baseball prospectus | The Baseball Zealot

BBWAA: The path to becoming relevant

The BBWAA is slowly dragging themselves into relevance.

Today, they added four writers whose contributions can be found mainly on the Internet. Congratulations go out to Will Carroll and Kristina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus and Rob Neyer and Keith Law of ESPN.com.

This is big. Yes, it was a long time coming and it’s not enough but it’s a slow recognition that ~~many~~ most sports fans are getting their sports news from the web whether it be from a brick and mortar newspaper’s web presence or from a new fangly web site out there. It’s time the BBWAA started to recognize that.

Now maybe the BBWAA can do something about their god awful looking web site.

Don’t do it, Baseball Prospectus

I love Baseball Prospectus. I think they put out a first rate podcast which I listen to without fail. Their annual publication which comes out near the beginning of the baseball season not only has a wealth of baseball information but does it with a sense of humor.

I don’t need to tell those who have been to BP’s web site that their staff of writers is one of the best in the business. And yes, some of their stuff is subscription only but if put up the green, what you get back is pretty amazing.

You know the one thing that might drive me away from it?

…if ESPN bought it

From baseball to politics

There’s a rather interesting article in the Seattle Times about Nate Silver. Readers of Baseball Prospectus should be familiar with Silver… he’s been a partner there since 2004.

As of late, Mr Silver has taken his obsessiveness with stats to the political realm. As he did with baseball when he created the PECOTA system, he’s using political numbers to make predictions.

If you have any doubt analogous the two realms can be, take a look at Silver’s web site FiveThirtyEight.com. I see the similar pattern.

Baseball… politics… some people see life in stats.