New Article: Johan Santana: Risk or Reward?, by Brandon Heikoop
New Series: The Baseball Research Project - Baseball Historians and HRs, by Dave Rouleau
Out of the Spolight, by Dave Rouleau
Fathers Playing Catch With Their Sons, by Benito Vila
It's Not Dontrelle's Fault: A Look At The Declining Participation In Baseball By African Americans, by Eric SanInocencio
Beyond the Diamond: January 24th, by Pete Toms
The Most Productive Hitting Streaks Since 1957, by Dave Rouleau
The Rising Fastball (Detailed pitch analysis: part I), by Jonathan Hale
Hot Stove Cool Down: Team Vie for Remaining Free Agents, by Craig Brown
Home Runs and the Power of Perception, by Geoff Young
The Bloggers Roundtable - Chicago White Sox (Cincinnati Reds on deck)
Visit BDD's Big League Futures, our minor league department, who has been redesigned recently. Original material is produced by Jim Pratt, Koby Schellenger and Dave Rouleau.
You can hear the latest edition of the BDD Radio Show, with the Nationals' Mike Rizzo on the show, by going on our home page and listening to the show with the Blog Talk Radio player.
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All Baseball Transactions Wednesday
- Excellent piece by Jack Curry on Andres Reiner, the scout who discovered Johan Santana during a tournament in Venezuela.
"Soon after, Reiner asked the Astros for $400 so he could travel from Valencia to the player's hometown, Tovar, about a 12-hour trip in a remote part of southwestern Venezuela, to invite him to the organization's baseball academy. But since major league players were on strike in 1994, the Astros would not give Reiner the modest sum. "I was told we were frozen," Reiner said. "We couldn't spend a penny."
If Reiner, who is 72 and works as a special assistant for the Tampa Bay Rays, accepted that initial response, there might not be giddiness in Flushing these days. The special player that Reiner was pursuing was Johan Santana.
If Santana passes a physical examination and agrees on what will be a mammoth contract by Friday, he will leave the Minnesota Twins and become the Mets' new ace. If Reiner listened to the Astros instead of his instincts, there is no certainty Santana's career would have begun or unfolded the way it has.
"My nickname with the Astros was Bulldog," Reiner said. "They knew when I wanted to do something, I would fight for it."
- George Vecsey of the NY Times reminds everyone that the 'Mets Are Still On Probation', despite the recent reason to be optimistic.
Third Baseman, David Wright (BDD/The magnificient Bill Richardson)
- The talented Geoff Young does it again, this time at THT where he reviews the projections for tainted slugger Barry Bonds in 1997.
- The MLB Network will be installed in a brand new building in Harlem when it finally goes to the air in 2009.
- My first offering for Seamheads.com - 'Revisiting First Round Picks Overall'
"While looking at a list of first overall picks in the draft since it was established in 1965, it was interesting to see that seven position players up until the 1999 draft had not posted at least 1,000 at-bats and three pitchers hadn’t won 20 games in their career. With teams putting so much emphasis on promoting from within, this failure to perform after being chosen among thousands of athletes can be quite distressing to front office personnel.
In my upcoming posts for Seamheads, I will be examining these players. To be fair, I will analyze only the 1965 to 1999 players, totaling 35 first overall picks, because drafted players since then have either not reached the majors or made enough appearances to justify an analysis of their performances so far.
Complete List - First Overall Picks"- MiLB.com has posted an interview with future Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg.
"MinorLeagueBaseball.com: What do you remember most about your first time around in the Minor Leagues?
Ryne Sandberg: I was excited to sign my first professional baseball contract, knowing I had an opportunity to make it to the Majors. The ballparks were pretty small, and playing in front of 500 or fewer fans was not unusual.
MiLB.com: Have times changed that much? How different are the Minors from when you were a player?
RS: I think today's players are more knowledgeable about the game due to the extensive television coverage. The stadiums are much more up-to-date and have better playing surfaces than the ones I played on.
MiLB.com: Life in the Minors can be surreal. What's your favorite tale of the Minors, either as a player or on the bench?
RS: My first Spring training was in 1979 in Clearwater, Florida. I will never forget the day the Major League club came over to use one of the fields, and I watched in awe as the bus unloaded Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton and Larry Bowa."
- A new way to look at OBP, by Patrick Sullivan.
"Maybe a tweak to how we think about outs and on-base percentage is in order. Dayn may be onto something here with this 1-OBP. I am going to take it a step further here and make it Outs/PA with "outs" defined as AB-H+CS+GDP. Baseball fans understand that outs are the only scarce resource in baseball. They understand that you only get 27 of them, and that each one you use puts you that much closer to running out of chances to score. So instead of tallying on-base percentage, which really only seems to resonate with folks who already buy in to advanced performance metrics, how about focusing on outs?
Discrediting Jimmy Rollins's 2007 MVP case by clamoring "but his on-base was only .344!!!" is obviously not sufficient. How about "did you know that Jimmy Rollins led all of Major League Baseball in outs in 2007?" Now that might help clarify things. To be sure, outs, on-base, outs per PA, etc. ignores what Bill James would call "advancement percentage" (which is really just slugging). It also fails to fully account for baserunning and clutch hitting. Still, tallying up outs per plate appearance is an instructive way to take a look at a major component of one's offensive makeup."
- Sports Illustrated's slide show of the biggest trades this decade.