It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Since the whole baseball card scenario has changed since I was a kid, I now look forward to the baseball preview issues from ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated as harbingers of the impending season.
ESPN arrived yesterday, and quite frankly, it’s a bit disappointing. In the past, the bulk of the content would be about baseball; not this year. Maybe it’s a sign of the times that there are no individual team profiles. Perhaps there isn’t enough staff to handle the chore. Instead there is a fairly general piece on “Sim Season,” in which the stats were fed into a computer.
“Remember 2008, when Buster Olney picked the Indians to win it all? Or kast season, when im Kurkjian tabbed the Mets to take the NL wild card? We do, which is why we’re eliminatuing human error this year,” says the article. “With the help of the stats gurus at baseball Think Factory and their cutting-edge computer projection system known as ZiPS, we simulated the 2010 season 100 times. Based on the results, we created pie charts showing how many times your team wins its division.” Etc. etc. They still have Olney and Kurkjian for comic relief, I mean commentary, but the results are limited to those charts and a list of three players in each division projected to have good seasons and three on the way down.
Not sure if it’s the anti-PED backlash, but defense is the new home run, and the Mariners featured in Jeff Bradley’s article “What’s In Are Outs.”
There’s also a ho-hum deconstruction — “Head to Head” — of an at-bat between Jake Peavy and Andre Ethier by Olney. Seems we’ve seen this before.
Smaller items include an interesting “5 Things You Should Know About Trimming an MLB Roster,” with Kim Ng, the Dodgers’ assistant GM, and a “compatibility test” to see how well the Twins’ J.J. Hardy and Orlando Hudson will get along.
Actually, the most interesting item, IMHO, is the closing “And another thing,” a chart of things that happen in a typical season. Some highlights:
- 31 rainouts, 2 snowouts
- 13,966 pitching changes
- 2,430 games, 21,193 strikeouts
- 76,485,560 tickets sold, but “only”21,733,839 hot dogs. Seems some fans aren’t doing their patriotic duty
- 425 DL stints (413 by the Mets)
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{ 1 comment }
I always thought that ESPN the Bird Cage Liner was aimed more at the 12-15 demographic, much like their channels.
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