Link Round-up

Baseball
* Royals Review: Closing the Book On Buddy Bell
I don't think a good case can be made that Bell would have been the right man to lead this team as its talent matures and the real, honest to God, goal becomes winning now (or, winning then, as it were). Nevertheless, while I would have been positively thrilled to hear that Bell was leaving for the first 200 games of his tenure, I must admit I feel a touch of sadness now. Retirement is a kind of death rehearsal in our capitalist culture, even for the most anonymous of jobs, and there's certainly something chilly about the fact that Bell's diagnosis is the spur here.

* Indians.com: Stanford designated for assignment
Now he's looking to run to another big-league club. Stanford said he would pitch in the Minors for another organization, if a Major League opportunity doesn't immediately arise. But because he views himself as a starter, he has no interest in remaining in an Indians organization stocked with starting pitching.

* The Church of Baseball: It's a bittersweet life
Why have you forsaken me, baseball gods? I give you everything. I sacrifice my time, money, and social life for you, yet you give me nothing but losing. You have condemned me to twelve years of wandering the barren desert, tease me with mirages of golden trophies, curse me with an insatiable, unquenchable thirst.

* Athletics Nation: The Myth of the 9 Hattebergs
A lineup of 9 Hattebergs will excel against “Hatteberg-friendly” pitchers (pitchers with spotty command, etc.), but will struggle against all “Hatteberg-unfriendly” pitchers, because a lineup of 9 Hattebergs has no Plan B to turn to against a Carlos Silva, who throws a ton of strikes, or a Derek Lowe, who doesn’t give up a lot of hits or walks but also cannot shut down the running game. This would lead to the team scoring a ton of runs occasionally but also getting shut down far too often. Sound familiar?

* The Hardball Times: Why do sinking fastballs cause groundballs?
There are at least two basic hypotheses to explain why sinking pitches lead to groundballs. If low pitches generally lead to more groundballs than other pitches, it's possible that sinking fastballs are associated with groundballs because the pitches simply end up in the lower half of the strike zone more often than the more traditional four-seam fastball. The second hypothesis proposes that location doesn't matter because the sinking movement causes batters to misjudge and swing over the top of the baseball regardless of where the pitch is located.


Other Sports
* Gelf Magazine: Lamenting SportsCenter's Baroque Period
GF: Deadspin has a community like the old SportsCenter used to have. Younger people have gone to blogs, where they find the capacity to be informed and the right to contribute and form an opinion. It's a massive kind of empowerment and a very powerful development. On the other hand, not all blogs are created equal, so one would have to imagine that there are going to be real questions about the next generation of people who write about sports.

* AOL Fanhouse: Big Ten Preview: '07 Ohio State
[written by the enemy, but seems mostly fair, although I'm not particularly educated about college football.]
So, yeah, they'll win because that's what Ohio State does of late. More specifically, they'll win because they have a ton of starters back from a defense that was statistically amongst the nation's best despite two rough outings to end the year, including freakish man-beast defensive end Vernon Gholston, by FanHouse's accounting the fifth best player in the conference, and jam artist corner Malcolm Jenkins. Oh, and there's that Laurinaitis guy. Despite being the #1 most overrated player in the Big Ten, he's not exactly bad.

* Abolitionist Approach: A note About Michael Vick
There is something positively bizarre about condemning Michael Vick for using dogs in a hideous form of entertainment when 99% of us also use animals that are every bit as sentient as dogs in another hideous form of entertainment that is no more justifiable than fighting dogs: eating animals and animal products.