Best of the Baseball Blogosphere: NL Central
With Spring Training rapidly approaching, it’s time to familiarize ourselves with the best of the team-specific baseball blogs out there. Need to know the down-low on how that rookie starting pitcher is going to fare against your team? Better know where to go. In the fifth of a six-part series, I’ll go through the NL Central, and highlight my picks for the cream of the crop.
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Chicago
Goat Riders of the Apolcalypse
I’ve got to give credit to them for handing out, among others, photoshopped pictures of Lou Piniella and Steve Bartman to fans at a Cubs convention. They even managed to get some members of management to sign them. As for the writing, the typical Cubs fan’s pessimistic humor is well represented here. It’s also pretty thoughtful, and I’ve got to agree with this:
I feel reasonably confident that, at the end of any given regular season, I could predict the superbowl winner with at least some degree of success. I certainly can’t say the same thing of baseball. Why do good football teams beat bad football teams far more often than not, while even great baseball teams struggle to win the odd game of five? More to the point, how have the Cubs managed to be so consistently appalling? It should be impossible.
If I’m honest, it’s precisely this mystery that attracts me to baseball so. Despite the fact that the Yankees should win every day, they don’t - in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I love the fact that on any given day - and, actually, on any given three days - the Pirates can sweep the Mutts, and even the Cubs can stick it [to] the Cards…
Oh, and they’ve got podcasts, too, for those who are interested.
Cincinnati
While the leading Cincinnati blog is arguably the Cincinnati Enquirer’s, I’m avoiding those run by newspapers, and looking more for good ol’ fashioned blogs run by people who don’t get a paycheck from a paper. Red Reporter is that blog, and it’s on par with the big boy run by the Enquirer. I thought the article by JD Arney on why fans support bad teams was well-done, and an example of what I’ve come to expect when I visit.
Houston
Again, I have to pick the only real blog out there for a team. The Crawfish Boxes is a fine site, but considering it’s by far the most active Astros site I can find, it better be. I wish there was more to say, but there’s really not. I like the “Doodads” section on the sidebar, which tracks different season stats like most games over .500, and number of games with 10+ hits.
St. Louis
I was tempted to list Deadspin, just from the amount of stories Card fanatic and Deadspin guru Will Leitch posts. Instead, I’ll go with Will’s apparent favorite, guessing from the amount of links Cardinals Diaspora gets from Deadspin. It’s really all you could ask for in a blog, with entertaining writing that all revolves around the Cardinals, whether it’s actually about baseball or not. I found the story of the Cardinals quilt particularly engaging, since both of my grandmas are quilters.
Milwaukee
Jeff Sackmann is a great writer. His work is spread all over the internet. He’s a part of The Hardball Times, Heater, and I have the pleasure of working with him on Beyond the Boxscore. He’s the fellow who gave the world Minor League Splits; one of the best resources since Baseball-Reference and retrosheet were released to the huddled masses of sabermetricians and curious fans. Brew Crew Ball is yet another of Sackmann’s online outlets, and it’s a fine one at that. He’s just started working with Minor League Equivalencies, which are translations of minor league stats to MLB-level equivalents, which is pretty interesting stuff.
Pittsburgh
As many of you know, I’m a sucker for stats. When I went over to Bucco Blog to read what’s new there, I ran across great articles about Adam LaRoche’s chance to hit 40 homers as a Pirate, and an analysis of Buck Naked Pitchers, those who were left out in the breeze by the defense. That’s all I need to see, I’m sold, Bucco Blog gets The Pastime seal of approval. If you’re not as stat-happy as I am, there’s plenty of things like reader mailbags and tidbits of news from around the web.