Review No. 1

I bought three baseball season-preview magazines last week.  The one from Athlon Sports wants its buyers to know they’re getting “224 PAGES LARGEST ON THE NEWSTAND.”  They hire someone to count the competition’s pages?

 

Athlon predicts the White Sox for third in their division, the Cubs second in theirs, good enough to become wildcard roadkill.  That’s fine by me.  Each team review comes with a capsule “Scouting Report,” one paragraph long, all in quotations.  Ooh, just like a real scout did it!  I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff.

 

There’s also a bunch of stories, some worth reading, others not.  I looked at three in particular, about the decline of the stolen base; the rise—in popularity, that is—of the slider; and a review of the 2009 MLB draft.  As for the first two pieces, it’s all about analytics—the stolen base doesn’t hold up to baseball’s new mandarins while the slider does. 

Who remembers that the Nationals took Stephen Strasburg with the first pick in the ’09 draft?  I didn’t, but I do remember Jared Mitchell, selected by the White Sox two spots ahead of some guy named Mike Trout.  According to the update, Mitchell spent the last 2-1/2 seasons playing independent ball.And the Sox scouts who missed on Trout?

Please tell me they're no longer employed on the South Side.  Please.