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.

Thanks to Beaneball for the link.

Time Sink

Great Puzzles

Baseball Crank on the AL West

Baseball Crank: BASEBALL: 2005 AL West EWSL Report

My gut tells me the A's will be a force to be reckoned with this season. But EWSL is much more sober about the rebuilding job the team needs to suffer through before the A's can be considered a bankable contender rather than a maybe-if-everything-breaks-right longshot.

BaseballCrank's EWSL projection has the A's finishing 4 games behind the Angels, 8 wins ahead of the Mariners and 11 games ahead of the Rangers. And that's assuming 9 total Win Shares out of Dan Haren, Joe Blanton and Dan Meyer. I'd like to think that those projections are more likely to be too low than too high, but the track record for rookie/unproven starters ain't great.

Well, here's hoping we get an extra 16 win shares from somewhere and scrap our way past the Angels into the post-season, where (as we A's fans all know) it's a total crapshoot.

Read the whole AL West piece on Crank, make your way over to the 2005 AL East EWSL Report and keep your eyes peeled for the remaining four division reports. It's great stuff.

Rick Ankiel's Premature (?) Obituary

And let’s face it, after Ankiel hangs up his cleats for good, he’ll follow a career path not unlike countless Americans before him. I mean, very few of us get paid to follow our dreams. By the time we reach age 25, most of us have already set aside our ball gloves or our guitars or our paintbrushes and we’ve started looking for more practical ways to settle down, pay the rent, make do. In a very real sense, then, when we mourn for Rick Ankiel we may as well be mourning ourselves. - Brian Gunn Rick Ankiel, Ex-Pitcher

Great little article about Ankiel and what looks like the end of his once-promising baseball career.

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.

Ranting, Raving and oh yeah, Baseball

Offseason Rankings: Part One -- The Hardball Times

"The Orioles were 10th in the AL last year with a 5.05 ERA from their starting pitchers. Want to guess how many starters they added this offseason to try to rectify the situation? That's right, none. Unless you count James Baldwin (you shouldn't)." - Ben Jacobs

Just a phenomenal, bitter series of comments on the 15 worst offseasons. Ben Jacobs is clearly not trying to make friends in any front offices or locker rooms. Good times.