Julien Headley was kind enough to respond to the three questions I posed about the statistical system he’s put forth at his weblog and which I just wrote about. He sent me a couple of very nice emails (“you did a better write-up of my system than i did!”) from which I’ve extracted his responses, …
Travelling to Northampton, Massachusettts, I missed nearly all of last night’s Yanks-Sox ballgame. All except for the final nail-biting out, that is. Perfect timing to catch Mariano Rivera inducing Jeremy Giambi to line out softly to Alfonso Soriano with two men on, behind in the count 3-1. Anyway, from the sound of it, the game …
Several things to note before I skip town for another Northampton jaunt… • The Yanks and the Red Sox kick off a three-game series in Fenway starting tonight. Pedro vs. the Fat Man, with Nick Johnson rejoining the Yanks from an epic stay on the DL. The Yanks are up by 2.5 games and hold …
Most of us who start baseball blogs simply want to offer our opinions and responses to the issues of the day as well as our takes on what our favorite teams are doing. But Julien Headley, the author of Julien’s Baseball Blog, is offering a new twist: the development of a statistical system that, if …
If there’s one subject of this site which I’ve been truly lazy in dealing with, it’s books. I’m a voracious reader, and in addition to whatever else I’ve got going, there’s always a baseball book that I’m currently reading — new, old, or a revisited classic. I buy at least a dozen a year; alas, …
Two lengthy articles about Bill James are online, both worth checking out, especially if your home team is getting rained out. The first is from the July 14-21 issue of the New Yorker. After introducing his subject and recapping his history, writer Ben McGrath quickly gets to the crux of the Jamesian view of baseball: …
One of the reasons we fans watch so much baseball is the chance to see something we’ve never seen before — a triple play, an odd scoring decision, an unlikely home run. Saturday’s ballgame at Yankee Stadium featured a previously uncharted event for me, and probably for the other 54,980 people in attendance as well: …
You know it’s bad when they start devoting Top Ten lists to your exploits. Take this ESPN list of Armando Benitez’s worst meltdowns (four of them against the Yanks, including #1). Or this David Letterman rendering of Randall Simon’s potential excuses. Back to Benitez for a moment. Lawrence Rocca of the Newark Star-Ledger has a …
Among the things I missed on my extended vacation was the naming of the All-Star teams and the annual flurry of debate which surrounds them. In my brief airport surfing session, as I checked the announced teams, I had a chance to smile at Paul Lo Duca finally making the game, raise my eyebrows at …
I’m back from my two-week vacation in the Bay Area and Alaska. Both stages of my trip were great, with the former giving me an opportunity to reconnect with some old school chums and the latter netting me some 15 pounds of red salmon as a take-home, not to mention a boatload of hilarious fish …