With the launch of the iphone App Store and the ability for 3rd party developers to write software for Apple's iPhone, MLB has introduced a $4.95 application designed particularly for the iPhone.

Features:

The main screen has the top 2/3 dedicated to todays scoreboard. The bottom 1/3 shows the game of your choice.

 

Scoreboard

The scoreboard area shows:

• each game
  
• the score
  
• the inning
  
• and has a video icon to a link to a separate page of the application that has highlight clips for the selected game

Selecting the game changes the detail section below to the selected game. Swiping to the right switches to the previous days games with video highlight links. Swiping to the left shows the next days games.

Game Details

The game detail shows:

 

• The line score
• A graphic representation of the field with any baserunners shown in by making the bases red.
  
• Current count.  
  
• Current pitcher with record and ERA.  
  
• Current batter with the current games hits and at bats and season batting average.
  
• A clickable image of a globe which opens mobile safari and the current play-by-play view of the game

Scores update every minute.

Video Highlights

The video highlight screen shows:

• a thumbnail of the video
  
• short description
  
• the length
  
• the time
  
• a status indicator about whether you have viewed the video or not

Clicking on the video rotates the image and shows a high quality clips with the widescreen.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• You can watch high quality video highlights away from the computer.  Fast on wi-fi, don't know about 3g but imagine it will be pretty fine.

Cons:

• Videos are difficult to dive in to and watch a few in a row. Considering they don't autoplay in sequence, you have to keep flipping the phone to widescreen and back if you want to click through videos
• It has less than the mlb mobile site in every area other than the ability to watch the clips. 

Conclusion
I spent my $4.95 and perhaps it was worth it, but I don't really so using the app unless they improve it. You can't tell a pitcher's pitch count, you can't see who is in the lineup, you can't read a preview of tomorrow's game or a summary of yesterday's game.  It's just a dressed up way to watch video clips when you're not at a full computer. Perhaps they'll add more functionality, but for now it's nothing to get too excited about.

 

 

 

The premise of this little piece is that the author's father...

...AS OWNER OF HIS
FANTASY BASEBALL
TEAM, HAS A MEETING
WITH HIS PLAYERS
TO EXPLORE THEIR
CONCERNS ABOUT
FRONT-OFFICE
MANAGEMENT.

DAD: I just want to say, first off, that you all suck so bad.

ANDY PETTITTE: I never wanted to be on this team in the first place.

DAD: Well, I didn't want you on my team, either, asshole. But I was drunk at the draft, and I thought you were that other tall, brown-haired Yankee pitcher, the one who does crosswords. That's who I wanted, you Yankee shit.

cont...

Al Doyle at Baseball Analysts writes What Good is an 83-MPH Fastball, a piece on Byrd and how pitchers like him maybe deserve more opportunities. Doyle went to the May 25 game at Comerica and spends a few lines detailing the particulars of Byrd's performance and poses the following:

So how do Byrd and his fellow finesse types survive in a time when radar guns and numbers like 98 have a slavish, cult-like following? The desperate need for even semi-competent pitching and depth in the rotation means teams have to tame their one-track quest for power arms and settle for other options.

Nate Silver answered the following question yesterdays chat:
 

ericturner29 (Chicago): Who would you have close for the Tribe?

Nate Silver: Adam Miller. Maybe.

Discuss.  Idle chatter (yawn)? Great idea, never happen? Stupidest thing you've heard since Steve Phillips said (insert anything he's ever said0? Papelbon redux?

Some of us have been scratching our heads wondering why the Tribe's record is as good as it is.  How come this year, the Indians are outperforming their Pythagorean record when they've underperformed it in the past?

Is it grit?
Is it luck?

Or perhaps it is Quality Starts....

Continue reading this post »

The Yanks have just fired their strength coach after all the injuries they've faced. Perhaps he is just the fall guy, perhaps they hired the wrong guy.

By and large, it seem like the Indians are exteremely progressive in their management of injuries.  They do appropriate conditioning (seems like something that yanks might have screwed up on), convince their players to be cautious with their bodies when they feel pain (macho-ism isn't rewarded), and they rehab well.

Here's the link to the NY Times story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/sports/baseball/03miller.html?ref=sports

Personally, I took no offense and found this kind of  funny:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060816

"10. Cleveland
Not sure what happened with these guys. The Indians would have made a much better roto team.

(Note: Normally I'd have more to say, but I'm tired of Cleveland readers complaining every time I write something even mildly negative about one of their teams, no matter how accurate that assessment might be. Now I'm thinking that Cleveland fans are like women -- if they ask you how they look, just tell them, "You look fine, you look great" or else you're in for 20 minutes of pure hell. So to recap, the Indians look fine, they look great. Let's move on.)"

Andy Marte is on hitting them out as part of the home run derby at milb.com if you care...you can see Marte's stroke right now 5:53 PST. He's rocketing them out in the round before the final. The commentators are noting his easy stroke.  He's up to 12 in this round. He's up against Ryan Ludwick, I believe in ths final round.

Oh, how important it is to remember how good it is to not be the Royals.  The Royals clock in with a .06% chance of making the playoffs and when they adjust for Pecota it drops to a 0%.

Here are the AL Central projections from Baseball Prospectus's Odds report which plays the season a million times.

Playing the rest of the season a million times:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_odds.php

Playing the rest of the season a million times with some help from Pecota:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_oddspec.php

Average wins by position in AL Central:  99.3 91.8 84.5 73.3 57.8
AL Central        W    L    Pct3  Avg W  Avg L  Champions  Wild Card   Playoffs
Tigers            35   18   .552   95.8   66.2   55.01185   15.24513   70.25699
White Sox         33   19   .544   93.0   69.0   35.73172   18.23417   53.96589
Indians           26   26   .541   86.0   76.0    8.92673    9.27632   18.20306
Twins             24   28   .448   73.7   88.3     .32945     .43446     .76391
Royals            13   38   .409   58.2  103.8     .00025     .00035     .00060

Rob Neyer has an Insider post at ESPN, where he coined (to my knowledge) the phrase "Filler B's" for Broussard, Blake and Boone, "just occupying their spaces until Andy Marte is ready to play third base, Franklin Gutierrez is ready to play right field and Ryan Garko is ready to play first base"

http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/columns/story?columnist=neyer_rob&id=2342179