Tag Archives: Web picks

Web Pick of the Week: Mud rubbing

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Web-PickThe St Louis Cardinals’ starter Chris Carpenter earned a win on Opening Day against the Cincinnati Reds, which gave him room to comment on the condition of the baseballs without looking like a sore loser.

Carpenter’s complaint is that the Reds don’t put enough mud on the baseballs. Why would there be mud on the balls in the first place?  Well, a baseball out of the box has a shine and slickness to it that can make it difficult to grip firmly; therefore a specific type of mud is rubbed into the balls (stop laughing) before the game to make them easier to grip. 

Strange but true, and to prove it here’s a web link to an article about it by famed baseball snagger, and author of ‘Watching Baseball Smarter’, Zack Hample.  He’s currently writing a book about baseballs and got the chance to spend some time with the Phillies’ equipment manager last August, learning about the mud-rubbing process.

Web Pick of the Week: MLB.TV Free previews

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Web-PickFor the second straight year, baseball fans in Britian don’t have a free-to-air TV option when it comes to watching MLB. Your choices are either an ESPN America subscription (note that recent comments here have suggested that the standard ESPN channel is of no use to baseball fans) or taking the online option of an MLB.TV or Gameday Audio subscription from MLB.com

Regular readers will know that I am a devout MLB.TV fan. It’s not cheap as the standard subscription costs approximately £65 and you need to have a decent broadband package to make it useable, but if it came to the worst, I would cut most things out of my budget before not renewing my annual subscription.  The ability to watch any game live or on demand throughout the year is more than worth the price if you can find the money for it. 

One of the things that makes people wary of an online service rather than a traditional TV service is the unknown quantity of what the quality is going to be like.  That’s a valid point, particularly as your broadband package will have a bearing on this.  Other people also are unsure about watching games via their monitor and would like to know if they can set it up to run the picture through their TV.  Paying out for a subscription before finding out the answers to these questions is a big ask, so what you need is a free preview or two to give you the chance to trial it.

That’s exactly what MLB.com are providing over the next three days.  There are six exhibition games available to watch, with the games on Saturday and Sunday being the most convenient for us in the UK. Presumably you will also be able to trial the excellent Gameday Audio as well, which provides radio feeds for each game and is a cheaper, but no less enjoyable, option (it comes with the MLB.TV subscription and I use the audio feeds just as much as the video feeds). 

The media player has been updated this year and one of the main features for you to be aware of is the ‘quality’ bar which allows you to reduce the streaming quality of the picture.  Obviously, the greater the quality, the more bandwidth you use up and the more likely it is to splutter and stutter, so it’s worth playing around with that and seeing how far you can turn it down whilst maintaining a picture quality acceptable to you. I tend to set the picture to full screen and then sit a way back from my monitor when I watch games, which allows me to turn the quality down quite low (right to its lowest sometimes). The graphics are not crystal clear, but the main picture is perfectly watchable.

The six games are listed below with first pitches noted in British Summer Time. If you have any queries about using the MLB.TV service then leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help. 

Friday

23.10. Cardinals at Twins
00.05. (Sat.) Pirates at Phillies
03.05. (Sat.) Dodgers at Angels

Saturday

18.05. Pirates at Phillies
21.05. Red Sox at Nationals

Sunday

20.05. Mariners at Giants

Web Pick of the Week: MLB Network’s ’30 in 30′

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Web-PickThis week’s web pick comes courtesy of a recommendation by Andrew (@chickenroyal on Twitter).  The MLB Network channel was launched in the States at the beginning of last year and one of its first big features was the ’30 in 30′ series that ran throughout Spring Training.  Simply put, the MLB Network team goes around Arizona and Florida dedicating a show to each of the 30 MLB teams over the course of 30 days.

This year, MLB.com is collecting all of the shows together and making them available to watch for free online.  The series started with the Detroit Tigers on 3 March and will finish with the San Diego Padres on 1 April, with the videos being posted online at some point during the day after they are broadcast on the Network.

Each show lasts for approximately 35 minutes, with those annoyingly frequent U.S. adverts mercifully being cut. During the show, the panel analyses all parts of the team’s roster, looks at the new additions and departures, interviews key personnel (in the A’s case, for example: Kurt Suzuki, Ben Sheets, Kevin Kouzmanoff, Billy Beane and Rickey Henderson) and finishes up with a package of memorable moments from the club’s history in the ‘Prime 9 Moments’ segment. 

The shows make for a great introduction to all of the teams if you are a newcomer to the sport and they are also an ideal way to help any baseball fan build up to the new season.  In particular, fans of the non-big-market teams will enjoy watching 35 minutes of coverage on their club, rather than the usual 35 seconds (if you’re lucky) that the likes of ESPN will devote to them at any one time during the season.

Web pick of the week: Morgan Ensberg’s Baseball IQ

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Web-PickIn his column last Saturday, Steve gave some examples of people within baseball who are using the Internet to connect with fans.  This week’s Web Pick piggy-backs on to this theme with a new blog by former Major Leaguer Morgan Ensberg. 

http://morganensberg.wordpress.com/

He had an interesting career because it wasn’t particularly long (8 MLB seasons, with his last in 2008 when he played in 28 games for the Yankees), but it did include one excellent year.  In 2005, Ensberg’s 36 homers and 101 RBIs as a third baseman earned him 4th place on the National League MVP ballot and, more importantly, helped the Houston Astros to their first ever World Series. 

Ensberg has now retired from playing and he launched his blog just a few weeks ago, 25 February to be precise.  As he puts it:

“I am Morgan Ensberg and this is a blog that teaches you about baseball.  Not crap, but solid fundamentally based strategy and teaching”.

Beyond the ban on “crap”, the focus is on thinking through scenarios and situations that crop up in baseball, both on and off the field, with Ensberg offering his observations and encouraging visitors to pass on their views in the comments.  What I like about it so far is that there’s a real sense that he wants to pass on his knowledge of the game to us fans, yet he acknowledges that he is new to the world of blogging and seems genuinely keen to receive feedback on his posts and to respond to it. 

That readiness to interact with fans, rather than writing as an ‘expert’ and dismissing the thoughts of people who haven’t played sports professionally, is rare.  The blog therefore shows a lot of promise and it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Web pick of the week: 60ft 6in

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Web-PickSome of my web picks are websites or articles that I’ve had bookmarked for a while, but this week’s is a site that I only came across for the first time on Wednesday: 60ft 6in. 

I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘game within the game’ that is the battle between the pitcher and hitter.  Appreciating the craft of pitching for the first time is an important landmark in your journey from baseball newcomer to devoted fan. Watching the hurler using both sides of the plate, sometimes ‘wasting a pitch’ in the hope of getting the hitter to chase one outside the zone, sometimes ‘pitching backwards’ by starting a hitter with off-speed pitches when there are runners in scoring position: I find it all both thrilling and fascinating.  Continue reading →

Web pick of the week: Josh Chetwynd on Planet Hardball

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Web-PickThis week’s web pick sees the return of a familiar face, or at least the return of a familiar voice, to British baseball fans.  Josh Chetywnd was part of the excellent team that brought us ‘Baseball on Five’, which continues to be greatly missed.  Sadly, MLB’s return to terrestrial TV in the UK doesn’t appear to be imminent and Josh would play a minimal part in the coverage in any case as he has now returned to the States with his family.

However, Josh’s interest in European baseball, fuelled by his time in British baseball (with the national team and in the domestic leagues) and a season with a semi-pro team in Sweden, has not diminished.  He created a system to rank European club teams several years ago and he publishes the rankings at Mister-Baseball.com, refining the system each year.  Josh was invited on to the latest episode of the Planet Hardball podcast to talk about the 2009 season rankings, passing on lots of useful information about the state of baseball in Europe in the process.

You can get to the podcast via the relevant blog post on Planet Hardball.  Incidentally, this is a relatively new website “dedicated to raising awareness of baseball being played around the world”.  Definitely one to add to your bookmarks or RSS feed reader.

Web pick of the week: Jon Sciambi on Baseball Prospectus

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Web-PickOur web pick this week is an interesting guest article by Jon Sciambi published at Baseball Prospectus on Tuesday.  Sciambi, known as ‘Boog’ to many, is a commentator for ESPN and he previously did the play-by-play for the Atlanta Braves.  He was one of my favourite ‘local’ commentators that we get to enjoy via MLB.TV so it’s a bit of a shame that he will not be covering Chipper and co this season, but I can hardly begrudge him his well-deserved new job (he previously worked ESPN games part-time).

Anyway, Jon is known for being open to new ideas and in particular for bringing some advanced statistical thoughts to the masses.  Will Carroll, one of the Baseball Prospectus staff writers, posted a blog recently about getting the advance-stat message out to more people (the blog post and resulting comments are worth reading as well) and Sciambi’s article provides a professional broadcaster’s response to some of the issues, ideas and preconceptions raised.

I’m a lot like Jon in the sense that while I do take a keen interest in stats and how they can help you to understand more about the game, I’m not really a ‘maths’ person. When stat-based articles go too far down the route of explaining regression methods and suchlike, they go over my head because it’s not the sort of thing I know much about and more importantly it’s not the sort of thing I’m greatly interested in learning either.  There are lots of things in this world that do pique my inquisitive nature, but grappling with long equations and calculations is not one of them.

However, taking an interest in advanced stats does not mean you have to get neck-deep into spreadsheets and databases.  Some people do, of course, but the majority of us can sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labour.  What we need are people who can interpret the numbers and relay genuinely insightful information about the game in a simple and enjoyable way.

Sciambi provides some interesting thoughts on how TV broadcasts can be part of this, whilst also recognising that a lot of people simply want to sit down and while away an afternoon or evening by enjoying a ballgame.  Bringing more advanced stats into baseball coverage is a good idea, but those involved need to understand that it’s not what everyone is after.  That’s not because they are dumb or have an unshakeable belief in the sanctity of RBI’s and batting average, it’s because they just want to enjoy the game with their friends and aren’t fussed either way about which stats are cited. 

Educating people is always a worthy goal, so explaining the limitations of some of the traditional stats and introducing new ideas is an endeavour that should be encouraged.  However it needs to be done in an enjoyable way. In other words, not in a ‘I’m telling you this to show that you are dumb and I am smart’ kind of way, which some of the advanced stat stuff (like any advanced or academic movement) is prone to suffer from at times.

Web pick of the week: MLB.com’s Team guides

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Web-PickThe MLB Spring Training camps have opened and that’s enough to make any baseball fan dance with joy.  Players are getting to know their new teammates and managers are formulating plans for who will be on their 25-man roster for opening day.  Us fans are looking on, lapping up the photos and interviews, thinking about possible batting lineups and starting rotations while trying to work out how player ‘X’ ended up with team ‘Y’ without you realising it.

Thankfully, MLB.com has put together a series of features designed to prepare fans for the season ahead. 

In previous years they have published an ‘Around the Horn’ feature in which each team’s MLB.com beat writer has written about a different position each week.  That was useful but it didn’t provide a great overall preview of each team once Spring Training came around because rosters were liable to have changed as the series progressed.  They’ve abandoned the Around the Horn feature this year, although they’ve stuck with the overall concept of devising standard column formats and then asking each beat writer to submit pieces for their team.  The three features published so far are: ‘A look ahead’, ‘Previews’ and ‘Quick Hits’.

My favourite is the ‘Quick hits’ feature.  This poses and answers three key questions about the respective team, lists their projected starting line-up, rotation and main bullpen pitchers, and then provides a decent amount of detail on the team’s main prospects and the players who have joined, left, or are rebounding from injury or poor performances in 2009.  If you want a quick and easy way to catch up on all of the thirty MLB teams, or if you are new to the sport, they are an excellent resource.

There isn’t a decent ‘home page’ to link to (as far as I can tell), so instead I’ll direct you to the Baltimore Orioles’ ‘Quick Hits’ page from which you can then look at all of the rest using the drop-down list.

Web pick of the week: Nats Insider

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Web-PickThis week’s web pick is a blog about the Washington Nationals.  Now, don’t head off somewhere else just yet.  A blog about the Nationals might not sound like a particularly inspiring choice, but this is a blog with a difference. 

Nats Insider is written by a guy called Mark Zuckerman.  Up until recently, he was the Nats’ beat writer for the Washington Times.  Then the Times decided to cut 40 per cent of its employees, including all of those working in the sports section. 

It’s a story that is sadly become all too familiar as newspapers the world over struggle to come to terms with the challenges they face in this digital age.  The internet should be the perfect platform for news corporations, allowing them to publish scoops at the click of a button and cutting out a lot of the downsides and costs of producing a printed product.  However, just like the music industry, they’ve treated the medium as an amusing sideshow for the last fifteen years or so.  Newspapers are now trying to work out how they can make money out of something that people have got used to receiving for free.  All the while, most newspapers are seeing their circulation fall and the reaction in many cases to a reduced income is to reduce expenditure on journalists and editors, the exact same people capable of producing content that people are prepared to pay for.  Continue reading →

Web Pick of the week: Various on defensive stats

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Web-PickI’m cheating a bit this week as I’m not so much offering a Web Pick, but a collection of them on the same topic. Most baseball fans are well aware that the established stats used to evaluate defence, fielding percentage and errors, don’t tell you very much about how good (or bad) someone really is.  You can hazard a guess that a player who amasses lots of errors is probably not too slick with the leather, but that’s about it. 

Offering much more than broad generalizations with fielding stats does seem to be a tricky task.  There are so many variables on any given play that, as a fan rather than a statistical analyst, my preconception is that creating reliable statistics is always going to be a major challenge.  Even something as simple as a second baseman fielding a grounder depends on lots of factors.  For example: how hard was the ball hit, was the ball’s bounce affected by spin or a bad hop, how much was the player’s ability to field the ball affected by his initial positioning (good or bad) and who was responsible for that (e.g. was the play made easier because the second baseman’s manager had instructed him to stand a few yards to the right of where he would normally)? 

It’s a major challenge, but clearly it’s one well worth taking on because getting a better idea of a fielder’s ability is crucial to General Managers and very interesting to most of us fans.  MLB.com helpfully provided an article about the latest defensive stats earlier this month and included a separate page containing “a quick primer on four of the newest defensive statistics”.  They’re a good starting point for anyone interested in the topic. 

The MLB.com article specifically refers to the importance that the Red Sox and Mariners are giving to defence and Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times posted a fascinating blog about the M’s and defensive stats just before 2009 became 2010.  I particularly liked the bit about Jason Bay’s defence in left, noting that “while baseball insiders will pretty much agree that Bay is no Endy Chavez as a left fielder, there is little agreement on how bad he actually is”.  No single statistic, or even a group of statistics, is going to conclusively answer that question, but that can be said of most things.  Let’s face it, if different surgeons can look at MRI scans of Bay’s knees and shoulder and come to different conclusions on his physical condition, working out precisely how the Green Monster affected his defence is going to be just as open to different interpretations.

Those different interpretations, and different stats, are exactly what makes these discussions/arguments so much fun for us fans, although General Managers that have to make decisions about the spending of millions of dollars might welcome a bit more certainty.