An Announcement
Dave · March 11, 2009 at 6:12 pm · Filed Under Mariners
So, this column isn’t really baseball related, but I thought you might all enjoy it anyway.
Yes, this is a regular thing. Yes, I’ll be writing about baseball for them this summer.
Yes, I’m excited.
The only thing I can say is…Awesome.
The Wall Street Journal? Holy crap.
You deserve it, man.
This may very well save print media.
Congratulations Dave. This is awesome.
Congratulations. Thats awesome.
Has anyone mentioned awesome? Because awesome.
How’d you swing that gig, Dave?
Congratulations, Dave. So the green banner about extended sports coverage in today’s paper should have said, “Now with Dave Cameron.”
Congrats Dave, that is awesome.
In regards to the article about Michigan St., did you simply just sort the rankings by “Luck” and find Michigan St. towards the top or was there more to it. Despite being lucky they’re still ranked 11th, which means they’d be overrated as a #1 seed, and only slightly overrated as a #2 seed. Just want to make sure I’m getting the point I guess.
Well, since it’s the news side…
At first I thought “hey kenpom!” Then I noticed that it’s WSJ… Ridiculously awesome, 100 congratulations to you.
Wow. Congratulations!
Though, if you aren’t careful you’re gonna give sabrnerds and mathletes a good name. I mean, if you write for the WSJ you can’t possibly still live in your mother’s basement right? (Of course it may reinforce the pencil neck stereotypes.)
ps. Since no one mentioned how awesome this is, I thought I would mention that this is in fact, awesome.
Oh no, there’s a comments section next to the article! Watch out.
Any predictions on the Dawgs or, even better, have you done any work/research that would freak-out or get Husky fans excited?
A very cool article Dave.
Congratulations
Hmm … let the awesome roll continue!
Here’s to hoping it’s a paying gig, and (selfishly) that it will not significantly impact what you can contribute to USSM!
Is it online, or in the print version as well?
Congrats. You are a phenomenal writer.
This may very well save print media.
Early leader in the clubhouse for the most hyperbolic statement of 2009.
In regards to the article about Michigan St., did you simply just sort the rankings by “Luck†and find Michigan St. towards the top or was there more to it.
The editors wanted me to do a piece on the Luck statistic, and Michigan State was the luckiest of the likely tournament teams, so they became the object lesson. I didn’t set out to pick on the Spartans.
Any predictions on the Dawgs or, even better, have you done any work/research that would freak-out or get Husky fans excited?
I’ll be doing a few more college basketball pieces with the tournament starting up, and I’d imagine that they’ll both be relevant to Huskies fans, even if they aren’t explicitly about UW.
Here’s to hoping it’s a paying gig, and (selfishly) that it will not significantly impact what you can contribute to USSM!
I have a wife now – the only way I can get her to go along with letting me spend more time writing is to show her how many more pairs of shoes it can translate into. (Kidding – love you Amy…)
And, I’m going to do my best to not let it interfere with USSM, but I’ll be honest, I’m getting stretched pretty thin between here, FanGraphs, WSJ, married life, school, and various other life commitments. I honestly feel bad about how little I’ve posted in the last week, but it’s just spring training, so hopefully it hasn’t been too noticeable.
Is it online, or in the print version as well?
Both – you can go buy a paper copy tomorrow and it will be in there.
let the awesome roll continue!
Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I really appreciate it.
Dude, you work WAAAAAAAY to hard! Love your work and good luck. Just don’t forget us!
Dave! Sounds like a sweet gig!
Excellent work Dave. I like the statistically bent of the new WSJ “Sportspage.” Your approach will be a great fit, I’m sure.
So much for Dave Cameron the well-kept secret.
Congratulations, and keep sticking it to Michigan State.
Good on ya, man. Thanks for everything you have contributed to my greater understanding of baseball.
The WSJ is one of the few media outlets that is doing just fine. I think part of the reason is they are good at figuring out what people want to read, and getting the people that can provide it.
Hear that PI? Oh, nevermind. It’s too late.
Good stuff.
Congratulations, Dave.
Congratulations, Dave. Hope you’re taking some time to breathe.
Very cool. This will probably be the first most of these readers have heard of Pomeroy, so it’s great to introduce them.
It doesn’t surprise me at all, by the way, that LSU is high on that list. That team has won a ton of close games this year, games that with some “unluckiness” could have gone the other way. The only thing about MSU is that the Big Ten is so awful, I really don’t think there’s much chance they struggle in their conference tournament.
Anyway, never knew you were a college hoops fan. But I guess living in N.C., you really don’t have much choice, do you?
Wow…a long way from a (talented) 19-year-old posting on the Mariners newsgroup. Congratulations, Dave – and it couldn’t happen to a nicer or more deserving guy.
I’d not be too sure of that. A huge number of their advertisers no longer exist, no one is buying full page ads announcing the closing of their huge deals and there have been entire sections lately where the only ads were for Dow Jones and other News Corporation affiliates. Their subscription base is probably a lot less likely to fall than other media outlets, but make no mistake, they’re not doing all that great. That’s part of why they’re trying to pick up the slack of cities that may be doing without local newspapers with greater coverage of sports and entertainment, to give themselves a market beyond finance and presumably an opportunity for broader national advertising accounts.
WALL STREET JOURNAL SUBSCRIPTION GET!
Yikes. I am terrified to ask this. What does the Gaussian Method say about our Huskies? You ducked it gracefully above, but c’mon! This is hard on the ticker!
Can that formula be applied to baseball teams so we could see how unlucky the Mariners were in 2008 or if they just really sucked????
Congragulations Dave!
Nice work, Dave…congrats!
Now that Dave’s hit the big time…..how much do you think his rookie card is worth?
Nice job Dave…congrats!
I hate to be the first to say it…
But…
Congrats Dave, that’s awesome!
You rock, Dave. Many congrats, and I hope you use your time at the WSJ wisely. (by the way, how funny is it that the first thing I thought of when you typed in WSJ was Winston-Salem Journal… man, I hate growing up in North Carolina
Congratulations!!!! This is very exciting! Does the WSJ have a name for your column yet?
Please keep us posted on future articles.
Congrats Dave! Awesome! Does this make you eligible to join the BBWAA?
Also, it’s very unfair to compare the Seattle P-I to the WSJ. The WSJ is different type of paper altogether. The WSJ contains information and insights that no one else provides. It’s an internationally distributed paper with a deep and well established niche. Of course, the PI would have gained a number of subscribers if they had beaten the WSJ to this particular hire.
Wonderful. So, Tuesday, one blogger I follow lands a column in in the Christian Science Monitor (and makes a huge splash); now you land a regular column in the WSJ, and hopefully an equally huge splash with that. Good week.
And the New York Times hires Atlantic former blogger Ross Douthat to be one of their major columnists. One would almost think this “blogging” is more than just something that uninformed geeks do in their mom’s basements
Well, Douthat doesn’t really count — he’s Harvard, he’s written a book, he’s written articles in all sorts of magazines. The blogging’s ancillary for him. Dave’s the one who’s working his way up the outside (good for him, and good for us).
Congratulations. The WSJ, too – nice. I think that your writing, both in style and in substance, fits in well there. I do wish they’d given you a little more space to go in depth.
Does anyone have bloggers like the M’s have bloggers? We are very fortunate.
very good– the broader the readership, the better. Now they need to get you into the special weekend section.
Congratulations.
I’ll 44th the awesomeness of this and 2nd gwangung’s comment. It’s just unfortunate for your readers that the paying gigs don’t allow you to go into as much detail as blogging does. Congratulations.
That’s awesome, man.
On MSU’s note – the explanation for their record-percentage differential is their two blowout losses to Maryland and UNC when they were hurting early on. Mix that in with the fact they play in the notoriously defensive Big Ten – where when you win by 8, you’ve effectively blown out the competition – and I could see them easily being the team that most outplayed their PS-PA allotment for the year.
I’d still watch this team real close come the tournament, though – being 11 deep, fully healthy for the first time this year, and coached by Tom Izzo is a recipe for danger on the opposite side of the court.
Good things, Dave. The Wall Street Journal only increases its reputation for good taste by this move. Don’t forget to link future articles, and I’ll be sure to scan the office copy for your future work.
Nifty! The WSJ is an excellent newspaper, and enhances its reputation by pulling you on board.
Good on ya. You may yet end up with a career in sports journalism. (And just wait until there are kids. Your wife won’t just be satisified with you bringing home shoe-money.)
Just need to add my voice to the chorus, Congratulations!
Very cool! -my $0.02
Congratulations indeed!
For cash strapped students, I believe that WSJ provides low cost student subscriptions (at least they did when I was in school a few years back). It was VERY affordable compared to what you may pay at the newsstand (I think almost 60% off or so).
Congratulations, Dave.
Congrats, Dave! That is pretty frickin awesome.
And hey, we understand you’re stretched pretty thin right now, so if you have to slack off a bit here and there we’ll forgive you. It’s quality over quantity anyway, and your work is definitely quality.
Hear, hear. Pretty sure the Mariners blogosphere is hands down the best in baseball.
Ack, Dave is now a puppet of Rupert Murdoch!
I kid (and of course, so are The Simpsons)
Congratulations Dave, this is a fantastic addition to your resume and a wonderful opportunity for you to spread the gospel to the real people who don’t live in their parents’ basements.
Considering the WSJ is one of the few examples on the net of a news outlet that is successful while charging for access, I think it’s already saving — or destroying — print media without him.
Dave – the luck factor you reference appears to be based somewhat along the same lines as the Pythagorean Theorem for projecting baseball records. Do you think that the smaller sample sizes (32 games in hoops vs 162 in MLB) and wider point swings (20 point blowouts in hoops vs 1-2 run games in MLB) would make it much less reliable from a statisctical persepective?
Congratulations!!! Well deserved!!!
The luck factor is also based on the standard deviation of those point totals, so it’s more complicated than the standard pythag. Presumably that eliminates some noise.
The question is, can we do that for baseball?
Yikes. I am terrified to ask this. What does the Gaussian Method say about our Huskies? You ducked it gracefully above, but c’mon! This is hard on the ticker!
Pomeroy’s ratings, found here, have UW as the 14th best team in the country, and say that they haven’t really been lucky at all in terms of wins and losses.
You’re the greatest, Dave. Congratulations!
Dave, Congrats on joining the dark side. (I kid.)
now that’s a fun chart.
Apparently Gonzaga has been somewhat unlucky in their losses, and is ranked pretty highly. fun to see how this plays out over the next 4 weeks.
good work dave!
You’ve already been accused of East Coast Media Bias in the comments section of that article. That didn’t take long.
Has Auburn been lucky or are they just generally lucky to be playing in the SEC this year (and will they be lucky come selection sunday)?
Dave,
Does the WSJ gig give you “credential” press status and access to the secret vault of the locker-room? After all, you can’t understand baseball unless you see Silva in a jock strap.
Congrats, well deserved!
How ’bout that?!
From Main Street to Wall Street (Journal).
Congratulations. And the comments section is already cracking me up. Now write something about how awesome U-Dub is… pretty please?
Woo hoo!
Awesome scale off-the-charts. Congratulations, Dave. The world needs every good writer it can get.
As a long time reader I want to add my congratulations. Well done and I hope this brings even more opportunities your way.
Ten more years until Dave gets to vote for the Hall of Fame!
Let me be the first to say it: congratulations
Five comments so far. All very obviously from MSU fans. All… not very nice things said about Dave.
Congrats Dave, and it should be interesting to see the baseball coverage you bring to the mainstream readers (though, I suppose WSJ readers may not exactly be mainstream).
In every sport, defense is the one constant. Offenses can go through stretches of atrophy, but typically, a good defense stays a good defense, as long as all of the players are healthy. I’ve watched plenty of college basketball in my life, and defense wins championships. Plain and simple. And MSU’s defense, when healthy, is mind-blowing.
I’m not sure if I particularly agree with the sentiment that a conference that will likely get 8 of its 11 teams in the tournament is akin to third grade height contests, but I’m ecstatic for Dave nonetheless. Can’t wait for the baseball-related content.
That’s a nice small college basketball article. It looks like the column will be about looking at a variety of sports from a stats-oriented perspective? As they might say in that baseball powerhouse Australia, good on ya mate, for not limiting yourself to baseball. But if indeed you’ll be writing about sports in general, the statistical world has exploded in size and it’s very difficult to keep up with it all. I can’t even keep up with all the stuff in pro basketball alone, much less the even larger amount of stuff going on in baseball, and there’ve been similar statistical revolutions in football. Not sure about hockey or soccer.
Hey, I’m eating lunch here!
My statement about this saving print media was intentionally hyperbolic in an attempt to illustrate how highly I think of Dave’s writing.
Seeing my favorite sports writer (that’s you, Dave) get a WSJ gig is like watching my favorite pitcher (King Felix) shut out the Yankees. Congradulations! I’d also love to see this new WSJ gig set you on the path to BBWAA membership, Dave. But if the WSJ got you some good media credentials, how would you want to use them? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the sense that you’re happy as a clam living where you are and have little desire to do traditional sports media-type things (at-the-ballpark interviewing and reporting, for example). What (and this is for everyone) are the biggest deficiencies in baseball reporting today that a few new reporters pulled from the sabermetric community could remedy? Are media credentials a good avenue for fixing these?
So then who should I pick in my bracket Dave?
Congrats!
I must add my congratulations as well. I hope that your analytical skills and writing abilities take you to even greater heights.
Wow, that’s awesome news Dave. Congratulations. I’m so happy for you.
Congrats. I had no idea you were so versatile.
Way to go, Dave.
This is great news! Congrats on the new gig.
It’ll be fun to read your take on sports other than baseball.
Seriously, where do you find the time? Newlywed, Fangraphs and here, and now the WSJ?
Wow, congrats Dave. Now, despite all those who think bloggers live in their parents’ basement, it is pretty obvious that blogging is a meritocracy. The best writers, in the long term, are recognized as such. It’s pretty cool to see you get this gig and drive that point home. Though how you haven’t been offered an analyst’s position in a Major League front office by now is beyond me.
One thing about Pomeroy is that he doesn’t deal in raw point margins; he deals in efficiency margins, based off of adjusted points per possession. It’s still a bit flawed, in that we know teams can either artificially run up the score late or draw close(r) late, but it’s a surprisingly accurate measure of the strength of a team.
If you look back at previous years, Pomeroy’s ratings — which are designed to be predictive — have predicted outcomes in the NCAA Tournament far better than any other metric measure.
Oh, and if you’re looking for an edge in your bracket, read this and look here.