#michael baumann

[ifreakingloveroyals]

20 July 2017 | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge accompanied by Baden-Württemberg's Minister President Winfried Kretschmann and Michael Baumann, Chief Scientific Officer of dkfz, Michael Milsom during a visit to the German Cancer Research Institute on day 2 of their official visit to Germany in Heidelberg, Germany. © Marijan Murat - DPA Pool/Getty Images

[asmallexperiment]

Reflections on the Bear

Michael Baumann ruminates on the Jorge Alfaro NRI:

When I first came to work at FanGraphs, I promised you, the readers, that I would bring you the best empirically based stories I could tell. I’m going to break that promise now. To hell with empirics; Alfaro is best enjoyed through highlights.

Alfaro will turn 30 this coming June, which is fitting. He’s one of those players who seems like he’s perpetually 23 years old, but he’s been around so long he has to be 37 by now. Take the average of those two numbers, and there you go. Over at Baseball Prospectus, Alfaro has taken on mythological status as the first seven-time top 101 prospect, and it’s easy to see why. Grading on tools, he has plus-plus power and a plus-plus throwing arm. He also has one of baseball’s best nicknames — El Oso — not just because all nicknames sound cooler in Spanish than in English, but also because “The Bear” is so evocative of a large, hirsute man who looks capable of superhuman feats of strength, and then performs superhuman feats of strength on a baseball diamond. Also, we think of bears as being large and powerful but forget that an adult grizzly bear can run at speeds of up to 35 mph. Alfaro, despite being a catcher who looks like he could squat a city bus, ranked in the 85th percentile for sprint speed last season.

I keep grabbing him in fantasy at some particularly speculative point, to no particular end. It's not even "perpetually 23 years old," it's that he has felt like a prospect longer than maybe anyone I can think of. I still remember Jason Parks talking about "The Legend" during the Up and In era. Not even at the end of the run, but back in the beginning, back in 2010. At some point, you become what you are, but Alfaro is the closest we get to eternal youth in baseball.

[thepotentialof2007]

the ‘f1 where men drive in circles instead of therapy’ quote comes from this rather good -- if perhaps not entirely accurate; if you wanted to start an argument ‘bout it, I’m sure you could -- season-to-date HAM vs VER recap [x]   

- written by Michael Baumann at The Ringer and tailored to those just joining in                                                 

[chadnevett]

One could say the Dodgers got the two best players to move at the deadline, and in the process kept Scherzer away from the Padres and Giants, or one could spin an extended metaphor.

Imagine the NL West is a small, affluent New England hamlet, and the Dodgers are the old-money family that’s generally run things for the past few generations. And imagine that the division title is a holiday party. The Dodgers have held the best holiday party more or less by default for the past decade, but now there’s a nouveau riche neighbor down the block with cool sports cars and a fancy pool with a Jacuzzi, and all his parties have loud music and Jell-O shots and so on—the Padres. On the other end of the street are the Giants, a somewhat mysterious family that might be conjuring apparitions in the basement, but everyone in town finds them compelling.

The Dodgers, upset at the increasing possibility of looking stodgy and obsolete, have cried, “Enough!” They’ve booked a bouncy castle, hired a former Top Chef contestant to do the catering, and booked the best cover band on the East Coast. The noisy neighbors were a fun diversion, but it’s time to remind everyone who really runs this town.

Michael Baumann on the winners and losers of the MLB trade deadline.

[chadnevett]

If Cleveland does play next season as the Indians, it would seem to indicate that the franchise believes the nickname is racist enough to be changed but not so racist that it must be changed immediately.

The Cleveland Baseball Team Is Finally Changing Its Name. Better Late Than Never. by Michael Baumann over at The Ringer.

[chadnevett]

Too frequently in our society, we see compromise as honorable, even when that compromise is made with dishonorable people who set out to exploit that impulse for unity. Some deal had to be made, but it would be wrong to praise compromise for its own sake—the worthiness of any agreement between labor and capital lies in the effects it has on the exploited. In keeping with established trends, the MLBPA sold out its next generation of members for concessions that might look good on paper but will be worth nothing if ownership, once again, pulls the rug out from under the players. In exchange, the poorest people who work in baseball will have the boot pressed just a little more firmly onto their throats.

Michael Baumann.

[chadnevett]

In any confrontation between labor and management, labor starts at an inherent disadvantage. Management has more money, which allows it to wait out its opponent. If MLB shuts down for half a season, superstars like Stanton won’t have trouble paying their mortgages, but players with half a season’s worth of service time at the league minimum might. Moreover, the owners’ material advantage allows them to hire better lawyers, more lobbyists, better PR—in fact, Major League Baseball has its own news agency, MLB Network, and employs dozens of journalists at MLB.com. The Players’ Tribune and social media are useful tools for the players, but they’re no substitute for a league-owned news organization. That’s a substantial obstacle for the players, particularly in a U.S. political culture so hostile to labor that Amazon can not only survive stories of warehouse workers on food stamps or peeing in bottles because they can’t make it to the bathroom on their breaks, but have cities trip over themselves to give the company billions of dollars in subsidies to build new headquarters. When a worker is making $1 million a year playing baseball, and not $8 an hour unloading boxes, the public gets even less sympathetic

Baseball Is Broken. Can Anything Short of a Strike Fix It? by Michael Baumann over at the Ringer.

[chadnevett]

Only that’s not how it works in practice. Preseason polls establish a pecking order: Win, and you move up the ladder. Lose, and you fall. This is independent of team quality; big underdogs that play Clemson or Oklahoma close (or Alabama, but big underdogs don’t play Alabama close) don’t climb up the rankings, and teams that lose games on incorrect refereeing decisions suffer the same fate as teams that lose legitimately. Win enough games in one season, and a team will start higher up the ladder the next. After finishing 13-0 in 2017 (and beating Auburn in the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Day), UCF started 2018 ranked 21st in the AP poll. That’s two spots behind Florida State, which went 7-6 in 2017, finished unranked, and lost head coach Jimbo Fisher, who signed a $75 million contract with Texas A&M. By the time the first CFP rankings came out before Week 10, UCF was 7-0 and in 12th, behind seven one-loss teams and two-loss Florida. Despite winning their last five games, the Knights managed to climb only four spots on the ladder: Alabama, Clemson, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma were ahead of UCF in those initial rankings and never lost, while Ohio State leapfrogged UCF in Week 11 after beating 2-6 Nebraska at home by five points. Georgia and Michigan started ahead of UCF and stayed there despite both teams losing their final game.

The College Football Playoff rankings is American capitalism in an easy to see/understand form. Hunt down people reacting to the idea of UCF being worthy of a spot in the playoffs and you’ll see people trapped by a system that makes them think that hard work is all that matters, that things are equal, that somehow UCF had an easier path than the powerful (or were lazy cowards) when, really, they operated within a framework where there’s no real room for advancement, because those with power will ignore them for fear of losing their status. Go hunt down the people who think all homeless people are too lazy to work and that rich people are all find upstanding folks who deserve every penny because they’re just better than everyone else and someday they’ll be one of them because they work hard and are smart and this is America where anyone can become something ha ha ha fuck.

Sure, that’s a little melodramatic, because we’re talking about American college football, but... sports are just entertainment and metaphor.