November 8, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Rob Neyer, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. Most Recent Comments
In the backwater swirling (1)
Ranking Yankee World Champions (3) Twins strike for J.J. Hardy (1) Both sides come out ahead in Teahen swap (9) Rays get something for nothing in Iwamura trade (6) 
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Thursday, January 24, 2008Rich and BusterRich Lederer and Buster Olney have been debating the Hall of Fame qualifications of Jim Rice in an open manner, swapping points back and forth in their blogs. You can read Rich's latest post, which includes a fair rendition of Olney's arguments, at his blog. Their willingness to continue their debate in the open air of the Internets is valuable for all of us. Now, I'm as sick of the endless Hall of Fame debates as anyone, but something in Olney's argument stopped me from working on the THT Season Preview for a couple of minutes to investigate something he implied: that Rice shouldn't be held accountable for his relatively low OBP because people didn't "know" that walks were so valuable when he played. This implies a number of things that bother me. One, that a player like Rice could dramatically change his batting approach based on sportswriters' expectations. Two (and more importantly), that the game was somehow "different" back in the 1970s and 1980s, and a different set of skills was required to be successful. I'm not sure Olney meant to imply either point, but I think they're both wrong. Yet I was curious as to his primary point: that teams and batters value walks more than they used to. If true, then might batters be walking more than in the past? That would seem to reinforce his point, wouldn't it? So I did a little digging... Click for more... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||