April 1, 2013

BP Announcements

Entire Baseball Prospectus Staff Hired by Mystery Team

by Russell A. Carleton

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BP World Hindquarters -- The bloggers are coming! The bloggers are coming!

Baseball Prospectus CEO Joe Hamrahi has confirmed that the entirety of the staff of Baseball Prospectus, a “web log” or “blog” website from the internet on which amateurs post articles which reduce baseball to a series of mathematical equations, has been hired by a team in Major League Baseball. “It’s kind of a weird day here at BP,” said Hamrahi. “They really wanted to get fully on board with the recent move toward analytics in baseball, and figured that instead of putting together a department, they’d just hire us.”

While Hamrahi confirmed that only one team was involved, he declined to name the team. “Look at that, the mystery team gets the big free agent prize again!” When asked about the secrecy on the part of the team, Hamrahi stated only that “[they] really want to keep things quiet about how much they’re embracing analytics so that they can surprise other teams. Plus, Michael Lewis is already on board to write a book about the whole project, Channing Tatum is going to play me in the movie version, and Martin Kove has signed on to play [new scouting director] Jason Parks.”

According to Hamrahi, writers and technical staff for the website would need to put on pants and emerge from their mothers' basements, and would be assigned to roles within the new organization roughly consistent with their roles at BP. New Assistant General Manager Colin Wyers said that he was looking forward to the challenge of running an organization entirely by computer. Proclaimed Wyers, “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in front offices, we shall fight on the American and National Leagues, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our stats, whatever the cost may be.”

New PITCHf/x Analyst and data coordinator Harry Pavlidis added, “I’m really looking forward to some good cheesestea— Oh right, that would probably give away… Right… Secret… Ummm yeah, just really excited to headed to Phil… ummm, happy, really happy. Liberty Bell.”

Reaction from around the rest of baseball was mixed. Tampa Bay Rays Director of Baseball Systems and former Baseball Prospectus staffer Dan Turkenkopf said, “ .” Mike Fast, also a former writer at the website and now an analyst for the Astros, was huddling in fear in his Minute Maid Park office when reached for comment. “It’s just all so terrifying with all the secrecy. They could be on any team. I mean, American League? National League? I don’t even know what league we [the Astros] are in any more, and now this… they could be anywhere.”

According to a press release from Baseball Prospectus, the company will no longer be able to publish the high-quality baseball analysis that fans of the site have come to expect. Instead, BP has replaced its homepage with a random number generator. "It's like nothing's changed," one relieved long-time subscriber said upon seeing the redesigned site. Hamrahi reports that traffic remains strong.

Russell A. Carleton is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @pizzacutter4
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