Baseball Prospectus Tour Event: February 28, 2010

Yesterday, I drove to Montclair, New Jersey to attend Baseball Prospectus' kick-off event for their annual book tour. It took place at the Yogi Berra Museum at the outskirts of Montclair State University (People from New Jersey are all nodding their heads. Everyone else is collectively shrugging). Steven Goldman, Kevin Goldstein, Christina Kahrl, Jay Jaffe and Cliff Corcoran spoke briefly at the beginning of the event, but mostly fielded questions from the audience. Most of the questions were team-oriented and not player-oriented, but there were a few nuggets worth sharing - fantasy oriented or no.

Yankees: The moderator of the event brought up the Yankees first, and the fact that PECOTA doesn't project them to win the division. The panel pointed out there is a 2-3 game difference between the Yanks, Rays, and Red Sox and that you're talking about the three best teams in baseball with some shades of differences. If anything hurt the Yankees in PECOTA, it was the age of the team; projection systems don't like players on the wrong side of Age 35 and predict declines even for elite players like Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. The panel thought that Joba Chamberlain is still young enough that he could have a good year starting, and that while the Yankees might have jerked him around, keeping him on such a tight pitch count may have saved some wear-and-tear.

Mets: While the Mets certainly aren't the class of the N.L. East, let alone the division, they have been maligned a little too much by the conventional media. One of the panelists brought up a point I hadn't thought of before: players, managers, and general managers come and go, but there's typically only one set of owners. The Wilpons have been the one constant in the Mets cycle of non-winning, so as much as Omar Minaya or Jerry Manuel may deserve some blame for the Mets struggles, ownership should be looked at carefully as well.

Nationals: This is the first year the Nationals aren't going to be "embarrassing." They have some players coming up like Stephen Strasburg and Drew Storen who are exciting, but while the Nats might win 70 or so and hold their own, it will still be a few years before they emerge.

Pirates: The Pirates are moving toward a better team, but the moves may be more incremental than Pirates fans would like. By 2012, the Pirates could be a contender, but 2013 seemed more likely to the panel.

Mariners: The Cliff Lee trade won't help as much as some pundits believe, not because Lee will disappoint, but because Jarrod Washburn and Erik Bedard already sparkled in the rotation in 2009 and Lee is not replacing bad innings. The line-up doesn't have enough oomph, and the team could lose a lot of 3-2 games. The Lee trade emptied a farm system that wasn't particularly deep to begin with, and there are no guarantees that the Rangers or Angels aren't better.

As an aside, there were cameras at the event and I was not sure at the time why they were there. After the Q&A ended, a young woman came up to my friends and me and asked if we wouldn't mind being interviewed for Real Sports HBO about Kahrl, who is a transgender. We agreed to stay longer for the interview. I figured that an intern or a young reporter would interview us, but when the young woman told us that "Bryant would be out in a few minutes," I figured out that we'd be talking to Bryant Gumbel.

Gumbel came out and was very amusing and down-to-earth, asking us some basic baseball questions to warm us up (and giving me grief for being a Mets fan). The interview with me and the two other guys they selected to talk to Bryant lasted about 5-10 minutes. I don't know if they'll use it and I don't know when the Real Sports on transgendered reporters will air but it was an experience talking to Gumbel and getting to meet him, though I probably would have shaved yesterday morning had I known.