THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Some interesting comments over at the BPro “call for suggestions” post, especially where said Joe Sheehan goes crazy and shows himself to be a total !@#$.  That kind of attitude is precisely the reason I do not go there, and will not be dealing with his newsletter.  I’m even canceling the free account I had w/BPro. Ridiculous.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=11401#commentMessage

Here’s his comment, word for word. 

“How about this?

I’ve done sports content as a business for 15 years. By any standard I’m one of a small number of people to do it successfully outside the mainstream, I’ve played most of the roles one can play and holy god I’m sick of listening to you act as if you’ve had 1% of the success the people you criticize have had. How about you grant that I might know what I’m talking about, given that sports content has been my career, without me having to make a business case to someone with no standing to ask for one?

Fangraphs, as far as I can tell, is financed by a rich grandpa. Primer/BTF/Newsstand/Brand of the Day isn’t a business in any real sense of the word, it’s r.s.b ported to the Web and stripped of its spark. That you would make these comparisons shows just how little you understand of Prospectus, how little you’ve ever understood.

Stick to being an academic, Thomas. Stick to your sycophant-laden fora and your above-it-all mien. Stop jumping in here and cheap-shotting a business that you’ve never comprehended on your best day.”

That kind of attitude is precisely the reason I do not go there, and will not be dealing with his newsletter.  I’m even canceling the free account I had w/BPro. Ridiculous.

So, lemme see if I’m understanding here.

Because of comments made by Joe Sheehan, who doesn’t write for BP anymore, you’re going to stop reading those of us who do still write for BP?

Okay…

Colin/2, since Joe Sheehan is labeled “BP Staff” with his comment, I can understand some confusion around whether he is representing BP with his comment.

Colin--As I understood it, Joe still periodically wrote columns for BPro. If this is incorrect, I apologize and thank you for correcting me.

My issue is that the type of interaction with readers exhibited by Joe in that comment is not a one time thing.  I believe (and you are more than entitled to disagree) that the general attitude at BPro is an immediately aggressive attitude in response to what can be (but are not always) civil, constructive comments.  I am not going to argue on this point, everyone has their own level of tolerance for that type of thing.  I am simply stating my level of tolerance loud and clear with my wallet.  I have no wish to support that type of customer service with my money.

Sam Walker wrote in Fantasyland that Joe Sheehan was nicknamed “Volcano” because of his temper.  Reportedly, Joe wasn’t fond of how he was portrayed in the book and wouldn’t appear in the documentary movie based on the book.

It’s just Joe being Joe.  Laugh with him or at him whatever strikes your fancy but I wouldn’t generalize to say that Joe’s attitudes are true for Baseball Prospectus as a whole.  His current affiliation with BP currently seems limited to a book deal and very infrequent blog entries.

I hate it when mom and dad fight.

It’s always us kids who end up getting hurt.

So I am more than a little confused now--is or isn’t Joe affiliated with BPro?  I see the ‘BPStaff’ tag, along with various references (like the one on his Wiki page) that say he still writes for BPro, but Colin writes (in what appears, to me, a condescending tone, customary for their customer service) that he doesn’t.  So what exactly is his affiliation with BPro these days?

I found it a huge WTF? moment when, after reading criticisms of how Matt Swartz called a reader’s position laughable, Joe just lays in to Tango on nothing that had to do with what Tango posted, and doing it under a ‘BP Staff’ tag. That cannot go over well with the readers.

My decision to resubscribe with BP will have nothing to do with Joe Sheehan, but I now know that I will not be getting Sheehan’s newsletter.

Obviously, it is a personal choice, but one of my philosophies in life is that my feelings don’t matter, more or less.  If they did, I would be doing all kinds of counter-productive things.

If every one left this blog every time I went off, I’d be writing to an audience of three! 

Joe’s not much of an analyst.  As a writer I might appreciate his work more if I were a fan of another team than the Angels.  But I can thank Shredder at BTF for posting a few pre-2002 articles and reminding me why I never bother to read his stuff.  It’s not that he didn’t think the Angels had a chance that year.  I didn’t either.  And after the 6-14 start I thought even less of their chances.  It’s the contempt he displays, the mocking, condescening tone.

“Well, whaddaya know? There are Angels fans.”

Yeah Joe. 3 million every year.

Rally/#10: I think you nailed it. Tone matters. What places like BPro should be (and as far as I can tell, this site is) are places where like-minded people can share thoughts and discuss what interests them in an atmosphere of intellectual camaraderie and respect.

I lurk here, but I feel confident that if I posted a stupid or obvious question to a thread no one here would talk down to me or be antagonistic. I don’t think I could say that about BPro.

mgl, you’ve never went off like that, it was personal and out of context.

That said, I do like just about everyone at BP. I worked with Eric, Colin, Matt & Pizza before they went there, and consider them friends. I’ve met all of them except Colin. I’ve also met Christina, Will, Kevin, Jay, Clay, Ben, Shawn Hoffman, Steve Goldman and got along well with all.

I know. I was just being facetious and self-deprecating.

I just read the post from Joe and it was unbelievable.  Tango basically just had an innocuous suggestion and Joe went off on him for no apparent reason that I could fathom.

Tango, are you sure you’re not the father of Joe’s child?