“You’re with me, flannel” and for a short time in Cleveland...we all were.
Anyway, every year somebody asks me what happens at a SABR convention.
...Also, for the last few years the convention has been a wonderful opportunity to see how Baseball Think Factory’s “Primates” behave when they’re not being chaperoned.
...• Anthony Giacalone—one of those Primates I mentioned—on “Baseball and America in the Summer of ‘65.” He tied everything together: baseball, Vietnam, the counter-culture, Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival, even the revolution in the Dominican Republic that year. Honestly? I don’t know if Giacalone actually tied everything together in his 20 minutes. But he put on one hell of a good show.
• Chris Jaffe, another Primate, had some fantastic stuff on managerial tendencies that I’d never seen before. It’s the sort of stuff that Bill James probably would have put in his book about managers, if only the data had existed then. Among the stuff I wrote down: “Zimmer!” (in a bad way) and “Gaston #1 positional CG,” which means, as I recall, that nobody did less than Cito Gaston. And that might explain why nobody was particularly impressed with his work the first time around. I believe Jaffe’s working on a book of his own, and if his presentation’s any indication, it’ll be a corker.
• Steve Treder—yet another, and our last Primate—talked about longtime GM Frank Lane, who was nicknamed both “Frantic” and (more famously) “Trader.” Lane made 290 trades during his career, far more than any other general manager, and Treder has analyzed all of them. Bottom line: Lane made some brilliant moves very early in his career—most notably, he picked up Billy Pierce, Nellie Fox and Minnie Minoso for almost nothing—but otherwise he was just making trades for the sake of making trades.
Repoz
Posted: July 09, 2008 at 09:31 PM |
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in a 5 day period in April 1960, he traded away Norm Cash for Steve Demeter and traded Colavito for Kuenn
I'll never forgive the sumbitch for that
[/unintentional rhyme]
Zimmer was last or next to last in the league in offensive platoon advantage every year of his career except once (when he was 10th of 14 with Texas).
and “Gaston #1 positional CG,” which means, as I recall, that nobody did less than Cito Gaston.
Yup. He's bottom-rung for mid-game replacements for his starting position players.
Pops.
Yup. I briefly say the basics of it at the About the [me] thing at THT.
I'm planning on it being 9 chapters long (the presentation was Chapter 2; the old articles I wrote here at BTF 2 years ago* are chapter 1). The manuscript is due in on 4/1/09. I'm writing the ROUGH draft now. I've finished 6 chapters & want to be finished with Chapter 7 on Friday.
If you (or anyone else) wants to read over the ROUGH drafts & give me feedback, send me an e-mail & I'll send you Chapter 1. I'm always looking for advance feedback.
* They're no longer here. In order to get the book deal, McFarland wanted them taken down & Jim Furtado was gracious enough to agree.
You should catch his after hours show on the Le Beltran Cruise Lines!
Good lord -- yet another euphemism for Option J.
The creation of that drink -- the Adrian Beltre -- and playing whiffle ball under the lights in front of Terminal Tower were the best parts of that weekend.
As I was still trying to make sense of the Harden trade last night, I wondered about whether Billy Beane was channeling "Trader" Frank Lane or not. Maybe Beane is a trade junkie.
Yes...I believe age 14 is the new cut-off point for researchers.
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