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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, July 08, 2010
I'd like to know what you think of BP just past the midpoint of 2010. I'd like to know what you like, what you don't like, what you would like to see more of, what you would like to see less of. I can't promise I'll be able to respond to each comment but I will read them all. What I can promise is that I and the rest of us here will take your feedback into great consideration as we continue to strive to make BP the type of site that baseball fans feel they absolutely must visit every day.
BP staff member Joe Sheehan
That, more or less, is why forums are basically a non-starter. All cost, no revenue.
TangoTiger
Fangraphs has forums, and they don't charge their readers. Primer has forums, and they don't charge their readers. You've got to have a better reason for not having a forum considering that you are already charging readers.
BP staff member Joe Sheehan
How about this?
I've done sports content as a business for 15 years. By any standard I'm one of a small number of people to do it successfully outside the mainstream, I've played most of the roles one can play and holy god I'm sick of listening to you act as if you've had 1% of the success the people you criticize have had. How about you grant that I might know what I'm talking about, given that sports content has been my career, without me having to make a business case to someone with no standing to ask for one?
Fangraphs, as far as I can tell, is financed by a rich grandpa. Primer/BTF/Newsstand/Brand of the Day isn't a business in any real sense of the word, it's r.s.b ported to the Web and stripped of its spark. That you would make these comparisons shows just how little you understand of Prospectus, how little you've ever understood.
Stick to being an academic, Thomas. Stick to your sycophant-laden fora and your above-it-all mien. Stop jumping in here and cheap-shotting a business that you've never comprehended on your best day.
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Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
Suffice to say that any thread that you might have interest in posting in without mentioning baseball has a better-than-average shot at being shut down. I don't know what impact that has on your calculus as to whether or not it's worth it to begin participating in such threads.
I assume he's referring to this.
So the problem was people accusing others of being insensitive about rape, and not the people being insensitive about rape? I guess that makes sense if you're competing with the ESPN message boards.
I assume he's referring to this.
It was more complicated than that.
Really? Would you let Kevin in?
No matter how annoying or inane most people find the political threads, a neverending DiPerna-Andy debate is pretty harmless. It's a shame that a couple people who aren't capable of being civil, and who otherwise contribute little, are able to single-handedly kill threads.
and sometimes quite humorous,
the old Kevin-DMN "debates" OTOH had the old "slow motion train wreck" quality to them
kevin, you know I love you, man, but this is a primey!
Also, what the hell are we arguing about here?
Who contributes more than a little? MAybe eight years ago but now we're all just a bunch snarky smurfs running around snarking the snark out of each other.
True, but don't forget our project to codify gratuity standards!
Perhaps this is what he means, but it's still incredibly short-sighted. True, allowing reader comments doesn't directly give BPro revenue. What it does give them, however, is feedback into (a) what their customers are thinking and the types of things they may want, and (b) ways their content can be improved/amended/corrected so as to improve their product.
That said, if BTF isn't a business in any real sense of the word that's probably why it doesn't suck. Bring money into things and your sportswriters start turning pro, and pro sportswriters are the last thing the world needs.
This is very true, I'm just lucky BBTF doesn't have novelty t-shirts, hats and coffee mugs for sale here. (And I don't even drink coffee!)
Never saw it blog.
But really... not worth any subscription price.
I'm just self-centered enough to assume this is about me.
Done and done.
Uh...
Thanks a lot, there goes my beer budget for the week
Good to know the Wallbanger radar is still somewhat functional.
Any response would reflect on the spouse. And I don't go there. Not wives. Not girlfriends. Not grandmothers.
As a long-time wiseguy I learned early on that this is ground not to be tread.
But I will also not countenance Philip Seymour Hoffman being called a doofus. He is one of Our Greatest Actors. And a celebrity.
Sure he can act. I enjoy all his roles.
But he looks like a doofus. He personifies the doofus look.
The two are not incompatible.
A Walt Davis suggestion circa ... god ... a very long time ago when, for some secret reason unknown even to me, I was on the internal primer mailing list! (Of course they let Don Malcolm in too so I shouldn't feel too honored. :-)
someone like Marisa Tomei would be with a doofus like PSHoffman in a "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead" is pretty ridiculous.
A world in which Megan Fox marries Brian Austin Green (really?) reportedly because she wants to have children (with Brian Austin Green? Really?) is a world I simply don't understand.
How much you want to bet that all their kids have names that start with B?
kevin, you know I love you, man, but this is a primey!
Speaking of El Diablo, I just got back from dinner with him after not having seen him since the 2008 meetup. He sends his greetings to friend and foe (with one obvious exception), and was as cheerful as ever. He takes himself a lot less seriously than a lot of you seem to think.
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Plus it creates a loyal community that will continue to pay them for their goods. The tighter the bond the more likely they are to continue to keep paying you for your goods. To me it would be like a coffee house telling people they can only buy coffee and then have to immediately leave the store. Part of the reason some people will frequent your store and purchase your goods is because of your fellow customers and the atmosphere inside the store.
I don't know what it's like in general for most businesses, but I know that when I had my book shop if I'd acted towards my customers like Sheehan does, I would have lasted about 23 days instead of 23 years.
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Hey, she went for Costanza.
Until she found out he was "sort of engaged."
Some of this is body language. There are obvious tells associated with someone being a deviant. Also, the wife's reaction woudl be key as women are far more attuned as to when a man is being a deviant jerk.
Assuming I heard only the remark followed by the wife responding, "Excuse me" I would position myself at equal plane of eye contact be it seated or standing and ask him to repeat the question while making direct contact. This would almost certainly direct in one of two directions. Either the obvious tell that someone was intending to be a cad or a light-hearted question.
Only if the individual is clear about being a cad and willing to press the matter do I engage in escalated confrontation.
While comfortable with confrontation it makes others uncomfortable and particularly at a wedding would detract from the moment. I would work very hard to defend the wife's honor with minimal disruption to the event.
She also went for both Gavin brothers and a short Frenchman who doesn't wear shoes.
I'd save Harvey the trouble and pummel the guy myself. What kind of question is that to ask?
I almost felt good about myself because for a moment I thought I didn't know who BAG was but then as I got to the bottom of his IMDB page I see that he was on 90210 and it all came flooding back.
Megan Fox marrying someone who is almost 40 doesn't really bother me since she simply cannot act and cannot do anything besides look good in a photo. At some point she is destined to hit the Tara Reid-Paris Hilton-Lindsey Lohan level of fame where they are only famous for being famous and you know longer have to worry about seeing them in a movie or TV show.
Now then Katie Holmes marrying Tom Cruise and Jessica Alba marrying some unknown guy and both having kids bothers me far more than Fox getting married even though neither one of them can act either. Perhaps it is the tattoos. Thankfully Eliza Dushku is still not married so I still have a chance.
People in that setting have been drinking, particularly amateur drinkers. It's akin to New Year's Eve.
I have learned to demonstrate restraint.
What if the wedding is at a cigar bar?
joe sheehan is teh sukc and one of the many reasons why i wouldn't spend one penny on bpro ( i site i spent an hour at every day before they went for pay) even if i had the extra $$$ lying around. if i wanna hear unpleasant assh*les piss on people i can get plenty of that for free
- and andy
do tell dat debbil ah miss his cantankerous redsux luvvin ass and hope he and the wife doing fine
and that kevin F dog is also doing well and sez YAPYAPYAP
Ah! A Massachusetts wedding.
I mean this in all seriousness: I think a baseball fan could learn more about the game, from a statistical & empirical point of view, from a combination of fangraphs and BTF's discussions than B-Pro.
Well, I don't know about that. There is the feed salesman episode about 15 years back. I lost my temper in that situation.
However, he did make the Mrs. uncomfortable having put his hand on her knee. So that was a breach of etiquette of an egregious nature.
But John Cusack's record store in High Fidelity seemed to get by ok.
Or are you claiming that movies can be somewhat misleading?
gotta say that your missus must be EXTREMELY teh HOTTTTTTT if she had some guy who is not you putting his hand on her knee when she was like 60
i should be so lucky. i mean, to be teh HOTTT at age 60 not that i want some icky guy putting his hands where they don't belong especially in front of my Husband who i really REALLY do not want to have to visit in jail you know what i'm sayin
and theres a WHOLE lot of 60 year old guys tell their wife - gf if some man wants to put his hand on you i'll pass the viagra maybe it work for him
Man, I just love that line. Isn't Tango working for an MLB team now? Doesn't that mean that his work is probably being applied more directly to actual baseball games than BP and their precious revenue gleaned from sweaty basement-dwellers? Which actually makes Tango the opposite of an academic - so what does that make Sheehan and his cute little website?
The Mrs. was diagnosed with high blood pressure in her mid 30's so she has been very careful about her weight. That and she didn't start getting any gray hairs until about five years ago. And all her sisters have held up well. So I guess it's good genes.
Eh, I have a feeling the Wicker Park hipsters in Cusack's store would be more turned off if he was friendly. His behavior is really just good business. (I'm only partially joking.)
I think he's doing consulting for both the Jays and the Mariners.
and we know VERY well what you think about fat
and yeh, good genes helps fer SHER. and if you don't have that, miss clairol is your bff. i sure do wish that my mama had given me some of those tall and beautiful genes though. hope your wife gave your grrrls some of her HOTTTTTT genes.
but me i learned to cook to kind of make up for it and with MY husband the way to his heart is most DEFINITELY thru his stomach
but you ain't foolin me none - if your wife is teh HOTTTTT and she done stuck with you all these years, it is because you make life, uh, interesting fer SHER
Good thing Leo Durocher never met your wife.
I live in Wisconsin. If I was 'anti-fat' I would not have any friends. (cue snide comments from the masses)
Of course I find my wife beautiful. She relishes telling a moment from a LOOONNNGGGG time ago when she wasn't wearing her glasses (the black horn-rims that looked ten times bigger than they actually were) and had her hair down versus it pulled back like I saw it all the time at school and a dash of makeup which she couldn't afford to wear all the time and upon being startled by all that she had the opportunity to reach over and lift my chin up to close my mouth while commenting that she didn't want me to catch any flies.
She enjoys telling that story very much.
Careful. I don't remark on loved ones and expect the same. You can mock me all day long and then some.
Understood. And thanks for the follow up.
These vertical ads accomplish what exactly? We have software gurus among us I am sure. What's the skinny?
Despite all of your experience, believe it or not, sometimes you aren't very good at what you do.
Sincerely,
Your 2002 AL West Preview(s)
Making predictions and acting like you know with certainty that they will happen simply makes you look like a fool.
Which is better than the on-topic ratio of this thread, which is now flirting with .400 after a hot start. Harvey's post at 168 dropped us below .400, but we've had a little flurry of late. Still, the overall performance arc here is strongly reminiscent of the 1975 Brewers (take note, Harvey!).
All that might explain/support the notion that we are somehow "stripped of spark." But Sheehan wasn't part of rsb during its "sparky/snarky" days, so he's simply polishing up the mythos of the BPro spittoon, basking in what is a seriously faded afterglow.
Bottom line: who would really want to stay on-topic on this subject, anyway??
Marisa Tomei shares a birthday with Cornell Woolrich, Dennis Wilson, Jeff Bridges and yours truly. It's sad to note that I'd be #4 on her "birthday buddy" hookup list, especially when one considers that two of these guys are dead...
In the old days you had Tango, Voros, MGL, and about a million other guys that would move on to either teams or other business ventures debating baseball and baseball numbers. Now we have maybe a tenth of that going on and and about a million more off-topic debates going on. I'm not saying that is good or bad just noting that while the debates are "fresh" and the voices are diverse we simply are not talking about baseball the way we used too. Some of it is for valid reasons, how many times can Treder rehash the 1950's?, how many times can we argue DIPS?, and some are not so valid.
I mean, I sometimes disagree strongly with him and his (and others') "we know everything, you can't argue with us" airs, but the man has always been unfailingly polite unless pushed to excess.
Actually, it was when Jim started paying Repoz by the number of posts per thread. It was like going from sea level to a home park in Nepal.
how many times can Treder rehash the 1950's?
Never underestimate this man's tenacity. He has 600 more essays already written just in case he has a boating accident in McCovey Cove.
I'm not saying that today's stuff is totally devoid of good baseball content. What I am saying is that BTF, or I should say BPrimer, at one point was THE place, and very close to the only place, for hardcore baseball discussions. The MLB sites were lowbrow, BPro and other sites didn't have discussion forums, ESPN boards were either non-existant, too new, or trolled by neanderthals, which also applies to a bunch of sites that are out there nowadays and thriving. But like TV we have splintered off into different channels/internet sites. At one time we were NBC with Cosby, Cheers, Night Court, Family Ties and everything else. Now we are the USA network and we have competition on the digital dial.
Ditto. If I made one contribution to BBTF, it was the thread where kevin accidentally outed himself and my quick googling revealed that most of his online persona was fabricated, especially this "I'M A WEIGHTLIFTER I WOULD DESTROY YOU IRL" schtick. It's a shame that I can't find that thread anymore.
In the old days you had Tango, Voros, MGL, and about a million other guys that would move on to either teams or other business ventures debating baseball and baseball numbers. Now we have maybe a tenth of that going on and and about a million more off-topic debates going on.
I agree with this. Though I think part of it is simply that sabermetrics, and baseball in general, is less compelling than it was in, say, 2004. Back then you had the peak of the great Yanks-Sox rivalry, and you had substantive insights into baseball being made on the board. Nowadays there's no great rivalry and the only people making sabermetric advances are the coding monkeys that can make heads and tails out of the PitchFX databases. Part of what made sabermetrics cool- that you could sit at home with a spreadsheet and figure out stuff that no one else knew about the game- is lost. And that's made Primer less cool too, I guess. How many times can you discuss the latest incremental improvement in the defensive metrics before your head explodes?
Granted I was one of the people that was involved in the PETCO thread but was it really PETCO that changed everything? Perhaps I have the time line wrong but I seem to recall the Iraq war and the months leading up to it to be a huge factor in thread length. Plus when was the Giambi trade? Before or after the PETCO thread? I believe it was before the PETCO thread.
Has anyone really figured out what it was that caused the huge shift in BPrimer's traffic? Was their article or something?
Not that many. Perhaps it's me, but I'm a lot less turned on by advances in the "academic" side of sabermetrics than of the application of it to today's action. I'm a lot less interested in the importance of peripherals than I am interested in what they tell us about the Red Sox pitching going forward.
I can agree with this. I remember around 2002 when I was really getting into sabermetrics and had delusions of making it a living. I sat down one day and seriously considered what it would take to do it and it was then that I realized that where sabermetrics was heading I had little to no knowledge or experience with. I mean I can play with a spreadsheet and can do spreadsheet formulas but even back then it was quickly moving away from basic math and informational gathering and into hard science territory. I decided to not quit my day job.
Not that many. Perhaps it's me, but I'm a lot less turned on by advances in the "academic" side of sabermetrics than of the application of it to today's action. I'm a lot less interested in the importance of peripherals than I am interested in what they tell us about the Red Sox pitching going forward.
Same here. I pretty much burned out from ubermetrics and every latest little improvement that produces a r=.965 instead of .963 like the old metric simply makes me yawn. And people can yell "REGRESS, REGRESS, REGRESS" all they want but simply taking SLOB and eyeballing it will take you a long way in terms of future predictions.
I don't think there was a watershed moment that increased traffic, though the mods may disagree. The internet just grew, and places like this grew with it. For what it's worth, there are still, in raw numbers, just as many good baseball posts here as there used to be. There's just more posts in general, and the really, really long threads typically aren't baseball related (then again, they rarely were). The lounge started as a place for off topic threads, but then it got unwieldy on the main site, moved to the forums, and now there's kind of a bifurcation. People who used to populate the main site are almost strictly lounge denizens now. Scotto and Jack Vincennes, to name a couple, are rarely here anymore, and I can't remember the last time I saw Dan Werr on this side of the wall.
For me, this place is now a place to troll headlines for news and interesting articles, occasionally post some snarky or funny (in my own head) comment, and even less occasionally post something of any value. Part of that is because anything worth saying has probably already been said. There are a lot of smart people here. It's still a worthwhile visit. It's not any worse than it used to be. It's just different.
That reminds me - I have what would be the 1995 annual (posts on rsb) sitting around in a box. Would that potentially be of interest to anyone or should I just chuck it?
I agree with this, and I think the primary problem is those ubermetrics, or what Bill James called great statistics, that pretend to encapsulate a player's entire worth in a single number. WAR, VORP, xFIP, the Fangraphs dollar values, that's the whole point of it. It's all completely opaque, not very interesting, and not really useful at all. And they serve to end discussions rather than foster them. The defensive stuff is a lot fresher, but it's of the same ilk, all purporting to show a player's entire defensive value, and even these stats' creators seem to realize they're nothing but estimates.
You know what I'd like to see? A study of whether there's much defensive variation among shortstops making relay throws from the outfield to the plate. You'd think there would, wouldn't you? These are plays that are the difference between a run and an out, so it wouldn't take more than a couple of them to make a real difference between shortstops.
My point is, there are hundreds of things still worth studying in baseball that would be of much more interest than "let's rate the MVP candidates." The last thing I remember reading on here that really opened my eyes was when MGL demonstrated that platoon splits for right-handed batters were universal, and didn't vary in any meaningful ways. That's really cool, and really helpful to know. I think sabermetrics needs to turn more in that direction to get its mojo back. Not, of course, that I'm going to be doing any of these studies myself.
Same here. Once the wall went up, I turned off completely. There's nothing there that I can't get in a bunch of free sites on the web.
Around 2003-4, I think. It got listed in some article and for about three months was the Animal Collective of baseball sites. Then I stopped contributing regularly and it devolved into the debacle you see today. Sad, really.
The BPro crowd's claim to fame, as far as I can tell, is that they saw the crowd-source chaos of rsbb and the asb.* hierarchy and were the first to think "you know, if we could just limit this, downsize it and cheapen it enough to collapse into a product offering of significant simplicity* we could churn out units and sell it to the masses." If that's a headstone etching they're proud of, well, the world needs all kinds I suppose.
*the Big Bad Baseball Annuals never quite grasped the "make it stupid enough for normal people to read" bit.
Aye. I bought the first book, realized it was nothing more than a few predictions packaged with snark and never went back. I liked Wolverton's pitching stats, but when they put the pay wall up there was no way I was paying for crap that I could write myself.
That article was where I first heard of this place. So there's another thing you can blame SI for. I got hooked by one of the superthreads on Frank Francisco and the chair toss, back when 200-post threads were still relatively rare. That same SI article mentioned BPro as well, saying it and Primer were the two smartest baseball sites around. I glanced at BPro's stuff a few times. Nothing about either the style or the substance of their writing grabbed me. I haven't read anything of theirs in quite a while.
I wouldn't say it was better, exactly, but in the days of Werr, Buford J. Sharkley, Meatwad and UCCF this was a much more whimsical place. And of course Brattain is still missed. I think of him every time I hear a horrible, horrible pun.
Wouldn't have been easier to say something like 'We've looked into it, and decided that the cost and hassle of forums is just not something that we want to do, especially since this is a market already served by other websites, like the ones you mentioned. We do look into it from time to time, and if we the situation changes, we will re-evaluate at that time.'
And I'm not even in PR.
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