Monday, January 26, 2004
With a Wink and a Nudge
For a brief moment, I had my hopes up that DMZ (a very nice set of initials) at the original M's blog, USS Mariner, had given me a permanent link after announcing my presence to their (I'm guessing larger than mine) reading audience.
I was going to honor them by allowing them to keep their suggested title of "Cranky Internet Columnist." Essentially, Derek does not like that I divide blogs into optimist and pessimist. Of course we are all Mariner fans and want the M's to win. I chose "optimist" as a tone for the blog, not to condemn the other blogs, who frankly, do excellent and entertaining analysis of the M's and their moves.
As a holder of a statistics degree, I understand their pessimism. Ibanez is probably being overpaid for his Kaufmann-stadium inflated stats. Scott Spiezio has never played 3B. Arthur Rhodes may be a better pitcher than Eddie Guardado. And Quinton McCracken may be the worst 4th OF in baseball. But, maybe they are wrong.
I just happen to be optimistic enough to think that hey, stats are NOT everything. There are other reasons to make moves. If the 25 best sets of stats won every year, the Marlins and Angels wouldn't be World Series Champs this year. I believe in chemistry even though it can't be measured. I like my team to have players I like as people. Raul Ibanez being a great guy is NOT BAD NEWS as some blogs, which I label pessimist, would have you believe. And even though under the sabermetric microscope, a move may look idiotic, I think M's management has put together a World Series contender in 2004.
Well, anyway, I've changed my template, and I wanted to also announce a new site, Mariner Minors, who look like they will have minutae about our minor league players, which should be a great reference. (Of course, I was in the middle of an optimistic posting on some of our top players, but I'll table that till later for now).
So I go back to USS Mariner to be the first to link to Mariner Optimist from there (and make sure it works), and I find that, while they've added Mariner Minors to their list of M's blogsphere, yours truly (and the Gleeman-length Sons of Buhner as well) were not added. Sigh - I guess I'll need to change my blog title, yet...
Hopefully by the time you read this, Mariner Optimist will be considered a part of the M's blogosphere by USS Mariner. If not, I'll hope that those Mariner fans looking for happy news that is not necessarily spoon-fed by the media will find me through links in the rest of the blogosphere. Or by googling "heckling basketball Rice Owls."
If any other blogs would like to choose their label, let me know, and I'll be happy to change it for you. These blogs are nothing if not easy to maintain. And if you know the guys at U.S.S. Mariner, send em a note asking them to add Mariner Optimist and Sons of Buhner to their template. I think they are sick of hearing from me.
And of course, now that there are 23 M's related blogs and counting, someone has already called for a moratorium and combining of blogs. I say give them all a try for awhile... some will drop out, some will merge, and some will drive away their readers by posting about sports from some school in Texas. In the meantime, I recommend going to baseballblogs.org and learning about RSS feeds - it at least cuts down on having to hunt for new posts.
I was going to honor them by allowing them to keep their suggested title of "Cranky Internet Columnist." Essentially, Derek does not like that I divide blogs into optimist and pessimist. Of course we are all Mariner fans and want the M's to win. I chose "optimist" as a tone for the blog, not to condemn the other blogs, who frankly, do excellent and entertaining analysis of the M's and their moves.
As a holder of a statistics degree, I understand their pessimism. Ibanez is probably being overpaid for his Kaufmann-stadium inflated stats. Scott Spiezio has never played 3B. Arthur Rhodes may be a better pitcher than Eddie Guardado. And Quinton McCracken may be the worst 4th OF in baseball. But, maybe they are wrong.
I just happen to be optimistic enough to think that hey, stats are NOT everything. There are other reasons to make moves. If the 25 best sets of stats won every year, the Marlins and Angels wouldn't be World Series Champs this year. I believe in chemistry even though it can't be measured. I like my team to have players I like as people. Raul Ibanez being a great guy is NOT BAD NEWS as some blogs, which I label pessimist, would have you believe. And even though under the sabermetric microscope, a move may look idiotic, I think M's management has put together a World Series contender in 2004.
Well, anyway, I've changed my template, and I wanted to also announce a new site, Mariner Minors, who look like they will have minutae about our minor league players, which should be a great reference. (Of course, I was in the middle of an optimistic posting on some of our top players, but I'll table that till later for now).
So I go back to USS Mariner to be the first to link to Mariner Optimist from there (and make sure it works), and I find that, while they've added Mariner Minors to their list of M's blogsphere, yours truly (and the Gleeman-length Sons of Buhner as well) were not added. Sigh - I guess I'll need to change my blog title, yet...
Hopefully by the time you read this, Mariner Optimist will be considered a part of the M's blogosphere by USS Mariner. If not, I'll hope that those Mariner fans looking for happy news that is not necessarily spoon-fed by the media will find me through links in the rest of the blogosphere. Or by googling "heckling basketball Rice Owls."
If any other blogs would like to choose their label, let me know, and I'll be happy to change it for you. These blogs are nothing if not easy to maintain. And if you know the guys at U.S.S. Mariner, send em a note asking them to add Mariner Optimist and Sons of Buhner to their template. I think they are sick of hearing from me.
And of course, now that there are 23 M's related blogs and counting, someone has already called for a moratorium and combining of blogs. I say give them all a try for awhile... some will drop out, some will merge, and some will drive away their readers by posting about sports from some school in Texas. In the meantime, I recommend going to baseballblogs.org and learning about RSS feeds - it at least cuts down on having to hunt for new posts.
