THT: Jaffe: Ten things I didn’t know before SABR 38

Chris Jaffe takes in the SABR conven...BREAKING NEWS! Joe Dimino snaps wrist playing punchball: Bernie Williams to be slingbearer!

4. I’m sooooooo very tired of clutch hitting studies

By far the biggest names slated for Cleveland were longtime sabermetric lions Pete Palmer and Dick Cramer, who co-presented a section responding to Bill James’s “Understanding the Fog” article from the Baseball Research Journal from a few years ago.

This confirmed for me something I’ve long since believed. It wasn’t that clutch hitting can’t be shown to exist even if you account for James’ fog (which was their main point). It was about the entire debate. It’s the same damn back-and-forth. You’ll never be able to prove definitively that clutch ability doesn’t exist (that’s difficult with anything) and a rigorously mathematical approach will show at most only limited clutch ability.

It’s one thing if some random study of the issue by Billy Joe Robidiminoux does a study that leaves me flat, but these aren’t just any two random guys from Tacoma.

By and large, the air has become stagnant on this issue and the whole line of questioning is suffering. You know what someone will say about the issue before he opens his mouth. This dead horse keeps getting beaten.

Joe Posnanski Blog: Not Especially Safe For Work (or anywhere else)

Is this funkooler than ‘Grandpa’ Al Lewis screaming #### THE FCC!!! during Stern’s anti-censorship rally ...it might be, it just might be.

I have been writing this blog so I could referee the official Scott Raab vs. Pat Jordan Swear-Off.

Now is the time when you can hide the kids. As you may have noticed on the last blog, I wrote that some people are good at swearing and some people, like myself, are not. In there, I wrote that Pat Jordan was the best swearer in journalism today. And I wrote that my good friend, Esquire’s Scott Raab, was second best. I will admit now that I did not really consider the ramifications of that statement — in other words, I badly, badly underestimated Scott’s singular pride for the expletive.

He wrote this comment, which I’m sure you have already seen:

“All due respect, but I’d kick Jordan’s ancient, bony, hairless ass in a curse-off any day of the ####### week (Except on Shabbat, when I go to synagogue and pray for Joe Borowski’s piece of #### right arm to fall off.“

At this point, as you have no doubt guessed, it was only a matter of time before Pat Jordan responded:

”Polski, tell Raab i got more muscles in my ####### hair than he has in his ####### body. Also, i stopped shaving my body when i stopped competing in bodybuilding contests when I was 53. I’ll bury the ####### wimp in a curse-off. i got mine the old fashioned way, in the locker room. Where’d he get his, the ####### press box?“

Thanks a ####### lot to the great Belth.

Delaware Online: Playing ‘Moneyball’ on the local music scene

Throws Swivel Chairs.

With wallets getting thinner and purses getting lighter, we’ve got to come up with a concertgoers’ version of “Moneyball,” the strategy and baseball worldview perfected by Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane as laid out in Michael Lewis’ 2003 bestseller of the same name.

Like Billy Beane using previously ignored stats to discover cheaper players who are more efficient, we’ve got to find previously ignored bands to discover cheaper concerts that are more excellent. We’ve got to spend less to rock.

We’ll start out with the rock concert equivalent of key “Moneyball” figure Scott Hatteberg—Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Leo is always putting his nose to the grindstone, always serving up strong-to-excellent albums and always hitting the pavement to tour behind it.

And all of those shows? Cheap, cheap, cheap.

Baseball Minutia: Todays Dead Ball Player - Art Fowler

From hoistin’ the moist to bending breaking elbows with Art Fowler and Billy Martin…

Art’s real legacy in the game is always going to be his pitching coach experience and his involvement with Billy Martin. Together they must have decided over cocktails one night to see what kind of abuse a pitchers arm could take, and they both followed through with their plan.

...Back again in 1988 Fowler coached a staff that for he first time in his career had not one starter with at least 200 innings pitched (Rick Rhoden led the team with 197)

After that season Fowler went the way that Martin went and moved away from the diamond. Behind him he left a legacy as a crafty hurler who loved to chase down a cold drink with guys like Joe Nuxhall and Billy Martin, he also left a wide path of success as well as destruction that has helped the folks in the game learn more about the hopes and the limitations of the pitchers arm.