December 1, 2008
Now shipping The 2009 Hardball Times Annual is now available. You can read about it here, but just make sure you order it directly from ACTA today. 
Rich Barbieri John Barten Sal Baxamusa John Beamer Brian Borawski John Brattain Craig Brown Matthew Carruth Derek Carty Alex Eisenberg Mike Fast David Gassko
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Chris Jaffe Josh Kalk Chris Neault Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! John Walsh Geoff Young And here's the full roster. StubHub is where fans buy and sell Yankees Tickets, Red Sox Tickets, White Sox Tickets, Mets Tickets and all other baseball tickets. If you are looking for World Series Tickets, ALCS Tickets or NLCS Tickets, you can find them at StubHub! More hot selling tickets include: Cubs Tickets, Astros Tickets, Dodgers Tickets, Angels Tickets and Detroit Tigers Tickets. Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets.
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Tuesday, November 25, 2008ShysterBall to THTPosted by Dave StudemanGreat news. One of my very favorite baseball blogs, ShysterBall, has agreed to move its operation to the Hardball Times. Starting Monday, Craig Calcaterra (the actual shyster himself) will be posting several times a day on THT, in a special blog set up for him on our site. We're pretty excited that Craig has agreed to move here, because it will really fill out THT's baseball offering for you: - Daily blogging comments by Craig (actually, several times a day—at least), - Terrific fantasy content from Derek Carty and friends (even if you don't participate in fantasy baseball, these posts are a great read) every day, and - Our usual two-to-three longer baseball articles every day. If you read the Hardball Times via an RSS reader, don't worry. ShysterBall's entries will appear in our RSS feeds starting Monday. We'll also post the specific "ShysterBall at THT" link then. So watch for it ... and thank you for supporting the Hardball Times. The Noochie Varner storyPosted by Dave StudemanThis post is a couple of days old, but you gotta love minor league outfielders with great nicknames. This one just happened to be involved in two key deals for the Brewers. Just call him RickeyPosted by Dave StudemanA very good, Oakland-oriented career review of our next Hall of Famer, Rickey Henderson, is available at Athletics Nation (hat tip: Beyond the Boxscore). Pirates sign Rinku and DineshPosted by Dave StudemanDon't know who Rinku and Dinesh are? They're the latest international sensations, a couple of Indian brothers who had never played baseball until six months ago. And now they are members of the Pirates' organization. Read the entire story at Walkoff Walk and Big League Stew. Friday, November 21, 2008Chase Utley Out 4 to 6 Months With Hip SurgeryPosted by Chris NeaultHere is an excellent article by Bill Conlin over at Philly.com, talking about the hip injury of Chase Utley. Needless to say, Utley was likely playing through pain during most, if not all of the season. Just another reason why he is one of my favorite players of all-time. Thursday, November 20, 2008Position-adjusted statsPosted by Dave StudemanDave Cameron makes a very interesting observation over at Fangraphs. To use Dave's example, when people say stuff like "David DeJesus is a very good center fielder, but his bat makes him just an average left fielder," they're forgetting that DeJesus's defense will increase his "runs prevented" over a replacement left fielder (compared to a replacement center fielder). Dave (Cameron's) point is that the defensive gain often wipes out the offensive loss. I haven't sat down and figured the math myself, though it strikes me that Dave may be overstating the case. It's still a legitimate general point, however, and one worth remembering. Thanks to guys like Dave, sabermetrics is coming along in its appreciation of fielding impact. 2009 Oliver projectionsPosted by Mike FastBrian Cartwright has released his 2009 Oliver projections for batters over at Statistically Speaking. His projection system draws its appellation from Tangotiger's suggestion of Oliver the Chimpanzee being somewhat more sophisticated than Marcel the Monkey. CC’s choicesPosted by Dave StudemanBrew Crew Ball has posted a spreadsheet comparing CC's two offers. I hope this is the sort of thing agents are doing for their players. The upshot is that $140 million isn't necessarily $40 million more than $100 million, at least not when you account for contracts of different lengths, different costs of living and the present value of money. Hey, Bobby!Posted by Dave StudemanHaven't heard much about free agent Bobby Abreu yet, but Eric Seidman rectifies the situation. Really, Abreu's salary demands are outrageous and he will be a good test of how rational or wacky the free agent market is right now. Wednesday, November 19, 2008Life of BoswellPosted by Dave StudemanOne of my favorite sports writer/bloggers, Joe Posnanski, has written a biting, yet appropriate, critique of Thomas Boswell's position that giving the MVP to Albert Pujols is "nuts." This year's MVP debate is really separating the "gets it's" from the "doesn't get it's" for me. I believe that Howard wasn't even the most valuable player on his own team; once you take fielding, baserunning and position into account, Chase Utley was. Now I'm willing to concede that's debatable to some extent, because it requires an appreciation of batting splits, fielding prowess and other kind-of-obscure stuff. But Pujols over Howard? Not debatable at all. Scott Karl interviewPosted by Dave StudemanYou may remember former Brewer/Rockie Scott Karl. Well, Brewerfan managed to scoop up an interview with Karl, and it's pretty interesting. You sometimes wonder why and how players start to lose their edge, and Karl provides one example: ...I had developed a genetic condition that limited the elasticity of my ligaments and tendons. I could still throw the ball where I wanted to, and make it move, but my velocity was going, and when that started for me, it went fast. I never had an arm injury in my career, but when that happened, I just lost the velocity. Tuesday, November 18, 2008New Fangraphs statsPosted by Dave StudemanFangraphs has been adding lots of features and new stats by the minute. Eric Seidman has helped the cause by looking at the relationship between some of these obscure stats (what is a Z-swing, anyhoo? Shouldn't definitions be included in the glossary and articles themselves?) and pitcher performance. This is good stuff, and understanding how these new stats relate to the more common baseball stats is important. Who’s embarrassed?Posted by Dave StudemanCraig Calcaterra picks apart Phil Sheridan's assertion that Pujols' MVP award was an embarrassment to the BBWAA. Some columns just write themselves. The only thing I'd add is that leaving Howard off your ballot altogether isn't that outrageous, in my humble opinion. Makes more sense to me that listing Pujols seventh. Vote for Cameron!Posted by Mike FastIf you've read and appreciated Dave Cameron's work at U.S.S. Mariner or more recently at Fangraphs, go vote for Dave in a online contest to receive the $10,000 2008 blogging scholarship. Dave is currently locked in a close race with Texas political blogger David Mauro of the Burnt Orange Report. Mauro would certainly be a deserving choice, but let's give Dave Cameron some support for all his hard work and excellent writing over the years at U.S.S. Mariner. Voting ends Thursday night. Monday, November 17, 2008The 2009 MarcelsPosted by Dave StudemanThe 2009 Marcel projections are now available from The Book blog. If you haven't heard of them, Marcel projections ("so simple, even a monkey can do them") are very simple yet still effective projections based on each player's previous major league experience. They're pretty good for players with a couple years of major league experience. If you're interested in how Geovany Soto or Joey Votto might perform next year, you might want to look at other projection systems, too. |
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