What do you do when all your hits are caught and the few that do get through are followed by double plays? That's the great thing about baseball: you play tomorrow.
Link time!
There seems to be an uproar over a dumb article at Grantland.com. I'm not exactly shocked, but whatever. The article is more of the same anti-sabermetrics and anti-information crap that we've all grown accustomed to from many mass media sources. I'm not sure why Grantland is any different than ESPN in that department. Oh, wait, their articles are longer. Tonight as I write this, the internet is teeming with takedowns of the article.
The first is Colin Wyers over at Baseball Prospectus (it's a free article), who gives it the semi-FJM treatment, minus the funny. But the funny isn't Colin's thing. The numbers are and he's right as rain, though in this specific example, you don't have to be Colin Wyers to know there are some horse turds being shoved here. The second piece is by SBN's own Beyond the Boxscore. And they have a little fanshot up about it too. If you're a fan of beating on the dumb (verbally speaking) this is, well, it isn't Christmas, but maybe it's Arbor Day or Secretary's Day. Not bad in any case.
Staying at Beyond the Boxscore theme (Marc Normandin would be proud), those fine folks put up one of them new fangled info-graphics showing the streakiest teams in all of baseball, and dag blunit if the Boston Red Sox don't come out on top. Does seem like they're a streaky bunch this year, don't it? (Not sure why I went into folksy country mode there, but what can ya do?)
The Hardball Times gets us all up to date on the AL East because, well, you probably weren't following it real closely. How are those Baltimore Originals doing, anyway?
The Platoon Advantage has done it again, and by it I mean "a good and/or interesting article worth reading" and not "eaten paste naked while dodging cars on the freeway." They've organized and pulled off a three round expansion draft for the upcoming 2012 season, complete with blog participation and ESPN's own Keith Law's analysis. My only complaint is the Portland team's name: the Webfoots. OK, it's rainy in the Pacific Northwest. I get it. Not particularly funny though. I know it's hard work coming up with article ideas and then executing them without having to make everything hilarious. Still though, Webfoots? How about play on the last part of the city's name and call the team the Sharks? Or you could play up the internety-ness of the place and call them the Clouds which also doubles as a comment on the local weather. Or you could just go with my fantasy football team's name: the Portland Poop. Hey, it's alliterative! Still though, Webfoots? For starters, shouldn't it at least have been Webfeet?
Finally, Peter Abraham at the Globe has yet another hilarious quote. When it was mentioned that the Sox may move Gonzalez to right field and put Ortiz at first base for Wednesday's game, Pedroia said, "It'll be good offensively, but damn, I've gotta play second, first and right. That's a lot of ground to cover, man. I've got small legs."