Last year, at the encouragement of Baseball Prospectus’ Will Carroll, Alex Belth and I headed to New Orleans for baseball’s Winter Meetings. We were unlikely prospects to crash Major League Baseball’s December soiree, but three days of schmoozing and networking with other writers in the hotel lobby ultimately led the two of us to conclude …
Continue reading ‘The Winter Meetings: Notes from a Hotel Room in the Magic Kingdom’ »
Thanks in part to Buster Olney, it’s fashionable among the mainstream media to compare the character and talent (in that order) of the current crop of New York Yankees to that of the dynasty which won five four World Series in a six-year span from 1996-2001 and find them lacking. By this reasoning, players such …
Continue reading ‘Remaking the Yankees for 2005, Part IV: The Bullpen’ »
Last night’s late news about the Yankees’ impending signings of Jaret Wright and Tony Womack set off a flurry of emails amongst a contingent of pinstripe-inclined bloggers and Baseball Prospectus-affiliated writers — the usual smart-guy suspects. The subject line of mine was “come back, Kenny Lofton! we love you! all is forgiven!” It’s fair to …
One of the recurring themes in the baseball blogosphere is the difference between what we bloggers do and what a traditional newspaper reporter does when it comes to covering a team. The key issue is access; we bloggers are unlikely to get a chance to ask a player, manager or executive for their perspective on …
We’ve all known that the road could lead to this juncture, yet we hoped it would not. So it’s easy to be disappointed but hard to be surprised at the revelation via his leaked BALCO grand-jury testimony that Yankee first baseman Jason Giambi used illegal steroids. As I’ve defended him over the past year, it’s …
If you missed them, here are Part I and Part II of this series, with the latter containing the big chart of starters on the market. Looking back at the list of free-agent and trade-bait starters, one of the first thing that stands out is the dearth of lefties (indicated with asterisks, as is the …
Continue reading ‘Remaking the Yankees for 2005, Part III: The Market for Southpaw Starters’ »
When we last left the Yankees, they had only three starters under contract for 2005: Mike Mussina, Javier Vazquez, and Kevin Brown. I wrote that I thought it likely either or both Vazquez or Brown could be traded. As I began writing this piece, I was convinced Vazquez would likely be wearing pinstripes next season …
Continue reading ‘Remaking the Yankees for 2005, Part II: The Market for Righty Starters’ »
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
I’ve been keeping some exciting news under my hat for the past two weeks. The night before I left for Seattle, I received an email from Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus inviting me to join the Prospectus Triple Play rotation, writing a trio of team-themed teasers on a monthly basis. And while the Yankees were …
It has very little to do with baseball other than the usual cast of NYC-based blogging suspects and a good portion of our evening’s chatter. But Alex Belth has a writeup of a group dinner expedition he and I made to Queens on Saturday along with our significant others as well as my pal Nick …