Baseball Fans Unite

Although I don't think I could say I know all of you well enough to know
whether you're baseball fans, I think everyone knows that I certainly
am.

That said, I would urge anyone who considers themselves even the
most casual of fans to read a recent article on Baseball
Prospectus:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=3081

Framed as a letter to Bud Selig, Dayn Perry has put together one of the most well
written criticisms I have ever read about the commissioner. He's managed to
put together a fully well rounded, concise, rigorous criticism of most of the
evil things Selig has done, packaged in a formidably coherent and well versed
delivery.

I cannot stress enough the degree to which I recommend everyone
take the time to read this. If you follow baseball at all, you will
likely become more informed, at times entertained, at times incensed, and
on the whole a better fan if you take the time to read this article.

MLB and Steroids

In addition to the article in ESPN The Magazine, this story appeared on ESPN.com:
ESPN.com - Report: Montgomery links Bonds to 'roids

This is a good example of the kind of bullshit that has caused everyone to assume that Bonds (and Sheffield, and Giambi, and...) is (are) guilty. The United States has a justice system built on the premise that everyone is innocent of all crimes until proven guilty, right?

Even if you disregard the fact that the compound THG wasn't even illegal at the time the players allegedly took it, and say that they would have broken the nonexistent rule, we have yet to see conclusive evidence that ANY players took ANYTHING illegal. Everyone is bound to bring up the results of last years testing, so...

Investigators and/or associates of the investigation would love to leak the results of the tests (which resulted over 7% of tests coming back positive) to the public, which would be illegal, simply for the publicity. I'm compelled to inform everyone that there were entire groups of teammates that opted not to take the tests last year, the Chicago White Sox have come forward publicly as one such group. In failing to take the test, the rest ends up recorded as positive for steroids. Players say they chose to do it so that the conditional testing program would kick in, but this fact is often over looked in most of the public scrutiny over last years results. There is no telling how many of the tests were false positives, simply the result of players chosing not to take the test.

This type of 'guilty until proven innocent' garbage has over 75% of kids convinced that Barry took steroids. This opinion is built upon alleged associations with BALCO and Stan Conte, and the alleged actions of both parties.

So, when I go kill somebody (aka Tim Montgomery), watch out -- everybody that writes for TOPD is associated with me, which will clearly make you guilty as well. The only difference is I really will have broken the law.

I wish that the President and Congress would stop sticking their noses into MLB's business, but if they're going to get involved, they could at least do a better job of enforcing simple privacy laws.

XML and RSS Feeds

In support of our one loyal reader (joking, we know there are two of you), we have setup a few resources for XML and RSS feeds.

Basically, every time we update The Outhouse, Part Deux, the host, Blogger, updates an XML file and puts it here:
http://topd.blogspot.com/atom.xml

We have setup a site, FeedBurner, to parse the XML and create an RSS (ver 2.0) feed in addition to the existing XML feed. If you are interested, you can have a program that updates itself using these feeds (and those of any other site that does similar feeds), to have a central location from which to read the stuff we do (or at least read the first part of the article).

All of the feed stuff is available in the sidebar on the right side of the main page.
If you have questions, please let us know.

Have you read Moneyball?

After reading my daily dose of Baseball Prospectus articles today, I found a link to an old Steven Goldman article about the book Moneyball, which is worth reading for anyone.
If you've read Moneyball, it will amuse you to read about all the misinterpretations and public derisions of the book. If you haven't read the book, it will help enlighten you to the differences between what is actually said and what many seem to believe the book is about.

Make no mistake: Beane neither wrote nor instigated the writing of the book, he was merely its subject. Numerous articles have been written criticizing Beane for writing a book about how great he is as a GM, but they couldn't be more off base. I'd continue, but I could never summarize Goldman's piece and do it justice. It is free content, so take 5 minutes and give it a read.

The Outhouse Blog Address

So, originally, when I started to rejuvenate The Outhouse's recall as a blog format, I wanted something like we had before, in terms of the URL. Something like theouthouse.blogspot.com. After a little troubleshooting, I settled on the title "The Outhouse, Part Deux" and used topd.blogspot.com. Once, I jumped over to see who really had theouthouse.blogspot.com and found this:

"Here is where I will chronicle my struggle with the crashing and burning of my marriage and (hopefully) the rebuilding of myself. Only my closest friends will know about this blog. Here I will be able to say the things I find so hard to say in conversation. And maybe here is where I will finally be able to let down 'the face'."

Well, my apologies to this nice lady, but I fear her blog is anything but private or unknown. Maybe next time she will pick something a little less desirable.

As if that weren't comical enough, I found these little snippets recently:
"I think the big thing - or at least one of the big things - about Ben is that he doesn't want to take responsibility for ANYTHING that can come back and bite him in the ass, where he'd end up taking the blame."
"Ben's also always been insecure - this is something I've known about him from the beginning."

And the story's taken an ironic twist.

B.J. Upton Interview

I recently had my first bylined article published on Baseball Prospectus, an interview with BJ Upton. If you get a chance to read it, let me know what you think.

Teams To Root For, Part 4

The fourth team on my list of teams to root for now that the Mariners are definitely out of the running is...
...the Oakland Athletics

Now, if you didn't see this coming, you must not know me very well. The GM that pioneered an approach that emphasizes objective statistical performance analysis (you guys probably lump it all together and call it sabermetrics -- that's close enough, I guess, but they really are somewhat different), Billy Beane, will have to work some magic again this year.

The pitching has been strong. If you didn't know that, you probably don't follow baseball enough. The Big Three (Hudson, Mulder, Zito) was supposed to become the Big Four (adding Harden), but things haven't quite panned out in that regard. Harden's still good, of course, and there's always Blanton on the way, so the A's have plenty of talent to deal.

If you don't have an affection for sabermetrics, then these guys are also the ideal underdog. Continually spending less to get a comparable team onto the field, the A's management has been leading the campaign to debunk the myth that "small market teams can't compete," going to the playoffs several times, and winning the second most games this century (for seasons in 2000-2003, one behind the M's, thanks to the 2001 miracle).

This year, they're doing it without Tejada, and they've fared well enough so far. Recently losing Chavez for several weeks won't help, as his bat was truly beginning to break out against lefties (he was always known for mashing righties and struggling against lefties) and his defense is always incredible. What they do (or don't do) between now and the All-Star Break to try to catch the division leading Angels could make the difference in their season. I know most teams make their moves between the ASB and the trading deadline, but I think these guys should move now and ask questions later. They are almost always improving their team down the stretch, and I wouldn't expect this year to be any different.

As the Mariners fizzle away, I hope to see the A's climb their way to the top of the AL West, as a victory for the underdog, to dispell the myths that Bud Selig keeps trying to propagate, and to show that sabermetric concepts are successful.

Teams To Root For, Part 3

The third team on my list of teams to root for now that the Mariners are definitely out of the running is...
...the San Diego Padres

They are my original home town team, as I was born there and lived there for the first several years of my life. There are a few reasons for everyone else to root for them, too, though.

They made the World Series in 1998 and said "OWWWWW" as the skankees brutalized and swept them in 4 short, terrifying games. They have yet to make the playoffs since, and here's hoping this year's the year.

The reasons start with PETCO Park. Okay, this is only a good reason if you want teams with a new park to do well. In recent years, teams with new parks have had swells in attendance for the first few years, but unless there was a quality product on the field, numbers dwindled after a few years. In order to keep the fans coming, San Diego needs to do well within the next few years.

Another reason is the improved lineup: gone is radical Rey, in is Khalil Greene, a rookie shortstop sensation. The outfield is full of pop, thanks to the bat of Brian Giles. Although some injuries have hurt them, specifically Klesko, and Payton early on, and more recently David Wells and Jake Peavy, the Padres remain in contention for the NL West.

If you're not already on the Dodgers bandwagon, either because of the early season success, or because (like me) you are a fan of Paul DePodesta, then the Padres are a great underdog pick to win the NL West. Many pundits predicted that the Diamondbacks or Giants would win. Many also picked the Rockies to be the "underdog" winner, but without a plan or any real talent beyond Todd Helton (currently injured) and the Coors Effect TM, the Rockies probably won't win any time soon.

So, when you're watching NL West teams, cheer for Barry, but realize the Giants wont go anywhere without somebody else of identifiable value outside of Schmidt (at least until his arm falls off -- the guy is injured, has surgery on his elbow, comes back and within a few starts is throwing 140+ pitches!). The division will probably come down to a race between the Padres and Dodgers, so if you have no current allegiences, maybe you should jump on the Padres wagon before we run out of space.