Baseball: Stan The Man, Writing Sports, Julio Teheran, Moneyball Draft, Bud Selig

The Cardinals were one afternoon game at Wrigley Field away from returning home to St. Louis, and the first baseman had requested the day off. It was May 13, 1958, and Musial sat on 2,999 career hits. He wanted to save No. 3,000 for the home crowd. Manager Fred Hutchinson, however, couldn't save his best hitter from the game against the Cubs. In sixth inning, the Cardinals trailed 3-1, and Hutchinson sent (Stan) Musial to the plate as the tying run - Read more: link  

One of the biggest problems for news organizations trying to change today is they don’t understand why they succeeded yesterday. News organizations see themselves as providers of information and defenders of democracy — which is true, and well worth defending. But that civic mission isn’t what made newspapers pillars of their communities. They attained that status because they were really good at printing – specifically, printing information and distributing it in a timely manner. In the pre-digital world, if you needed to tell a lot of people in a given area that you had a hot deal on sofas, a good selection of groceries, or were showing movies at a certain time, putting an ad in the newspaper was the best way to do that. Those ads paid for a lot of journalism, but the arrangement came with an odd mutual blindness: Journalists habitually focused on the articles and ignored the ads, while advertisers habitually focused on the ads and ignored the articles. - http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/146069/rules-of-the-game-change-as-sports-journalists-compete-against-teams-they-cover  

Julio Teheran is young enough to add another 20+ lbs to his frame. If he does there is an uptick in velocity. Enough to where even as he becomes more fine a pitcher, he’ll still work in the mid 90s. His secondaries are already very close to giving him a 3 pitch mix worthy of a #2 starter. If either of his secondaries makes the jump to plus he can front the Braves rotation. If this is the frame that Teheran will work with throughout his career I do have some worry about him holding up under a full workload. If that’s the case he might wind up in the bullpen as a power reliever. That would be a waste of his 3 pitch mix and ultimate potential though. So even if he’s dealing with the smaller frame, I think managing his workload closely in his early years would go a long way to making him last season in and season out as a part of the Braves rotation. The upside for Teheran, is taking over as the Braves Ace by 2014. The downside is a power reliever. The most likely outcome is settling in as the #2 SP in the rotation with less emphasis on the workload. It’s all going to come down to how much room his body has left to grow. - http://baseballinstinct.com/2011/09/14/prospect-instinct-julio-teheran-rhp-atlanta-braves/#more-13961  

The class produced a lot of Double-A/Triple-A/organization talents, which was one of the things traditionalists predicted. The signees with the best success, Swisher and Blanton, had excellent scouting reports to go along with the statistics. At the same time, you can find dozens and dozens of examples of drafts conducted under "traditional" principles that produced much weaker results than this one did. If you count the unsigned Papelbon, the class looks even better. Overall, the Moneyball draft wasn't a giant success, but it wasn't a massive failure, either. Our ability to evaluate and project amateur talent has certainly improved in the last decade, and the relationship between stats and scouting was never as bifurcated as some claimed in the first place. - http://www.minorleagueball.com/2011/9/15/2427683/reviewing-the-2002-moneyball-draft#storyjump  

Selig understands business. But a tunnel focus on the business — as with baseball’s ridiculous ban on YouTube videos, making game footage of amazing plays absurdly hard to find — can have the counterproductive side effect of pissing off fans. Hey, baseball’s a business, and it should be run as one. But I doubt that any of baseball’s priorities would have been seriously harmed by just letting the Mets wear the FDNY and NYPD caps during the game, just as they weren’t harmed by letting the Nats wear Virginia Tech caps. MLB made the wrong choice, and as a result, they’re suffering the blowback in the court of public opinion. They deserve it. - http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/mlb-the-mets-the-hats-and-september-11