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Sam Walker at Sportsline.com

Sam Walker wrote a very good book about fantasy baseball called Fantasy Land, which covered his first year in Tout Wars, which was also his first year playing fantasy baseball. As a Wall Street Journal reporter and with the estimable Nando del Fino as a partner, Sam finished in the middle of the pack his first year, but won Tout his second year.

He’s got a big lead this year, as filmmakers are using Tout AL and another newcomer to make a movie of Sam’s book. In this column at Sportsline he explains what he did to make that lead happen. Names like Duchscherer, Hamilton, and Ervin Santana go part of the way, but Sam thinks he did some smart things, too.

Yes, he did.

Mike Pianowski

Let me again recommend an excellent but hard to find Tout Wars essay, this time from the hyper competetive Mike Pianowski. I don’t personally believe him that he’s writing this story for himself, personally, but I think that that only amplifies the content. And I’m pretty sure Mike knows that, too.

Yep Roc Records Artist Info

Back when I was a boy I spent a dusky night or two at Gerdes Folk City in NY’s Greenwich Village, in its dying days, totally crazy for a LA band called the Dream Syndicate. (I also saw there an amazing Levon Helm/Rick Danko show that I count among the best I ever saw anywhere.) Folk City had once been a hangout of the nascent Bob Dylan, who among other things went on to write a song about Catfish Hunter, and who also wrote about his love for baseball in Chronicle. (Dylan has been touring in recent summers in minor league baseball parks, though I’m not sure he’s been taking in many games.)

About this same time I was also a little crazy for Jonathan Richman (wait, I still am), who was famous then for his awesome band the Modern Lovers, but who ended up being known most famously as the troubadour in the excellent hair-gel movie There’s Something About Mary. Jonathan, back in the old days, wrote an amazing song about Walter Johnson, and some other baseball songs as well.

So now, Steve Wynn, the lead guy of the Dream Syndicate, has made an album of baseball songs that have the same love for the game that Dylan and Richman have shown before. Wynn has a partner who I don’t know, so consider the credit shared, but these are rock songs about baseball in every good sense of the phrase.

Illustrative song title: “Ted Fucking Williams.”

Geek’s love: “Harvey Haddix,” which makes the case that losing a perfect game in the 13th inning shouldn’t have cost Harvey his status as a no-hitter pitcher.

There’s also a song about Curt Flood and the reserve clause! Sexy! And rockin’.

I’ve only listened once, but I like these songs, and I like these people. Play ball!

I bought the Baseball Project LP at www.emusic.com, by the way, which is a pretty good service for finding mp3 songs in a wide range of genres for a pretty fair price.

Alan Barra, Village Voice

I’m not sure I agree with Barra that the Yankees and Mets are cashing in, coasting instead of spending the ducats necessary to win. But the quote from Marvin Miller calling to task the phrase “fiscal responsibility” is powerful. If only we knew how much money the teams were making we could judge their decisions in this way. That we don’t know, yet we’re building them luxury palaces of profit maximization, is the real scandal.

Or maybe that’s the fiscal scandal. The possibilities that Brian Cashman isn’t very good at his job and that the Wilpons are as inept and dysfunctional as the Angeloses are very real, and I think better explain why these two big-spending teams aren’t very good.

Tout Wars

My essay about Tout Wars this year is about Mike Lombardo. He just wins.

Nate Silver Rocks

On this day, a couple of days past midseason, Nate Silver talks about how PECOTA only projected the Rays to win 88-90 games this year, an audacious projection that now seems a little lily livered. That’s how good the Rays have been.

My goal here is to shout out about Nate’s analysis, which is excellent, but I have another objective. In Joe Sheehan’s column today he also takes on the Rays. Tucked behind the BP pay wall I can only guess at his overall point, but the tease is apologetic for not getting the Rays analysis right in the preseason.

But, and maybe Joe is being coy here, it was his analysis of the deal for Garza and Bartlett (oh so many months ago) that turned me on to what seemed like the key preseason Rays story. This was a defense that was moving from crap to good, and there would be some pitchers who would benefit. Based on that analysis, of Sheehan’s,  I made a bet on Edwin Jackson, a post-hype starter who finished fairly strongly last year, but whose historical ineptitude made him a $2 pickup in the endgame.

There is a ton we don’t know about defense and how it helps and hurts teams, but when a team like the Rays moves from the bottom of the defensive efficiency ratings to the top, and at the same time dramatically reduces the number of runs it allows, it may be time to say that we at least know what works.

Without shorting the shrift of the excellent Nate Silver, I think this defensive shift has been Sheehan’s baby the last few years (at least) and he deserves a lot of credit for seeing what was happening.