A-P "So You Think You're A Sportswriter" Thread

[metirish]

Anyway back to the numbers game..and who the hell is Nate Silver?

]Predicting Futures in Baseball, and the Downside of Damon E-Mail This Printer-Friendly Reprints Save Article By ALAN SCHWARZ Published: November 13, 2005 INDIAN WELLS, Calif., Nov. 11 - Thad Levine was distracted. As Levine, the assistant general manager of the Texas Rangers, conversed one evening at last week's Major League Baseball general managers meetings, his eyes kept wandering to an enticing packet of paper sitting on a nearby coffee table: the 2006 Pecota Projections. Discuss the Postseason For the growing number of baseball executives bent toward statistical analysis, a certain anticipation builds every off-season for the release of what is known simply as Pecota, Baseball Prospectus's �berforecast of every player's performance the next season. Most front offices have an employee who consults it - particularly during the free-agent season. "Signing someone to a three- or four-year deal is a risk-management business decision," Levine said, leafing through the pages. "This tool does a fantastic job of managing expectations for what the player will do for you." What separates Pecota from the gaggle of projection systems that outsiders have developed over many decades is how it recognizes, even flaunts, the uncertainty of predicting a player's skills. Rather than generate one line of expected statistics, Pecota presents seven - some optimistic, some pessimistic - each with its own confidence level. The system greatly resembles the forecasting of hurricane paths: players can go in many directions, so preparing for just one is foolish. Take Johnny Damon, the Red Sox center fielder considered one of this off-season's most attractive free agents. Pecota examines many factors beyond his raw statistical record - the effect of playing in hitter-friendly Fenway Park, Damon's age (32), power and speed, even his height and weight - and compares him with every major leaguer since 1949, identifying the trajectories others have taken and assessing the probability Damon will follow them. The system forecasts Damon to have about a 25 percent chance of posting an on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) of .829 next season, but also a 40 percent chance of declining to .761. This is because players like Damon have maintained their performance only for about one year before beginning a consistent, decided decline. In other words, buyer beware. Pecota is less pessimistic toward shortstop Rafael Furcal, who at 28 has a better chance of maintaining his performance level. (Though the system suggests that middle infielders age more quickly than classic sluggers.) A relative sleeper could be found in outfielder Brian Giles, who despite being 35 has the kind of skills - excellent power, speed and a fine batting eye - that tend to age relatively slowly. Pecota was developed four summers ago by Nate Silver, a 24-year-old Chicago financial consultant. "In some ways it was boredom," Silver said. "If I had a spreadsheet on my computer, it looked like I was busy." (Its official name, Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, joyfully boils down to the last name of Bill Pecota, a former major league utilityman.) The projections are anticipated enough among some executives that Silver has received e-mail messages saying, "Hey, are the Pecotas done yet?" Though the system naturally cannot predict all player fluctuations, it succeeds more than most. Last winter, it identified Jonny Gomes, a relatively unknown Tampa Bay Devil Rays outfielder, as having an excellent chance at significant improvement. Gomes hit .282 with 21 home runs in just 101 games. It also foresaw even greater production from established players like Andruw Jones, Derrek Lee and Dontrelle Willis. Pecota helps quantify the danger of long-term pitching investments, and points out which types of arms tend to project best. The strongest indicators of future performance are rates of strikeouts, walks and home runs, but also ground ball-to-fly ball ratio and even body type. As for this year's free-agent pitching market, Silver sees a fine future for A. J. Burnett, an enigmatic 28-year-old right-hander. Burnett projects to have a 3.65 earned run average next season, but also has a 15 percent chance of blossoming into a Cy Young award candidate for several seasons. Of the two most intriguing relievers available, the veteran Billy Wagner and the less-known B. J. Ryan, Pecota chooses Ryan as the better long-term investment thanks to his age next season (30 to Wagner's 34) and several other peripheral factors. Pecota's focus on looking several years ahead is what catches executives' eyes most at this time of year - and helps temper what is often unfounded optimism about players' chances of improving. "Sometimes you have a guy with a track record, a guy in his early 30's, and when he declines we act like we're shocked," Levine said. "And we don't want to look at a 26-year-old who does X and think that in two years he's going to do two-times X. This helps us stay grounded." No organization uses Pecota in a vacuum, instead incorporating it with other projection techniques like traditional scouting reports. But a decade after Bill Pecota retired, his name is growing more prominent each winter. "Everyone in baseball is in the guessing business," the Mariners executive Dan Evans said. "This makes it a little bit less of a guess." E-mail: keepingscore@nytimes.com

[seawolf17]

Silver's one of the Baseball Prospectus wunderkinds; he's a stathead. A lot of PECOTA is common sense, in a way -- like saying BJ Ryan is a smarter long-term investment than Billy Wagner -- but it quantifies things on a much more concrete level.

[Theoldmole]

What's Aaron Heilman's Pecota?

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

In the 2005 book, Pecota pegged Heilman

12% breakout
36% improve
27% collapse
And suggested it would take 2 injuries to get him a chance to play (which was more or less accurate).

"Projected" line:23 games (11 starts), 78.2 IP, 59-36 K-BB, 4.68 ERA, 4.5 VORP.

Actual: line: 53 games (7 starts), 108 IP, 106-37 K-BB, 3.17 ERA, 26.5 VORP.

PECOTA thought it was a longshot that Heilman could attain excellent K/IP and K/-BB figures.

[Guest Edgy DC]

They need to factor in the contagiousness of Pedro's changeup.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I screwed up the K-BB numbers above, and edited.

BTW, this discussion belongs more in soupy's thread than this one.

[Guest Edgy DC]

The Daily News thinks Bob Raissman is a sportswriter. Do you?

'Clown' Prince Phillips spills juice on steroids but only as a paid ESPN employee Steve Phillips never made a public issue of steroids when he was Mets GM, but he's a lot more outspoken now that he gets paid for his opinions. The transformation an athlete or a team executive undergoes to become a media member is amazing. Take the case of Steve Phillips, the former Mets GM who now works for ESPN. In the current issue of ESPN The Magazine there is a lengthy story on steroids in baseball. While there are few revelations in the piece - it's corned beef re-hash, so to speak - there is a segment headlined "The Executive," in which Phillips says that in 1987, while playing for a Mets minor league team in Mississippi, he saw one of his teammates shooting another up with some form of steroid. Steve Phillips never made a public issue of steroids when he was Mets GM, but he's a lot more outspoken now that he gets paid for his opinions. Phillips tells the magazine that in 1994, when he was Mets GM, he suspected some players were on the juice. So concerned was Phillips he had some players tested. When the "first of several players flunked," Phillips "handled it internally." The story goes on to paint Phillips as someone whose hands were tied on the steroids issue because other - more pressing - baseball matters took precedence. It's not surprising Phillips went public with all this in ESPN The Magazine. Phillips' concern about steroids now has a price tag attached. After all, Phillips never put a public spotlight on steroid abuse in baseball when he was Mets GM. Nor did he express any outrage for the impact juice was having on the game immediately after he was fired. Only now, when he is picking up a paycheck from ESPN, does Phillips feel motivated to go public. ESPN the Magazine suits don't have to worry. No one will ever accuse them of directly paying Phillips for the interview and his insights. There was no need for that. Phillips was already on the company payroll. Lines have always been blurred at Bristol Clown Community College. Are ESPN analysts, reporters and hosts paid to be journalists, sources or entertainers? In ESPN The Magazine, Phillips comes off as some kind of martyr. And yet last week ESPN was paying him for his acting ability. Phillips played the role of GM for a variety of teams - Yankees included - during mock press conferences staged by the network. While Phillips was convincing as a practitioner of Dork Speak, it was particularly pathetic watching Jeremy Schaap and Buster Olney come off as twin buffoons, playing "reporters" at these make-believe press conferences. Some genius at ESPN made a conscious decision to compromise the credibility of Schaap and Olney. No real surprise. Why worry about their reputations when, on any particular day, reporting is not a priority in Bristol? See, at ESPN it pays to be versatile. Just ask Steve Phillips.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Some fella with the Central Illinois Pantagraph also thinks ESPN and Phillips are going too far. And that people are pushy at the drug store.

Greenberg: Simulated press conferences not a good idea Saw something on television a few days ago that disturbed me so much I changed the channel. No violence. No sex. No stupid jokes -- that's my specialty. It was a simulated press conference on EPSN that left me -- and others -- shaking their heads. One of those others shaking his head was George Solomon, ESPN's ombudsman, who wrote the following on ESPN.com: "Standing at the kitchen counter Monday morning, drinking a cup of coffee, I was startled to hear a tease for an upcoming news conference involving the Boston Red Sox. ... "I read the crawl on the bottom of the screen ('Simulated news conference') and saw ESPN's Steve Phillips, a former general manager for the New York Mets, at the lectern, acting the part of Red Sox GM. I also thought I saw ESPN reporters ... among others, asking questions. "I'd been had. And so were many other viewers who, like me, simply could not understand why ESPN, a news-gathering organization of stature, would simulate a news conference," Solomon wrote. He then quoted Vince Doria of the massive sports network who said, "We wanted to present the traditional offseason hot stove speculation in a platform that would deliver the same information in a more entertaining way. We hoped that might get our viewers' attention, as opposed to the conventional piece or discussion." For those who may need a little translation -- "hot stove" discussions are what baseball fans do in the winter, talking about what their team and others need to do to improve before the next season begins. Real reporters asked real questions. Phillips played general manager and gave answers. The network did a few of these. In the one I saw, Phillips played the general manager of the Chicago Cubs. Trying something different is good. In a world of expanding and constantly changing media, we should consider new ways to give our readers or viewers information. But this goes too far. The simulated news conference morphed reporting and journalism into some kind of make-believe quasi-reality show. Granted, it is sports -- an area where the lines between reporting and entertainment have become fuzzier over the past few years. But this goes too far. Just imagine if some national news organization decided to hold a simulated press conference with President Bush -- or if we did one with Gov. Blagojevich or one of our local police chiefs. We'd tell people it was simulated. We could get someone who would accurately portray the public official. But this just opens up all sorts of possibilities for bad things to happen. Hopefully this bad idea doesn't catch on and goes away as quickly as it arrived. Were you raised by wolves? There are times I wonder if some people were raised by humans. Last week I was in line at a stor\e to buy some deodorant. There were two people ahead of me. Another store worker saw the line and went to a second check-out station. He said, "Can I help the next person in line?" There was a woman ahead of me and I waited for her to move. She didn't want to move. So I turned to pay. A man behind me threw the item he wanted to buy on the counter. The worker looked at me and I handed him the deodorant. He rang it up. I started to pay him and the guy behind me said, "Hey, I already put my stuff on the counter." The worker looked at him and said, "But he was ahead of you in line." The man got angry and protested. I turned, looked at him and said, "I was ahead of you in line." To which the man replied with disgust, "Well, I guess we're all in a hurry." The worker and I didn't know how to reply. I just left. Whether it's in line at the store or in line at a four-way stop, what's so hard about waiting for your turn? We could all share a little more courtesy with each other. Terry Greenberg is editor of The Pantagraph. Contact him at (309) 820-3230 or at tgreenberg@pantagraph.com

[seawolf17]

First of all, what the hell was the point of that piece? Why throw that random anecdote from the CVS or whatever in there?

Second, I love how Edgy combs papers nationwide -- like the [u:de9afd55ee]Central Illinois Pantagraph[/u:de9afd55ee] -- to find stories for us.

Third, what the hell is a "pantagraph"? I think Central Illinois made that up.

[Guest mlbaseballtalk]

seawolf17 wrote: First of all, what the hell was the point of that piece? Why throw that random anecdote from the CVS or whatever in there? Second, I love how Edgy combs papers nationwide -- like the Central Illinois Pantagraph -- to find stories for us. Third, what the hell is a "pantagraph"? I think Central Illinois made that up.

I have a feeling that was a paper-based version of a blog column

I have a feeling Edgy has some sort of google alerts thing that emails him whenever a Met related person is mentioned

I mean how in the bluest of hells did he get the info on Steve Bieser being on the coaching staff at some Missouri HS?

Steve Bieser?

Sure he did have one shinning moment in the first ever regular season Met-Yankee series, but that was 1997! By now he ranks with the Joe Moocks, RIch Puigs, RIch Sauvers, Joe Ostrossers, of the world of random obscure Mets

Steve

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I don't watch ESPN anymore and I'm missing all this bad TV.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Firstly, this isn't about me.

Secondly, the point of the last two clippings was clear. I guess my point in posting them consecutively was to suggest that consensus was building among sportswriters that ESPN and their staff are making mooks (and not Moocks) of themselves.

Nextly, a pantagraph is an ingenius tool for copying images --- like maps and illustrations --- by tracing them with a needle and having a lever with a pencil following the tracing. They could reduce or enlarge the scale of the drawing.



The paper, if I'm not mistaken, is the one that filed suit against Michael Moore for a dollar for misrepresenting in Farenheit 451 that a letter to the editor claiming that Gore won the 2000 election was actually a news story. I believe the suit was unsuccessful.

Great Mets of the eighties! Could you imagine seeing Disney march over the hill?

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[Guest Edgy DC]

The Brockton (MA) Enterprise retroactively awards an MVP to the Mets

Lack of time in the field cost Ortiz best of field By Bob Stern, Enterprise staff writer Did you know that Brooks Robinson won 16 Gold Gloves and was voted the American League's MVP once? Funny how defense didn't mean much the 15 years he wasn't MVP. Did you know that Ozzie Smith, who set the standard for defense for shortstops, won 13 Gold Gloves, but never sniffed the National League MVP award? I guess defense doesn't mean much among National League voters. Look at the history of MVP voting, and never � repeat never � has defense been a key ingredient for the award. The award has always been a tribute to the bashers of baseball, the guys who send towering drives over outfield fences; the guys whose averages are north of .350 or guys who are so good in a particular aspect of their game that they're almost impossible to ignore. That explains Rickey Henderson and Maury Wills. But defense? No one has ever won the award because they can range to their right to glove a ball in the hole or leap to bring back home runs from over the fence. Until this year. Alex Rodriguez is a great player who legitimately deserves to be the American League's MVP. He did nothing this year to shed his label of being the best player in the game, and the Yankees wouldn't have sniffed 95 wins or the American League East title without him. But spare me the argument that he was more valuable than David Ortiz because he played in the field. Rodriguez was incredibly valuable to the Yankees, but he was no more valuable to the Yankees than Ortiz was to the Red Sox. The case you can make for A-Rod to be the MVP is the same case you'd make for Ortiz. The Red Sox wouldn't have won 95 games or tied the Yankees for the AL East title without him either. If voters truly think Rodriguez was the most valuable player in the league, I have no argument with them. The same is true for those who voted for Ortiz. But if those same voters penalized Ortiz for being a designated hitter, then they should be ashamed of themselves. Designated hitter, whether you agree with the rule or not, is a legitimate position on a baseball team. This isn't some experiment that will be re-examined in a couple of years. It's been around for decades and figures to be around as long as pitchers throw curve balls and umpires blow calls. To penalize a player because that's his position is flat-out wrong. Ortiz's value wouldn't have been greater to the Red Sox if he played first base for 140 games, just as Rodriguez's value to the Yankees wouldn't have been less if he was the DH for most of the season. Both, Rodriguez and Ortiz, are great players. Both had great seasons. Both were deserving of the award. Baseball history is filled with bad fielders who have won the the MVP award. In 1979, the Mets' Keith Hernandez and the Pirates' Willie Stargell were named co-MVPs of the National League. If defense were counted, however, Hernandez, one of the best fielding first basemen of all time, would have won in a walk. Barry Bonds has won the last four MVP awards in the National League, a streak that will end this year, but he was a terrible outfielder those four years. He certainly was a worse outfielder than when he won his previous three awards in 1990, 1992 and 1993. Did Sammy Sosa beat out Mark McGwire in 1998 because he played right field better than McGwire played first base? I don't remember that debate. The same is true in the American League. Did defense count when Jason Giambi won in 2000, Mo Vaughn won in 1995 (beating out the equally inept fielder Albert Belle for the award) or Jose Canseco won in 1988? Did Jim Rice turn into a great fielder when he won in 1978? Remember last year's MVP, Vladimir Guerrero? How many voters do you think placed him first on their ballots because he has a great arm? The best players, obviously, are the ones who hit and field. Who could argue with Ichiro Suzuki winning in 2001 or Ken Griffey Jr. in 1997? But I'll bet there wasn't one writer who voted for them because they could field. To say Ortiz should have won the award doesn't take away from Rodriguez's performance this year. Rodriguez was a good choice, maybe even the right choice, but it's a choice that could be � and should be � debated. Ortiz was nothing short of sensational this year. The Red Sox went through a myriad of problems this year, but Ortiz was the lone constant on the club. He hit early in the season, hit in the middle of the season and hit late in the season. Boy, did he hit late in the season. Rodriguez, likewise, was sensational this year. He easily was the best player on the Yanekes and lifted them when everyone around him stumbled. If you think A-Rod was the most valuable player in the American League this year, I can't argue that. He was deserving. But the same is true for Ortiz. If you thought he was the most valuable player, I can't argue that either. He was equally deserving. But A-Rod didn't deserve it more because his position was '5' instead of DH. That's something I will argue with.

[metirish]

He makes a great point about defence, of course Hernandez wasn't a Met in 79.

[nymr83]

]Granted, it is sports -- an area where the lines between reporting and entertainment have become fuzzier over the past few years. But this goes too far. Just imagine if some national news organization decided to hold a simulated press conference with President Bush -- or if we did one with Gov. Blagojevich or one of our local police chiefs.

hey, look, its my point from the other thread only with actual examples!

[Guest rpackrat]

Stupid article. Nobody is saying that the MVP is, or should be, primarily about defense. A good defensive player, however, is clearly more valuable than a player who provides comparable offense and no defense. The article's illustrations are also stupid. Yes, Brooks Robinson won 16 gold gloves and only 1 MVP. Of course, that 1 MVP came in a year when he osted a 145 OPS+, a figure he never approached in any other season. When you combine his stellar offensive season with his typically stellar defense, he put together an MVP yaer. The fact that he didn't win the MVP in his 15 other gold glove seasons, in which he was also closer to a league average offensive player (OPS+ ranging from 58-125) doesn't mean defense was irrelevant, just that great defense is not enough to overcome mediocre (or worse) offense. Ditto with Ozzie Smith. This year, the leading AL candidates were two comparable offensive stars, though ARod was probably a bit better offensively (167 OPS+ to Ortiz' 161). But ARod also provided excellent defense, whereas Ortiz provided none. In what universe is an excellent defensive player who provides at least as much offense as his no-glove competitor not more valuable based on the added defense? It's the Most Valuable Player award, not the Most Valuable Hitter award.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

It's all a matter of perspective I think, not debiting Ortiz but crediting Gayrod, assuming their jobs with the bat were more or less equal.

[metirish]

]Stupid article. Nobody is saying that the MVP is, or should be, primarily about defense.

Yet commentator after commentator are saying that they would give their vote to Rodriguez because he plays the field and played great defence...M&MD claim it's hte reason he won...I agree that some of the analogy's in the column were silly but he was making a good point, defence only mattered this year it seems.

[Guest rpackrat]

I thonk you're missing the point, irish: Nobody is saying that they would give it to ARod because he plays defense, they're saying the fact that he plays defense (and very good defense at that) is what sets him apart from Ortiz. In other words, ARod doesn't get the award because he plays excellent D, he gets it because he is a great hitter who also plays excellent D.

[Guest Edgy DC]

If A-Rod played defense at any level above replacement level, I'd give it to him.

If they are equal in offensive win shares, and A-Rod had .5 defensive win shares to Ortiz's .1 (provided I bought win shares math hook, line and sinker), I'd have to give it to the Rod.

I only posted that article because it credited Keef as a Met.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I've just got to think that there's not so much of a schism between old-school management types and new-school as the press would have you think. But check out the lead on this otherwise professionally written profile in the OC Register:

Colletti's roots food for Dodgers MARK WHICKER Register columnist mwhicker@ocregister.com LOS ANGELES � He learned the game from coarse and intuitive men, men who judged ballplayers with their eyes, men who were convinced the baseball field was a great exposer of character and truth. He learned from Dallas Green, ranting that a player "had better learn how to look in the mirror;" Jim Frey, squinting impatiently at the first hint of psychobabble; Brian Sabean, drawing hard on a cigarette and working the phones on July 31. Since 1982 Ned Colletti has been hoarding their thoughts, sponging their instincts. On Wednesday he drove yet another new car into the Dodgers general manager's parking spot. He signed a four-year contract offered by a man who gave Colletti's predecessor a five-year deal and 20 months to fulfill it. Neither Colletti nor the deposed Paul DePodesta played professional baseball. That is almost all they share. Colletti is 50, grew up scuffling in suburban Chicago, broke into baseball as an assistant PR man for the Cubs, the equivalent of the Hollywood mailroom. Before that he was a hockey writer, covering the Flyers for the Philadelphia Journal, a short-lived tabloid so brazen that it showed a picture of a Miami riot victim, set afire, with this headline: "Body Heat." He is gregarious and outspoken. Unlike DePodesta, he will be in the clubhouse daily and nightly, taking the pulse. He quickly confirmed he was less infatuated with Hee Seop Choi and J.D. Drew than DePodesta had been - and he speaks in clipped, blunt sentences, as Frey did when he managed and general-managed the Cubs. Colletti went back to Chicago in early 1982 to be with his dying father, shortly after the Journal folded. His first Cubs salary was $14,000. He worked his way into the Cubs' front office and then into San Francisco's, and Sabean became the GM in 1997 and made Colletti his assistant. "It's good to see a guy who's paid his dues get a chance at a position like this," said Jim Fregosi, who was briefly an adviser to Sabean in San Francisco and is probably a candidate to manage the Dodgers. "I know how hard it is to get through a season," Colletti said. "You can't fool the season. It's a process that goes from Valentine's Day to Halloween. It's so long and so demanding. That's why I get choked up every year when I see the team that wins the World Series celebrating. I know what they've gone through." With one exception. "In 2002 we should have won Game 2 and Game 6," Colletti said stonily, recalling the Giants' World Series loss to the Angels. "And then we were done. I knew that in Game 7, we'd be fighting uphill. But take the Cubs in '84. We're up 2-0 in a five-game series, we've got a three-run lead in the fifth inning of Game 5, and we didn't get it done." Besides, Colletti worked in close proximity with Barry Bonds for 11 years. Jeff Kent and Milton Bradley will be like recess. "Barry is the most intriguing, interesting player I ever dealt with, and it was an honor to watch him play every day," Colletti said. "He had a compassionate, considerate side, but he liked to cover it up. "The first year I said hello to him three or four times, and he kept blowing me off, so I quit saying hello. Three strikes, and you're out, right? The next year he comes up and says, 'What are you, rude? You never speak to me.' So, from then on, we'd talk every day, and it was a guaranteed 15-20 minutes about something. And it could be anything." "He might not talk to his teammates, but then in spring training he'd show up for an hour at the minor-league complex and talk to a kid about hitting," Colletti added. "That's Barry." In winning three division titles, a wild-card spot and a National League pennant from 1997 through 2003, the Giants basically lived for today. They peddled prospects for solid veterans with moderate salaries. They lost Keith Foulke, Bobby Howry and three first-round picks who have amounted to nothing. "I'm a believer in kids," Colletti said. "And in this park, pitching and defense. They (Dodgers) had good infield defense two years ago when they won the division. Last year it wasn't so good." One could ask why the Dodgers didn't just promote Kim Ng, who had as many of the arbitration contract responsibilities as Colletti did in San Francisco. One could also wonder why so many new general managers come from the contract world instead of the front metal bench of a high school ballpark, where the scouts congregate. After all, they're the ones with the baseball eye. "I've scouted," Colletti said. "I've scouted in the Dominican Republic, I've scouted players that we were about to trade for. Brian gave me a lot of leeway to test out my ideas, to call general managers and find out what it would take. There's nothing in this game that I haven't experienced." Mostly he experienced long days and nights, alongside Green and Sabean and Frey. He was even there the night in New York, when Dwight Gooden had struck out 16 Cubs and the Mets writers wanted Frey to comment on the kid's poise. "Poise?" Frey answered. "You think his poise is the reason he does that? Poise? I've got poise. You think maybe that 98 mph fastball has something to do with it?" Three men challenged everything Ned Colletti said for 24 years. Now he gets his own challenge - win the National League West in his first season. You know, the way Paul DePodesta did. It will take poise, at least, and a critical eye. Colletti might win, he might not. But he won't try to fool the season.

[metirish]

Colletti seems like an interesting person, not sure about him heading to the clubhouse every night to check the pulse of the team, not a place for a GM ,right?

[Guest Edgy DC]

The Mets are referenced in today's New London Day. I'll only run with relevant excerpt.

Maybe There's Another Reason For The Empty Seats At Gampel By MIKE DIMAURO Day Assistant Sports Editor, Sports Columnists Published on 11/18/2005 .Storrs -- Rather than being a Negative Nellie, let's start with the sunny side: At least there were enough people left at the Gampel Morgue on Thursday night to boo Boston College's Brooke Queenan, who thumped Renee Montgomery with a forearm in the closing seconds. The announced crowd at The Morgue was a generous 9,513, a gathering of golf clappers and crickets, to see the UConn women beat BC in the WNIT semifinals. That's roughly 600 short of a sellout, although it sure looked like there were more than 600 empty seats, especially during game introductions, when rows and rows of them turned The Morgue into Shea Stadium late in '62 when the Mets were about to lose game No. 100. ....

A few probs: Bad example with 1962, as the Mets actually drew in the middle of the pack in 1962, though I guess it was pretty empty (though still Summer!) at the time they were working on loss 100. More importantly, Shea Stadium was an empty lot that probably wan't even named Shea yet.

I'll say this much for him --- has any sportswriter ever looked so much like a John Turtorro character?

[metirish]

I swear I was laughing out loud when reading the first paragraph of this....

] For a moment there, it was as if the clouds parted and the sky turned a gorgeous shade of blue and a beam of light came washing down on the upturned faces of all those Derek Jeter haters who gripe that the Yankees shortstop is overrated, overhyped, shamelessly coddled and indulged

[url=http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-sphow304533124nov30,0,1494788.column?coll=ny-sports-headlines]Captain courageous[/url]

[Guest Edgy DC]

See, I don't hate Derek Jeter. I think he's an outstanding ballplayer and seemingly a decent fella and the Yankees and thier afficianados are lucky to have him. At the same time, I think he's overrated, overhyped, shamelessly coddled and indulged.

OE: There should be a serial comma after coddled.

[Guest rpackrat]

Exactly right. Someone can be a good or great player and still be overrated. IMO, Jeter has had a hall of fame career so far. But he's not Ruth, Gehrig and Honus (excuse me, John) Wagner all rolled into one as Michael Kay and millions of MFY fans would have you believe.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

]probably wan't even named Shea yet.

Wasn't, I don't believe. Sometime in 1963.

[Elster88]

Edgy DC wrote: See, I don't hate Derek Jeter. I think he's an outstanding ballplayer and seemingly a decent fella and the Yankees and thier afficianados are lucky to have him. At the same time, I think he's overrated, overhyped, shamelessly coddled and indulged.

Exactly. The hate I feel is for the Michael Kays of the world who want to bear his children.

[Elster88]

]But Reuters reporter Larry Fine, when reached by Newsday's Jim Baumbach yesterday, said he stood by his account, emphasizing that he had taped Torre's remarks and, "I don't believe anything was taken out of context."

Ok, sure. I believe you Larry.

Another myth perpetrated by the media shot down by a direct quote that actually addresses the made up "rumor".

It's weird that these "stories" keep getting shot down. I was involved in a high-spirited argument a couple of weeks ago where a reporter repeatedly insisted that no sports reporter would take quotes out of context for the purposes of writing an article. This would seriously jeopardize his career and reputation, I was told.

[Guest Edgy DC]

But apparently the tape has gone missing while in the possession of his roommate Curly.