I thought that this was pretty interesting. At first as Buzz was going along I was thinking I would like to read this article, and he made some good points such as young pitchers trying to over throw to stay within pitch limits. Then when Boog started asking questions on his research, and it was revealed that it basically consisted of asking older guys in the game what they remembered rather than actually doing some work and finding out the facts my opinion completely changed.

What a dodge by Bissinger. By all accounts Rosenberg is a giant slime-bag, but trying to use him to deflect real questions was pathetic. And I agree 100% with what #1 said.

Me too, decent interview, and then Buzz was caught with his pants down. Maybe he should have spent more money on research than 'travelling around'. No idea who Sciambi is, but that part at the end on the SABR stuff was dead on.

I heart Boog Sciambi.

I was listening to the interview live and I thought Sciambi was getting punked by a Howard Stern fan. I half expected after the Sid Rosenberg comment to hear "baba booey. Howard Stern. baba booey." Completely bizarre.

who is this boog guy? never heard of him before, i give him mad respect.

buzz bissinger comes off as a blabbering idiot. first he states something...then he says "well, i think"...then it's studies? no time to look at studies because "for every study that says one thing, there's 14 that say...",

then "i talked to jim riggleman, and he's been in baseball a long time, and he said.." "how many innings did mark prior throw in the minors? 51" and starts getting all huffy.

finally, bissinger starts going off on sid rosenberg (who i guess follows boog, and sid IS a moron) like that should matter to boog? and boog cuts him off and ends the call.

boog: "that's the epitomy of the kind of stuff i love about the game today".

buzz is cut off about 8:20 in. and boog's sabr comments (which boils down to: i love getting bat speed, etc. from players but if they state something which can be researched easily, he won't let athletes / managers get away with spewing wrong info.) the final thing: baseball ppl are smart people, but when they say they can eyeball something like that, it's time to call b.s. on them. buzz clearly isn't smart enough to do that.

given that boog looks exactly like braves broadcaster jon sciambi, i assume they're brothers. jon is pretty sharp himself - he reads prospectus and hbt, and it comes across in his announcing. that is, until joe simpson says something silly.

ahh, after a quick wikipedia search, i see that "boog" is jon's nickname. makes sense.

given that boog looks exactly like braves broadcaster jon sciambi, i assume they're brothers. jon is pretty sharp himself - he reads prospectus and hbt, and it comes across in his announcing. that is, until joe simpson says something silly.

Not brothers; one and the same.

who is this boog guy?

Jon Sciambi was one of the hot-shot announcers that ESPN brought onboard when they expanded their TV coverage a few years back...I think he was being too Saber-friendly and confuding the color dudes, so it was bye-bye time.

I haven't seen a link to the Bissinger article, so here it is.

Having read the pap of "Three Nights in August", it doesn't surprise me that Bissinger's unable to come up with anything vaguely rigorous.

As far as guys coming up younger, a look at 2006 shows one MLB player younger than 20, Felix Hernandez. Look at years a couple decades past and you've got several guys in their teens in any given season. A can't speak for the average player, but certainly the very youngest have gotten older.

I haven't read Three Nights but Friday Night Lights was terrific. Buzz is going to be on stronger ground when he focuses on being a storyteller (specifically other people's stories), and there's a place for that. If the most sound foundation he can have for his opinions is other people's recollections -- especially when they're talking outside of their expertise (LaRussa is not an expert on baseball history and hasn't shown himself to be an expert in developing young pitchers) -- then he should leave the forming of strong conclusions to others.

You're a good writer, Buzz, or at least you sometimes are, but good analysis requires verifiable facts, not people's memories of the good old days.

Happy Base Ball

Thanks to some research by Clay Davenport, we find that pitchers debuting in 1973 averaged 420 minor league innings. Pitchers debuting in 2006 averaged 433 minor league innings. Looks like Tony LaRussa & Nolan Ryan are paying more attention to special cases, and there's not any overall trend toward faster debuts after all.