Hey, Redleg Nation!!
It’s not every day that we get to return to doing something that we enjoy, but thanks to Chad and the editors of the Redleg Nation staff, I’m able to return to writing for the Redleg Nation blog.
The Redleg Nation has come so far since its inception four years ago, and it’s positioned to keep moving forward in this new and increasingly competitive medium of sportswriting.
My interest lies in seeing baseball through a historical perspective. There have been many eras of baseball, and as timeless as the game may be in our hearts, there’s been lots of ways to build winning baseball teams. These methods have changed over the years and what I enjoy most is attempting to see things through this historical perspective.
I bought my first baseball analysis book while in the third grade in 1970; a book called “Player Win Averages” (by Eldon Mills) which had formulas for awarding and penalizing players for performance at specific times during a game. Mills specifically analyzed the 1969 World Series (Orioles-Mets) and I’ve been hooked on player/team analysis ever since.
I loved baseball stats so much I even wrote Seymour Siwoff of Elias Sports Bureau for a job back in 1982, and was politely rebuffed, with the comment that careers in sports statistics were quite limited. If only I had heard of Bill James, who had already started self-publishing his own baseball analysis books at the time…
Anyway, we’ll agree and disagree….I love sabermetrics, but I also believe in the roles of scouts on a team, and, contrary to sabermetric thought, I do think there’s something important in the such things as lineup construction, clutch hitting, and the ability to score and drive in runs. I’m exceedingly glad that defensive analysis is coming around…for I do think the home run era is coming to an end and we’ll be seeing a metamorphosis in how baseball is played.
Meanwhile, please comment and share your thoughts and feelings. There’s usually some degree of truth in most everything we say….