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The Premiership side with by far the most American players is in the process of possibly completing a monumental dodge of relegation. After a 2-0 win against Birmingham, Fulham finds themselves out of the bottom three relegation spots for the first time since the very beginning of the season. They still have one more game and could still go down, but this relegation nonsense sure makes for a lot more exciting games for the worst teams in the league than we see in September in MLB.

I mean the Marlins should be threatened with relegation purely out of principle if nothing else, but even ignoring that, this crap is thrilling. I don’t think Man Utd and Chelsea battling for the Championship is this exciting. I was talking to my dad about it the other day, and I theorized that maybe getting to keep what you thought you were going to lose is more exciting than winning something you’ve already won before (recently). Nothing seems to get right down to the heart of the matter better than threatening your team with becoming a minor league team if you don’t play better.

There are problems with promotion and relegation, of course, and the chances of it being implemented are roughly the same as Buzz Bissinger sending Will Leitch a Christmas Card this year, but I like it anyway. Besides, the Toledo Mudhens deserve at least one year in the Majors after all of these years.

I have a new post up on Baseball Digest Daily about the verbal tirade Buzz Bissinger launched against Deadspin’s Will Leitch on Bob Costas’ HBO navel gavzing exercise the other night.

Here’s a short post on BBDD about Brian Bannister and how a statistical phenomenon could be affected by knowledge of the phenomenon by one of the actors.

What’s funny is, Reyes isn’t always this easy to hit.

Nothing takes me back to my twenties than guys spitting blood in a bar at 2:30 in the morning. Methinks that today Big Al will be hurting more from last night’s libations than the punch.

I wrote a post on Big Soccer about the challenges that we face in individual player analysis in soccer as compared to baseball.

I guess if I were to suggest a course of action for the statistical community, a soccer version of Bill James “win shares” might be the best idea. This is interesting because I’m not all that enamored of win shares in baseball; it’s interesting but I don’t think any significant improvement on the sorts of things already being done, particularly for modern players.

But for soccer, I think it’s the exact right approach. Figure out the quality of the team the player plays for, and then apportion out credit/blame to individual players based on those results. The difficulty, I think, is that intuitively I believe soccer is a multiplicative sport and not an additive one. That is, if one team has two players rated at 10 and 2 and the other has players rated at 5 and 5, the second team wins 25 to 20 rather than losing 12 to 10.

Granted I can’t prove that, which again is another problem. For the Billy Beanes of the world looking to crossover, they have a very difficult task ahead of them. The good news is that success may prove to bring monumental rewards, because they’d be one of the few people on the planet who would possess that knowledge.

Met up in Tempe with some regulars from BTF for some beer and food. I got to relate to them my stories about the Red Sox, they got to complain about the lunatic who showed up at their table impersonating Voros McCracken. A good time was had by all. And by “all,” I mean “me” as I can only guess at whether anyone else had a good time.

Thanks again boys for tolerating my yapping. Cheers.

Well the easiest way to get me to root for you is if you give me perks and say nice things about me. My allegiances come cheap that way.

So I can’t say I was particularly disappointed with the result of today’s Tigers vs. Royals game. The Royals won 4-0 behind 7 shutout innings by Brian Bannister. Congrats to the Royals and Brian, and while there will probably be some rough days this season, it’s nice to see them have some success. Thanks to the Royals for the spring press credentials and thanks to Brian for speaking with me. I’ll continue to pull for both.

UPDATE: And now the Royals complete the three game sweep behind Greinke. I wonder if too fast a start might get expectations out ahead of where they need to be. I suppose that’s a danger Royals fans are willing to live with right now.

Baseball’s true opening day is on Monday, but the domestic soccer season gets underway in an hour as MLS begins its 13 season of existence. I guess it’s just a personal preference, but when a baseball fan who also likes soccer learns that I’m a bit of a soccer guy myself, that fan often asks me which Premiership team I support. I try and be diplomatic about it, but I just have trouble getting worked up over English soccer. I guess I’m like the Japanese fans of Ichiro or Matsuzaka and I root for a team like Fulham who is packed with Americans, but if all of the Americans left, my interest in Fulham would cease.

For whatever reason, I prefer the domestic game despite knowing it’s a lower quality of play (but not nearly as low as some folks like to claim). Maybe because I could see the games live (though I’d have to drive to LA to do it) or maybe because I understand how important the domestic game is to the development of the sport in this country. For whatever reason, I follow and enjoy MLS a little more than I do club games from across the pond. I enjoy the World Cup more than either though.

Anyhow here’s a few players to keep an eye on in MLS this year: [Read more →]

Nick Piecoro has a piece in today’s Arizona Republic about Stephen Drew’s upcoming season in which I get a mention. I really appreciate that some of the sportswriters now see statistical work as a means to explain what it is many people actually see during the games (like Drew hitting into a little bad luck). I think this helps the cause of statistical analysis and greatly improves the quality of sportswriting as well, so Piecoro and others who are doing these sorts of things should be commended.

The Red Sox and A’s will soon square off in the Far East to kick off the regular season. The rest of the teams get their start in a week or so and then we’ll be off.

I’m a baseball fan, but I don’t think I’m enough of one to stay up until the wee hours to watch tonight’s game. Looks like this one’s going on DVD for viewing tomorrow.