Hello! This is your blogger speaking to you from THE FUTURE to tell you that tomorrow there will be a new BIZARRE BASEBALL CULTURE involving TIME TRAVEL!
Be excited.
Category Archives: Blog dealings
Quick Aside
Aside
In the next few days, there will be some football stuff leading up to the Super Bowl… but also a Bizarre Baseball Culture!
Quick Aside on Continuum Rankings
Aside
New Baseball Continuum Rankings will be up on Friday!
(This was just an aside, since I hadn’t posted anything yet today.)
A Change in The Continuum Baseball Rankings method
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As I mentioned yesterday, the latest installment of the Continuum Baseball Rankings is coming up.
However, there will be one major difference: I will not be taking into account the number of MLB players and Win Shares for each country, instead using only the input of the IBAF World Rankings and results from international tournaments in which a country’s “professional or equivalent” team took part.
There are a few reasons for this.
For one, using MLB players and MLB win shares in it heavily skews it towards the USA, Dominican Republic, etc.
For another, it skews away from countries that have their own leagues, such as Japan and Korea, as well as an isolated nation like Cuba.
Finally, they are at times incomplete, as the site I use to find the numbers for it goes by place of birth, not necessarily nationality, leading to, for example, Donald Lutz being listed as an American and not a German.
So, when the next Rankings update comes up, it’ll have used a different method for things that happened after July of this past year.
What’s Coming Up This Week on the Continuum…
Okay, so, this coming week:
- There will finally be a book review of Steve Rushin’s The 34-Ton Bat. I’ve been saying it was coming for awhile now, but now I will make sure it finally happens!
- An article on the joys of AAA baseball, written in the cold, cold winter
- An update of the Continuum Baseball Rankings to reflect international play, MLB players and so-on from the later half of 2013
- An update to the Glossary.
- And more!
So, see you later!
My 2014 Blogathon Post is Up!
Well, guess there won’t be a book review today. But, guess what? You still have stuff of mine to read, as my entry to the Blogathon at Old Time Family Baseball is now up! Be sure to check out the whole thing (there are some great pieces in it), and look at my piece, in which I look at what would happen to various baseball players, fans, announcers and reporters in a It’s a Wonderful Life-style dystopia where baseball didn’t exist.
But, of course, there is a real reason for the blogathon: to raise money for Doctors Without Borders, one of the world’s most respected organizations. They work to bring medical treatment to war zones and developing nations where it may not be available. You can donate to DWB over at OTFB, and even a dollar donation will put you into a raffle for some cool prizes.
Heads Up! Old Time Family Baseball’s blogathon has begun!
Just a heads up that Old Time Family Baseball‘s yearly blogathon to raise money for Doctors Without Borders has begun. If you don’t know about it, what happens is that Michael Clair, for 24 hours starting at 11 AM Eastern this morning, writes at least one blog entry every half hour. All day long. And then, starting tomorrow, the rest of the baseball internet takes over, as writers great and small contribute stuff to show support and fill the rest of the time as Clair recovers from his 24-hour baseball blogging binge.
I contributed a piece, and it’ll be up on Sunday. But don’t wait, head on over to OTFB now to see what crazy things are going on.
Coming this weekend on the Continuum….
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This weekend on the Continuum:
- A Book Review!
- Predictions (which will probably be wrong) on the NFL Playoffs
- And perhaps more!
Catching up on what happened to some players after some previous posts…
What happened to some of the people in previous posts? Well….
- Daniel Missaki, the then-16-year-old who impressed me so much in the WBC qualifiers when he closed out Brazil’s upset of Colombia, signed with the Mariners and played with their rookie-level team this year.
- Also in November 2012, I made a humorous prediction on the future of the Marlins, forecasting them out until the city of Miami is reclaimed by the sea and becomes inhabited by genetically-engineered merpeople. Well, that hasn’t happened yet, but since that post, some predictions have come at least partially true (I got the teams and timing wrong). Since the post went up, Ricky Nolasco was traded (and then also signed with another team through free agency), Justin Ruggiano has been traded and Tino Martinez is no longer the hitting coach (although for a completely different reason than my joking quip that he’d be traded to the Yankees). Meanwhile, poor Giancarlo Stanton is still a Marlin.
- Jeff Clement, of miracle-comeback fame, is currently a free agent.
- Jeremy Bonderman, who had made a comeback this season after a long absence from big league rosters, is also a free agent.
- Donald Lutz, the first German-raised player in MLB history, finished the season with 58 ABs, a .241 BA, .585 OPS and a home run, and remains in the Reds’ organization.
- Roy Halladay is still retired.
…And now you know!
Coming Up This Week on The Baseball Continuum:
So, what’s coming up in the next week?
It’s like this:
- Pictures from my vacation last month- at least, the baseball-related things I saw on it.
- An installment of Bizarre Baseball Culture
- Some follow-up on previous articles.
- A book review!
- And analysis on any major moves that might happen.
Also, I’d like to note that I am currently working on a rather large project, a tongue-in-cheek “research paper” that extrapolates the true events of a certain fictional baseball game that we all are familiar with. I did some brief work on it last summer, but only restarted it recently. I don’t know when it’ll come out and it’s entirely possible I might try to get it published somewhere other than here (if you are one of those who run Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, Sports On Earth or some other esteemed place, or know people who do, and are interested, feel free to contact me).
Oh, and I’ll be contributing something to the Old Time Family Baseball Blogathon again this year, and that’ll be coming up sooner than you think.
The Baseball Continuum 