Jim Parque signs
Man, you dudes are staaarved for news. Jim Parque’s this year’s “injured former player now hopefully healed and dreams of making it back” story. Injuries destroyed his career: after a nice 2000 with the White Sox, he never started more than five games in a season and hasn’t put on a major league uniform since 2003. There’s really no projections or analysis to be done here – the health of his arm determines entirely how well he can pitch, and at this point only the teams that have talked to him and Parque have any idea what his condition is.
Someone wins an advance reader’s copy of The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
207 unique non-authors commented, some of who, ignoring instructions, registered today and made their first comment in that thread. They got thrown out. No one (surprisingly, given the subject matter) attempted to bribe me or otherwise cheat. So lacking a good n-sided die, I used Excel’s RANDBETWEEN, and we have a winner, which I’ll announce when I hear back from them. Unless they want to remain anonymous.
If I may make a pitch, though — it’s clear that at least 200 of you are interested in reading it. For only $11 more than free, you can pre-order the final version that features pictures with captions, corrected illustrations, and I promise that either at the USSM signing event (to be announced) or in some other fashion, I’ll make every effort to sign it for you.
Pre-orders will be hugely important in the book’s success, so if you’re thinking about it, please do go for it — it’s $11 and you’ve got months to cancel if all the readers and reviews this far turn out to be wrong.
Thanks to everyone who entered, it was good to see.
Free advance copy of The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
I hold in my hands one rare advance uncorrected reader’s copy of The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball. I’m going to give it away to a USSM reader today.
If you’d like it, autographed or not, leave a comment below and I’ll randomly select someone and send it to them. The one caveat: to prevent mass registrations, your account must have been registered before today. Long-time lurkers, apologies, but your day will come.
Also, a reminder – March 3rd, Peoria. Meet two major league GMs, Jonah Keri, me, and get a Cheater’s Guide bookmark or something similarly exciting. Check it out.
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Community Projections
In 2004, James Surowiecki published a book entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds”, in which he discussed how a well rounded group of laymen were better at evaluating almost anything than any individual expert in that field. Essentially, he posited that a large group of people would almost always do better in any test of knowledge than an individual person, even if that person was clearly more informed than any other individual in the crowd.
This applies to almost every facet of life, including baseball. As notable analyst and friend of USSM Tom Tango has shown, an amalgamation of projections from fans often perform as well or better than advanced projection systems or baseball experts. By combing the various bits of knowledge from a large sample of people, the inherent bias’ that each of us hold can generally be overcome in most cases, presenting an accurate assessment of reality.
In that spirit, we’re happy to join forces with Jeff Sullivan and the gang over at Lookout Landing to present the 2007 Community Projection series. Last year, Jeff spearheaded this project on his blog, and this year, we’re joining forces to give the Mariner blogosphere readership a real chance to show your stuff. Is the group widsom of the average USSM/LL reader more knowledgable about the potential of this team than advanced systems like PECOTA? I say yes, and this is a chance to find out.
The community projections officially kick off on Monday. In order to make the collection and calculations easy and accurate, we’re going to be utilizing Google Spreadsheets. This will allow us to share an Excel style workbook over the web for collaboration and publishing. To use Google Spreadsheets, you need to have a (free) Google account and join the community projection mailing list so that we can add you to the list of collaborators.
We will not send any spam, sell your address, or do any other annoying things – we just need to be able to invite you to edit the spreadsheet. To participate, send an email to communityprojections@gmail.com. On Monday, we’ll send a notice inviting everyone on the list to enter your projection for Kenji Johjima, and we’ll proceed around the diamond with the rest of the team over the next several months.
You don’t need to be an expert to feel like you have something to offer. If you’re reading the blog, you’re probably a pretty well informed fan, and we’d love to have you participate in the community projection series. So, sign up today and help us make this a true test of the wisdom of the Mariner blogosphere crowd.
Late-week news of little or no note
Well, sort of. Those of you who like me have not forsaken the Cult of Doyle after the team’s craven betrayal of Snelling will note that Austin Kearns’ new $17.5m deal with the Nationals. This means that Snelling’s going to have to beat the stuffing out of, at least, Ryan Church and a similar cast of scrubs in order to crack the starting Nationals lineup. He’s out of options, right? Maybe the Nationals end up waiving him at the end of spring training when one or more of Vidro/Guillen demonstrate they can’t play and… yeah, I’m dreaming.
Mike Matheny’s retiring for medical reasons.
Roger Clemens continues to generously fill column-inches.
Pirates signed Tony Armas Jr. to a 1-yr, $3.5m deal to avoid arb.
Brian Roberts signed with the Orioles for 1y, $4.2m
Quick Wednesday news
Barry Bonds is, to my knowledge, the first player to have a clause in his contract allowing it to be terminated if he’s indicted. His agent says it’s not enforceable. I’d bet the Giants disagree.
Yankee Stadium gets the 2008 All-Star game, and then the Yankees will inevitably get another one soon afterwards with their new stadium.
Wanted: P.R. man
No, not for us. For Jose Guillen’s trainer.
This story on ESPN details Guillen’s workout program during the offseason, and it’s all pretty generic. If you’ve read a story about a guy coming off injury working hard to get back in shape and prove himself again, you’ve read this one.
Except, there’s a throwaway line that I just can’t wrap my mind around.
The guy that drives him is the 54-year-old Presinal, known to Dominican players as Nao (sounds like Now). Guillen has worked with him the last seven offseasons. Presinal has been under contract in recent seasons to Juan Gonzalez and Bartolo Colon, but discussions are under way to have him join Guillen this season in Seattle.
Yes, folks, Jose Guillen is being trained by the man who had such wonderful success keeping Juan Gonzalez healthy and Bartolo Colon in shape. And he’s using that experience on his resume?
Really? You’ve been working with this guy?
I’m sure Presinal knows way more about conditioning than I do, but he has to have clients that are better recommendations for his services than Bartolo Colon and Juan Gonzalez, doesn’t he?
First review for Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
From the Feb 1 Library Journal:
Zumsteg, Derek. The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball. Houghton. Apr. 2007. 256p.
ISBN 0-618-55113-1 [ISBN 978-0-618-55113-2]. pap. $13.95.
It’s been said that an athlete who “ain’t cheatin’ ain’t tryin'” and that “rules are made to be broken.” Zumsteg (coauthor, Baseball Prospectus) has written a lively and challenging account of cheating as part of America’s pastime, whether it’s the habits of particular notables, such as Gaylord Perry and his spitball, or modern day pharmaceutical legerdemain. He also ponders such issues as whether it’s cheating to try to bunt to break up a no hitter. No, it ensures that the game evolves and progresses! This one’s a sure hit.
Pre-order now, folks. Your purchase supports me writing for USSM.
The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
Only $11 – a bargain at twice the price.
First book event of any kind– Peoria, March 3rd, you can meet two major league GMs, Jonah Keri, me, and get a Cheater’s Guide bookmark or something similarly exciting. Check it out.
Monday also holds no interesting news
I mean really, ESPN’s running a headline with “Gonzalez, Hollins looking to aid Yomuri” and it’s Luis A. Gonzalez.
Or what, Clemens isn’t sure if or when he’ll come back next year? Can’t you just write “cross-apply last year’s articles on this topic?”
Spring training feed announcement
Come on out to sunny Peoria and meet two major league GMs March 3rd. Seattle Mariners GM Bill Bavasi and San Diego Padres GM Kevin Towers will talk and take questions from fans for a good 45 minutes, before seeing the two interleague rivals face off in a fierce spring training game at the Peoria Sports Complex. Afterwards, you can buy a signed copy of the newly updated, paperback version of Baseball Prospectus’ Baseball Between the Numbers
Cost is $21, which includes your ticket to the game and the money we have to pay TicketMaster to mail them to us so we can distribute them early.
RSVP by emailing to seattlefeed@yahoo.com. Please specify your full name and how many tickets you need. To ensure that we can secure/order a group of tickets all together, deadline to RSVP and pay for tickets will be Friday, Feb. 9. Once we’ve confirmed your RSVP by email, you can PayPal the funds, by no later than Friday, Feb. 9, to: derek@ussmariner.com