March 22, 2010

No Pepper

Against the Fence

by Tommy Bennett

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I'm back from South by Southwest with links for all. At least now, in addition to waiting for opening day, I can await the release of the debut Sleigh Bells album.

Is Joe Mauer's contract extension "good for baseball"? Walkoff Walk is tracking that cliche.
Or is it a cliche? Drew Fairservice argues convincingly the agreement is a single datapoint and ought not to be read any more broadly than that.

Bill at The Daily Something takes a look at how comparable catchers have performed from ages 28-35 by OPS+.
I think OPS+ undervalues Mauer since a greater than usual amount of his offensive value is tied up in OBP, as opposed to SLG, and OPS overvalues SLG as compared to OBP.

Time to rename Pennsylvania's capital? Maury Brown examines the financial reasons to send Strasburg down.
Despite the major league deal the Nationals gave Strasburg, there are still incentives for them to delay the tolling of his service time clock. Usually the cutoff for Super Two status comes in mid-May, so I'd take one of those days in my Strasburg debut pool if I were a betting man.

Pirates pitchers Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh are enjoying a less scrutinized spring training experience.
It is interesting to watch the careers of two players who learned baseball skills later in life. How transferrable are cricket skills to baseball? One early difficulty was catching the ball with a glove rather than barehanded.

Jeffrey Toobin stole the one question I have always wanted to ask Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
Stevens was in attendance for Babe Ruth's "called shot" in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, and he claims it was in fact called. He also corrects erroneous box scores with a red pen. A Cubs fan, Stevens is joined on the Court by a Phillies fan (Justice Alito), a Yankees fan (Justice Sotomayor), and a Red Sox fan (Justice Breyer).