Baseball Prospectus – Sung Min Kim ($): Teams can be bad, we all know this. Most of us are okay with that; not with the actual losses, but with the general idea that some years the team we like will simply not be competitive. On the other side of the spectrum, there is the idea of intentionally tanking, something that all fans should typically be against. There have been a few successful instances of tanking to win future titles. However, when half, maybe more, of the teams in the league are tanking why should fans be engaged with their team or any team? This is a problem in Major League Baseball, but not in the Korea Baseball Organization, where they have come up with rules against the practice of tanking.
FanGraphs – Jeff Sullivan: The mantra the past few years in baseball has been that velocity is king. For the most part, it’s been found to be true. When MLB teams are stacked all the way down to the Dominican Summer League level with pitchers who can throw in the mid-90s, velocity does, in fact, rule the roost. However, there are limits to what the human body can do, and it may just be that despite what we think, velocity has already plateaued. If that’s the case, where does pitching go from here?
The New York Times – James Wagner: If you don’t know who Sean Forman is, you really should. I spend countless hours a week on Baseball Reference, and if you’re reading this, chances are that you do as well. Sean is the man responsible for Baseball Reference, and similar sites for other sports. His outfit remains modest, but it continues to deliver a treasure trove of baseball statistical information that is unmatched. It’s very existence and the way it has changed baseball research deserves to be celebrated, and then some.
Lead photo courtesy of Yonhap – The Korean Times
