What’s Eating A-Rod?

For the Baseball Prospectus/ESPN Insider soup du jour, I join forces with Will Carroll to examine Alex Rodriguez’s struggles, which saw him benched for Friday and Saturday’s games amid an 8-for-55 June swoon that dragged his overall line down to .212/.370/.462. Here’s a taste: The schadenfreudians might believe that Rodriguez is receiving a cosmic comeuppance …

Continue reading ‘What’s Eating A-Rod?’ »

Young Guns, Old Clip

Last week’s WWZN Young Guns radio hit, discussing Russ Ortiz’s short-lived lead over namesake David in the 2009 home run rankings, the possibility of the Blue Jays remaining factors in the AL East, the sudden power outbursts of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, and other fun stuff. The segment was recorded via iPhone while I …

Continue reading ‘Young Guns, Old Clip’ »

The Replacement Killers

Another one of my Baseball Prospectus pieces syndicated on ESPN Insider, this one on trying to quantify what the absences of Alex Rodriguez and other stars would cost their teams in terms of runs and wins: When the news on Alex Rodriguez’s hip injury broke last week, the Baseball Prospectus crew brainstormed a few possible …

Continue reading ‘The Replacement Killers’ »

It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Coverage

In addition to flattering me with some choice casting, El Lefty Malo (a/k/a Alex Lash, a mentor from way back) raised a provocative question in this post last week: is sabermetrics anti-labor? One thing about our sabremetric era that doesn’t get discussed much: it’s inherently anti-labor. “Efficiencies” is not a word workers want to hear …

Continue reading ‘It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Coverage’ »

The Dumbest Article in the History of Stupid, and other A-Roid Tales

The Alex Rodriguez story took a new turn on Monday evening, as A-Rod submitted to an exclusive interview by ESPN’s Peter Gammons in which he admitted to using steroids from 2001 to 2003 while a member of the Texas Rangers. While the interview was relatively softball — the hand-picked Gammons is about as threatening as …

Continue reading ‘The Dumbest Article in the History of Stupid, and other A-Roid Tales’ »

Strange Bedfellows in this News Cycle

So much going on and so little time for me to write. After more than seven months of waiting, my wife and I finally closed on our Brooklyn apartment and will be moving this weekend, thus ending my nearly 13 years in the East Village. The timing isn’t exactly great, coming in the middle of …

Continue reading ‘Strange Bedfellows in this News Cycle’ »