Baseball - Korean Baseball, Fox Beats LAD, Jeff Bagwell, Command

The Korean Baseball Organization is outdrawing some major league teams it would appear. Check out the two videos below from a game earlier this month between the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins. A pretty packed house full of thunderstick pounding fans react to a play on the field and sing-a-long to some music in the first video, and a group of dugout cheerleaders get the crowd fired up in the second video. It’s amazing how into it the baseball fans are and it looks like it would be a ton of fun to see a game in Korea. - http://topprospectalert.com/2011/07/28/korean-league-team-outdraws-some-major-league-teams-with-music-thundersticks-and-cheerleaders/



A U.S. District Judge in Delaware on Friday dealt a significant blow to the Los Angeles Dodgers' plans to sell the media rights to future games, halting the sales process while he consider an appeal by Fox Sports. Judge Leonard Stark also said he likely will agree with Fox's position that a bankruptcy judge who authorized the sale process erred when he determined that certain protections granted to Fox in its existing contract with the Dodgers were unenforceable in bankruptcy. "The court is also likely to conclude that the bankruptcy court opinion and/or order are based on one or more clearly erroneous findings of fact," wrote Stark, who said he would issue an opinion on Tuesday further explaining his reasons for  granting Fox's request for an emergency stay of the bankruptcy order. http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/other/major-league-baseball/article684359.ece

Jeff Bagwell was a 22-year-old in Double-A at the time of the trade, which is to say no one but the most hardcore prospect fiends knew his name. He was in the minors during the era just before the Internet and 24-hour sports saturation elevated baseball prospects into the national consciousness; it was a time when teams could trade potential stars without fear of immediate revolt from their fan base.
And they did. Eight months before the Sox traded Bagwell, the Baltimore Orioles traded three young players to Houston for 30-year-old slugging first baseman Glenn Davis. (Davis was often injured and rarely effective in his three years with the O's, playing in 185 games and hitting .247/.312/.400.) In return, the Astros received Steve Finley (who spent 19 years in the majors and finished with more than 2,500 hits) and Pete Harnisch (who made the All-Star team in his first year with Houston, pitched for 14 years, and won 111 games in his career.) The trade would have been even more lopsided had the Astros not turned around a year later and traded the third player in the deal to Philadelphia for middle reliever Jason Grimsley. Only after three teams had given up on him¹ did Curt Schilling become a star
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7370324/the-mlb-prospect-bubble

Command and control. They sound like terms we’d use during a military operation. But no, these are two skills that are very important in baseball. The two refer to the same general ability to throw pitches in the best locations for the pitcher. There is a distinction between the two. As I understand it, control represents the pitcher’s skill in throwing strikes; command refers to the pitcher’s ability to throw pitches where he intends to throw them. We can’t actually measure command. That would require knowing where the pitcher wants to throw the ball, and we don’t know that unless he’s telling us before each pitch. CommandF/X – Sportsvision’s technology that tracks the catcher’s glove — would help, but that’s not publicly available. What we can do, though, is measure pitch location through PITCHf/x. This should work as a good proxy.  http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/do-betters-pitchers-actually-have-better-command/