Back from my late winter summer trip to Salt Lake City and Wyoming, where I nearly froze my ass off while backpacking in the Wind Rivers range once again. After three days of chilly weather and occasional odd snow flurries that melted the moment they hit the ground, I awoke to a snow-covered forest floor …
One of the saving graces of writing about baseball from an analytical perspective is that something that might rip your heart out as a fan — say, the brazen stupidity of Dodger GM Ned Colletti or the failure of Alex Rodriguez in the clutch, with the Yankees’ season more or less on the line — …
Back from my west coast swing (no to be confused with my western swing). I had a great time visiting friends in Seattle, catching up with family and watching killer whales on San Juan Island, and packing my stay in Los Angeles with trips to museums — the Getty, MOCA, LACMA, the Norton Simon. Our …
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Three pieces of Prospectus-flavored content to note here, an average of one for each manager fired this week (Willie Randolph, Seattle’s John McLaren, and Toronto’s John Gibbons). With apologies to Bill Bavasi… • First off, here’s the transcript from Tuesday’s chat as well as a few slices: Dan (windowless office): Should we ignore the Hit …
Friday’s Hit List featured my two teams personifying mediocrity, ranked at the middle of the pack at #15 (Yankees) and #16 (Dodgers). Neither has been a whole lot of fun to watch lately. The Dodgers have been minus Rafael Furcal for about a month now. They were 18-14 with him, as he got off to …
Quick radio note: in addition to my usual gig on Toledo’s WLQR 1470 AM at 4:10 PM Eastern today, I’ll be this week’s Baseball Prospectus representative on Boston’s WWZN 1510 on “The Young Guns Show” at 3:05 PM Eastern. The Toledo gig doesn’t have a means of listening via Internet (hey Norm, get on it!) …
The second installment of my historical take on recently deceased former executive Buzzie Bavasi is now up at Baseball Prospectus. It’s even longer than the first part, covering not only the Dodgers’ 1960s heyday — Sandy Koufax’s prime — but also his tenures with the Padres and the Angels. At one point, I was sure …
“Who else played golf with Babe Ruth, had dinner with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale and worked for people of the stature of Larry MacPhail, Walter O’Malley, Gene Autry and Ray Kroc?”–Buzzie Bavasi (1914-2008) While Buzz Bissinger continues to be raked over the coals, the baseball world lost one of its titans on Thursday, as …
Bleary-eyed but satisfied, I’ve got a two-fer today in the form of my first New York Sun piece of the year, and the first regular-season Hit List (both of which are free as opposed to subscriber-only). The Sun piece is about the absurd glut of young talent in the NL West, which figures to be …
Happy Opening Day, everybody! Though I spent most of my afternoon slaving over my final Fantasy Baseball Index spring update deadline — interrupted by a fun radio hit for KOGO in San Diego, where I ran down the likelihood of several Padres’ players scenarios this year — I Tivoed the Dodgers’ opener, which I was …