One of my favorite daily columns is Morning Mound Visit from Beyond the Box Score. In it, BtBS’s Managing Editor, Matt Provenzano, picks three recent sabermetrically inclined articles to highlight for BtBS’s readers to check out. That column is requisite reading for me every single day. Inevitably I discover a few articles every week that have slipped through the cracks, or sometimes even discover a new writer who I want to follow regularly. Matt is spreading the sabermetric love, and I want to continue to spread the baseball love at Words Above Replacement.
This Week in Baseball (yes it’s an ode to everyone’s favorite long-gone weekly baseball recap show) will drop every Monday and will shine a light on a trio of quality baseball articles from the previous week. Not just sabermetrically inclined articles, but articles from all around the world of baseball that I feel people should take the time read.
Without further ado, here’s the first installment of This Week in Baseball:
Beyond the Box Score – Matt Provenzano: Fans seem to always be stuck in the middle of the constant battle between ownership and players. Between the two sides, there’s one important constant; ownership thinks that fans are gullible and will believe whatever they tell them. Owners across the board are crying poor despite teams making record-setting revenues, and fans are supposed to just accept their plight as truth.
Forbes – Jared Wyllys: After 2016 the Chicago Cubs franchise and fans were on cloud nine. Fast forward to 2019, and the Cubs ownership group canceled their yearly Cubs Convention Q&A fan session for fear of backlash from fans over the lack of off-season spending. They were once beloved by fans, and they can win them back again, but will they?
Baseball Prospectus – Zack Moser: People can change, it’s a tenet that I hold dear to my heart. People need to actually change though, and if they are not displaying behaviors that actualize said change, we need to hold them and their enablers accountable. The Cubs, on the whole, have consistently said all the wrong things about Addison Russell’s domestic violence accusations. They continue to do that when they preach that Russell needs to and is changing without providing any evidence.
Lead photo courtesy of Garrett Craig – flickr
