahoo's search is pretty darn good too: "link:http://search.msn.com/".

Nice to see the competition on the search front, but it feels like MSN's got a ways to go.

Yahoo's SMS Search

Just noticed the recently-launched text-message search feature on Yahoo.

You send a text message to 92466 ('yahoo') with a phrase or "quote yhoo", and you get search results delivered to your phone. It's a really great features, but Google's had this for a long time: Google SMS.

No word yet on how effective Yahoo's SMS search is in comparison to Google's.

One Hour of My Life: Gone

Planarity

Made it to Level 12 - 199,263

That is one tremendous time sink! I'd hate to see it get loose in the office...

UPDATE: Great tips in the comments here. (Don't peak until you've given it a shot.)

Investing in Web Analytics

Utah firm gets $40M boost

Investing in Omniture is almost like acquiring interest in an e-commerce index fund, O'Driscoll said. "Online retailers, banks and even media companies need Web analytical services to understand their customers. They just cannot run well without it."

Interesting take. All us internet folk sure do like getting our hands on as much data as possible -- And it's a pretty safe bet that our appetite for data will only increase.

Addictive Online Games

This morning, Marc posted this game -- and "kiss your morning goodbye!"

Oddly enough, an email from Shaft this afternoon pointed me back to another great one: Escape!

Kiss your evening goodbye!

Nifty Little Project

Joel on Software - Project Aardvark Midterm Report

In a nutshell, you go to copilot.com and get an invitation code. You tell your uncle to go to copilot.com and type in that same invitation code. You each get a little program to download and run. When you run the program, your uncle's computer screen shows up in a window. When you move your mouse, his mouse moves. When you type something, it appears on his computer. Etc. And now you fix the problem and log off, and peace is restored...

Neat, simple-sounding product that might be useful for helping your uncle troubleshoot his computer, but might also have applications for Customer Service folks trying to reproduce user-reported problems. Instead of asking back and forth questions over a series of emails ("Tell me what version of IE you're using"), a CS agent could simply connect to the user's computer, find all the answers they need and duplicate the problem easily. Or perhaps show the user how to avoid future problems.

Even more intriguing is that the product is being built head-to-toe by four summer interns. Fascinating stuff.

Learn more this coming Thursday if you're in NY and like wine, cheese and interns:

If you're in New York, come to the Project Aardvark Open House! You'll get free wine and cheese and you can pepper the interns with questions about sockets programming in person. The open house is Thursday, July 14, 2005, from 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM, at Fog Creek Software, 535 8th Ave., 18th Floor, New York.

FANTASTIC Puzzle (Time Sink)

"Everybody has to cross the river"

Click on link, then click on blue circle (lower-right corner).

The rules are:

1 - Only 2 persons on the raft at a time.
2 - The father can not stay with any of the daughters without their mother's presence.
3 - The mother can not stay with any of the sons without their father's presence.
4 - The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member if the Policeman is not there.
5 - Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft.

To move the people click on them. To move the raft click on the pole next to the raft.

Chief People Yahoo!

Catching up with Libby Sartain

"There are a lot of companies that do what [Yahoo does]. In every product we have, we have direct competitors who would love to steal our people because they're really good. And of course we want to hold onto those people plus find more people like that. So that's the war for talent for us."

Interesting take. I was someone who walked away from Yahoo back in early '04. Not sure if they lost the battle or didn't even know the fight was going on. Probably the latter.

De-Animator High Score

Two weeks ago, I posted a note about De-Animator. My high score at the time was right around 100.

The day after that post, my office-mate Adam started playing -- his high score is about 230. Convinced he was the greatest of all time, he emailed the creator of the game...

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 9:29 AM
To: Andrew
Subject: FW: de-animator

Maybe I'm a little crazy. I emailed the creator of De-Animator to see what the high score is. Looks like I've got a lot of work to do...

-----Original Message-----
From: Bum
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 8:31 PM
To: adam
Subject: Re: de-animator

Stage 28, 534 zombies by a guy from Spain

--On Monday, May 23, 2005 1:41 PM -0400 Adam wrote:

>
> Bum,
>
> your game has become a cult favorite in my office. wondering what the
> highest score you've heard of is?

Great Time Sink

De-Animator

UPDATE: My personal best is 94.

UPDATE: After a few *cough* minutes, my new high is 99.

Google History

How long until Yahoo copies this? Google's My Search History

An Investigation of Area 51

Thanks to GMSV for this: So tonight I spied on Area 51

Mildly amusing.

PostSecret

PostSecret

Fascinating.

Amen, Brother

Concerned (But Powerless): The Decline and Fall of espn.com

Once upon a time, espn.com was the very first site I would visit after popping open my web browser. Though depressingly corporate, the site nonetheless offered a cavalcade of interesting and/or entertaining columnists, and provided a wealth of useful information. Over the past few years, however, espn.com's most glaring faults -- endemic commercialism, East Coast bias, ignorance of groundbreaking new methods of baseball analysis, and increasingly irritating columnists -- have rendered the site virtually worthless.

Time Sink

Great Puzzles

High Paying Executive Jobs

Over at the Ladders, we just posted an archive of all the jobs we posted in 2004. Flip through some of the titles - it's interesting stuff.

Executive Jobs

And, while you're there, check out the latest jobs through our job search engine.

CBGB Closing?

"Rosenblatt could be immediately reached for comment." -Yahoo! News - NY Punk Venue CBGB Faces Closure Over Unpaid Rent

Interesting... Rosenblatt could be immediately reached for comment, but Reuters didn't bother to publish those comments? Perhaps there's a slight error in there, eh?

About CBGB, I've only been once, in the summer of 2000 to see Yitzhak Perlman's son. He was in a punk rock group that wasn't too bad, but the rest of the groups there were painfully awful. I can't say that the closing of CBGB is going to affect my New York experience in any way.

Another Great Time Sink

Helicopter game - an oldie-but-goody.

Gmail Goes Public

From Google:

Hi there,

Thanks for signing up to be updated on the latest Gmail happenings. We hope it's been worth the wait, because we're excited to finally offer you an invitation to open a free Gmail account! Just click on this link to create your new account:

[link removed]

Since last April, we've been working hard to create the best email service possible. It already comes with 1,000 megabytes of free storage, powerful Google search technology to find any message you want instantly, and a new way of organizing email that saves you time and helps you make sense of all the information in your inbox.

And here are just some of the things that we've added in the last few months:

- Free POP access: Take your messages with you. Download them, read them offline, access them using Outlook, your Blackberry or any other device that supports POP

- Gmail Notifier: Get new mail notifications and see the messages and their senders without having to open a browser

- Better contacts management: Import your contacts from Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Outlook, and others to Gmail in just a few clicks. Add phone numbers, notes and more. Even use search to keep better track of it all.

We also wanted to thank you. For showing us your support and for being so patient. And to those who have already signed up for Gmail, thank you for giving it a try and for helping us make it better. Our users are what have made this product great. So whether you're just signing up for your account or you've been with us since the beginning, keep letting us know how we can build you the best email service around.

That's it for now. We hope you like Gmail and will share it with your friends. We've got lots of cool new stuff planned and we can't wait for you to see our work in your Gmail accounts! Stay tuned...

Thanks,
The Gmail Team

Google Maps

As I'm sure has been said elsewhere, Google Maps look great. I like the flexibility of the search, the intuitive display and (particularly) the turn-by-turn display on driving directions. Very cool.

Daily Puzzle

Thanks to my sister for this link: Set® Puzzle

I finished today's puzzle in 2:07, but the sister did it in 1:33. She's quite the smart A's fan.

Hanukah Tune

Thanks to Aunt Marcia for this one: Hey-Ya

Distraction (!)

How about this fun one, eh? Trebuchet Challange (Thanks to Yahoo!'s daily picks)

My first score was 2300-ish.

How do you like that, marco?

Almost a Compliment?

"Is it really more than a year?" My boss looks back (fondly?) on the founding of AndrewKoch.com. What's remarkable is that Stone linked to me without harping on my lack of blog-effort.

If you go to Stone and search for "Baseball", three of the top four results are posts suggesting that (A) I don't spend enough time on AndrewKoch.com and/or (B) AndrewKoch.com is going down in flames.

While (A) is certainly true, I hope that (B) isn't. Is it even possible for something as small as AndrewKoch.com to really go down in flames?

When a blog dies, isn't it really more like Hanukah candles that slowly melt away before sputtering their last breath and expiring.

Good News, Bad News

THE GOOD: There's now a semi-organized archive of Bill Simmons ESPN writings

THE BAD: Click on any link, say Top-10 Most Tortured City??? and you'll see a paragraph (if you're lucky) followed by an ad - "Want to read the whole article? Open your wallet, insert vacuum."

Probably a good way to increase near-term revenue for ESPN.com, but a bad sign for Bill Simmons (and me). It's only a matter of time before they move Bill's Boston Sports Guy entirely behind the "pay" wall, leaving him a much smaller audience (smaller at least by one - me). And really, he's the only reason I go to ESPN at all anymore.

Is moving all of their best content into their premium "Insider" package really the best long-term move? Do writers like Bill want a small, devoted "customer-base" OR do they want to be cultural institutions? In the long run, will ESPN be able to attract the best talent once they've managed to reduce their audience to the 5% of their current visitors that are willing to pay?

Is this all just a short-term cash-grab by Disney, parent of ESPN? Is there anything wrong with that?

And if you've got $40 to spend on a sports site, isn't Baseball Prospectus going to give you a better bang for your buck? (Even if they're currently overhauling their subscription process...)

Shame on you, Cuban

Mark Cuban on Donald Trump

How does it feel to know that in future years when the question is asked , "Which show was the anchor when NBC's Must See Thursday Night slipped from its perch for the first time in decades ?", the answer will be Trump's show ?

"The Benefactor" makes "The Apprentice" resemble an episode of "Masterpiece Theater." Cuban's game, and television show, looks like a child created it. Money cannot buy maturity. Which is something these contestants lack. "The Apprentice" tests people on their business and people skills, and then rewards the winner with a lucrative job. "The Benefactor" asks people to play silly games, possibly humiliating themselves, and then hands them a million dollars. Why? Because Cuban can.

Wealthy Beyond Belief

Yahoo! News - Bill Gates Gets 4 Million E-Mails a Day

"Literally there's a whole department almost that takes care of it."

A whole department, just watching his inbox? Yoiks!

Site of the Day

The Sneeze - An Open Letter To My Hair

"Hey! How are you? Everything's good down here."

It's an old post on what seems to be a great site. I'd recommend extensive exploration from this first post.

Fascinating

Yahoo! News - Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500 Retreat on Exit Poll

"That's what we're hearing," said Lisa Hansen, head trader at Transamerica Investment Management. "Apparently the blogs are saying that Kerry is ahead in one or two of the swing states and that's why the market dipped."

Advice from a Google Investor

It's the people, stupid. Shriram helped co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the Menlo Park garage by consulting his "Ram's Book of Mistakes,'' which he said he started eight or nine years ago to help remind him of all the bad decisions he'd made. Bad hiring decisions are the most fatal.

-MercuryNews.com | 10/30/2004 | Google guru shares words of wisdom

Michael Lewis on Motley Fool

Fool.com: Don't Listen to Buffett [Commentary] October 26, 2004

"If we weren't doing things this way already and we were starting afresh, would we do things this [same] way?"

A great quote summing up Bill James' approach to baseball analysis and a good idea to keep in your head. Overall, looks like a mildly interesting series of articles with the author of that baseball book. But at what point does Lewis get sick of the Moneyball questions?

And do I get extra "moneyball" credit for suggesting that Lewis co-wrote the Motley Fool articles about himself...? (background here)

Eminem

Will Carroll Presents...: Eminem

"There is no frickin' way that this one's going to end up on MTV, even after the election."

Just follow the link through Will's site to the video.

Fun with Pictures

Build a better Bush

That Fenway-Nike Commercial

I don't understand the new Nike commercial. What's the "it" you're supposed to "Just do"??

Sit there like a bump on a log for 80 years?

Conflicting Priorities

Stone: Yankees Lose

"You'd think a self-styled baseball blog would have some commentary on the baseball story of the season. But, alack, no."

I think this has got to be one of the first times in the history of mankind that a boss has called out an employee for not blogging enough about baseball. This, folks, is historic.

Blast from the past

Stone: Super Addictive Racquetball Type Space Game From the Future

Good times. I wasted many an hour horsing around with that game.

David Carvajal

David Carvajal joined my company, TheLadders.com recently. He's a tremendous recruiter and a great guy to have on the team. We're all real, real excited have him on board.

As our CEO, Marc Cenedella says, "David helped build an award-winning corporate culture at HotJobs and his previous experience as a recruiter is just invaluable to our business." We're all looking forward to making the world's best job search engine for $100k+ jobs together as a team.

UPDATE: Here's the official press release on our site: David Carvajal joins fellow HotJobs Alums

"Smart" Mob, my A**

Stone: Mob #8: The End

"And do not await instructions for MOB #9. They
will not arrive; not for a long time, at least, if
ever." - Sep. 9, 2003

Just when you thought that silly little "flash mob" fad was LOOOONG gone, some Russians are trying to revive it.

(And don't think I'm not annoyed that I have to link to a site that calls itself "smartmobs.com - the next social revolution.")

I'm Back

Sooooo, to make a long story short... I started a new job in early March (more on that in a bit). In early April, I moved this site over onto my new company's server. And it's taken me until early May to get it working again.

Basically, I've been working too hard and neglecting my site. That, my friends, will no longer be the case. Now that the site is back up, you can look forward to see at least a little something here every now and then.

(How's that for non-commital?)

Next on the task list is for Greg (tech buddy at the new job) to get the comments working...

While I'm Thinking About 4/1

Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time

Google Mail - Hoax or Not?

Via Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org: Google launches GMail

It sounds like an April fools trick. A gigabyte of free mail storage for every user just doesn't sound reasonable. And hasn't Google protested the suggestion that they become a portal?

All the same, Google does own "gmail.com" (check for yourself) and I'd like to be the first to request andrew@gmail.com.

This whole thing is very curious. Another PigeonRank? Or a kick-ass free-mail service?

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.

How to Fail Chemistry

Thanks to GMSV for this little gem.

More Penguin Madness

God bless the Pingu. Check out the new game

Great Ad

Check out this ad, courtesy of Will Carroll.

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

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.

More Penguins

This version of the penguin game is a little more gruesome. My best is 692.

The Omnipresent Schatz

Aaron Schatz has an article up on The New Republic about the spread of Sabermetrics in MLB front offices. His point - the "Moneyball revolution" that allowed the A's to compete with teams with larger payorlls is not a revolution but a market correction. The eventual end result? A more efficient market, where the rich teams still get all the best (and now properly valued) players.

Schatz himself is seemingly everywhere I look on the internet. His relatively new FootballOutsiders site exploded onto the scene this past fall, rocketing up to Alexa's top 50,000 websites in Nov-Dec. And that kind of internet phenomenon is exactly what Schatz has been studying for his "real" job over at Lycos, pumping out "The Lycos 50" each day.

I like his style, and apparently, so do a lot of people. He's getting a lot exposure all over the internet. Kudos Aaron. Keep up the good work.