There's a lot of blame to go around for last night's relievergeddon, but let's not ignore my share. Yesterday, I said that Bruce Bochy "legitimately deserves to go to the Hall of Fame." Sorry, guys. That's on me.
Baseball Cards, Papa bear Bochy! ♡
Think of the most important questions of our time. Will we ever reach the Singularity? Are there aliens out there somewhere? What would Bruce Bochy look like as a bear? Today, we have an answer to one of those questions, and it is undoubtedly the one most crucial to our understanding of our place in the universe.
The answer is "pretty cute," by the way.
23 potential MLB free agents as SkyMall items
I've long believed that one of the great activities that man invented was cleaning out the lint screen of the dryer, because the ratio of Actual Work to Making You Feel Like You Accomplished Something is phenomenal. "Welp," you can say with some self-satisfaction, "Guess who just prevented the house from burning down? You're welcome! You're all welcome!" Skymall jokes are the cleaning the lint screen of humor. They're so, so easy. And they're fantastic.
Nine Unlikely Postseason Heroes
BP is free this week, and while I could link to their analysis of last night's game, I have more important things to do, like thoroughly petting my brother's girlfriend's cat to ensure she doesn't have the Hope Diamond hidden in her fur. So instead, let's think about something else. There have been a lot of middling players in postseason history who turned in fantastic performances, from Travis Ishikawa to Literally Travis Ishikawa. Who will be next? Will it be Juan Perez? It'll probably be Juan Perez. Let's get our hopes way, way up for that.
How Wall Street Strangled the Life out of Sabermetrics
I'm always in favor of blaming things on Wall Street, so obviously I was a big fan of this article. It's about the business strategies that led to less public innovation in sabermetrics. It's not that people aren't doing research work on baseball, but they're doing it for money behind closed doors, after having signed non-disclosure agreements. That's good for them and the teams that employ them, and bad for everyone else who wants knowledge. Though I guess if I really wanted to know more about analysis, I'd get off my ass and buy a MLB team. No one to blame but myself here.
New Baseball Statistics.
Let's enjoy these stats before Goldman Sachs gets their grubby mitts on them and makes them proprietary.