Interviews Archives

There's an audio interview with Bill James at this web site, but for some reason it won't play for me on IE, I had to use Firefox.

Kevin Van Valkenburg catches up with one of my favorite managers, Davey Johnson.

Team USA (which embarrassingly failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens) followed it up by beating powerhouse Cuba in the final. Johnson also led Team USA to a first place finish at the Baseball World Cup in Taiwan last year, but it was the celebration that broke out when the United States made it back to Olympics that he remembers the most.

"Guys were passing around a jug of rum, trying to get me to take a sip," Johnson said. "They were chanting 'Skipper! Skipper!' So yeah, I took a sip. I've never had a bus ride like it."

I wish he were still managing in the majors.

In case you didn't see it, Jack Curry of the New York Times rode to Yankee Stadium on Monday with Joe Girardi. He gained some new insights into the man.

BBTF posts the 60 Minutes Bill James interview.

Update: Joe Posnanski puts something into words that I couldn't. I didn't want to say this was a bad piece, because it really wasn't, but there were things in there that were inaccurate. Joe nails that:

Point is, I think 60 Minutes is a great show -- as long as you don't know much about the topic. I would guess that people who understand classical music probably had no use at all for the Gustave Dudamel piece, they probably felt like it was shallow and silly and borderline inaccurate.

I say this because, of course, I DO know Bill James. You know Bill James. And that gives us a unique look at the 60 Minutes piece on him Sunday. I will say first that I liked the piece because I thought Bill came across well, and I'm guessing it was probably well received by people who know nothing at all about baseball. But, it was certainly those other things too, shallow and silly and borderline inaccurate.

Isn't this what the blogosphere really exposed? Now, if someone in the media reports on something, there's an expert out there who knows better to set things right. So after 40 years we finally realize that if 60 Minutes is a good show if you don't know something about a topic, it's probably a bad show.

Brian Kamenetzky inteviews beat writer Matt Hurst on the state of the Angels.

Bill James sits down with Time magazine. Two separate questions actually meld together well. First, Bill on ERA:

You often show that conventional baseball statistics aren't as important as they appear. In the book, you write "every year that passes, the ERA (Earned Run Average) becomes a little more irrelevant." Why is that?

The reason the ERA is becoming a little more irrelevant every year is that pitchers don't pitch whole innings anymore. Relief pitchers anyway. If you go back to 1915, 1920, really, all pitchers pitched full innings 99% of the time. And you could measure a pitcher's effectiveness by how many runs he allowed in those whole innings. But modern pitchers, in particular modern relievers, pitch portions of an inning. And in a situation where each pitcher pitches a portion of an inning, who you charge the run to becomes critical. And the rule on whom we charge the run to is so careless and sloppy that it doesn't work. It often leads to pitchers having ERAs that do not reflect how they really pitch, either because the reliever allowed a bunch of runs to score that were charged to somebody else, or because the starting pitcher who left guys on base got hurt by it.

This melds with what Bill would do if he were commissioner:

This is the rule that I would adopt. I've thought about this for a long time, and I don't see why this doesn't work. One time per game, you get a free pitching change without restriction. Otherwise, when you put a pitcher on the mound to start an inning, he has to stay in the game until he's charged with a run allowed. In other words, you have a limit on how often you can put a pitcher out there, let him face one batter and "let's bring in somebody else."

I like that rule. I still like the old way teams used relievers, that he was expected to finish the game unless he got in trouble.

The Baseball Musings pledge drive continues through March. Please consider making a donation.

Phil Hughes is taking questions for Ian Kennedy.

Update: Ian answers the questions here. I'd really like to see more about baseball, although I suppose someone could start a fantasy league around which baseball players are best at HALO.

I had not heard of the Vulcan changeup before, but maybe it will be the pitch that allows Kennedy to live long and prosper.

Dave Rouleau speaks with Jacques Doucet, former play by play man for the Montreal Expos.

DRays Bay interviews B.J. Upton. I wonder if they'll get a letter asking them to change the name of the blog to Rays Bay?

Bleed Cubbie Blue posts a very good interview with Len Kasper, the play-by-play announcer for the Cubs. I like his take on criticizing the team:

BCB: Do you and Bob feel at all pressured (either real or perceived) to toe the company line rather than express any true criticism of the way the Cubs are playing or of questionable moves that Lou makes during the course of a game?

LEN: No, we just do the games to the best of our ability. I think the holding back part is simply having a sense of decorum and understanding that 1) it's a very difficult game to play and 2) we're broadcasting baseball, not doing an over-opinionated talk show. We don't shy away from pointing out what's going on. I do it mostly by saying, "The Cubs are 0-for-their-last-20 in these situations" or "The Cubs have lost 9 in a row" or whatever. I treat the audience as thinking human beings who can form their own opinions. Yes, I have opinions, and they come out at times, but if I simply spouted them for 3 hours, I guarantee you, it wouldn't be a very enjoyable broadcast. Bob has his opinions too and I enjoy bringing those out, and he's not afraid to be critical at all. It's just that we don't normally scream those opinions. I think we do a thinking-person's broadcast and I'm proud of that. The biggest key for me is that we don't miss stuff. That's a huge goal of mine. I don't ever want to ignore something just because it goes against the Cubs or might not be a positive. We owe that to the viewers.

Len also knows VORP and OPS+.

Matt Cerrone at MetsBlog.com talks with Keith Hernandez while the Trentonian sits down with Yankees prospect Alan Horne.

Beyond the Boxscore interviews Paul DePodesta. Paul doesn't give away much, but he does explain his definition of a Moneyball player.

My definition of a "Moneyball" player is much different than the common usage. I don't see it as having anything to do with walks or on-base percentage or really any statistic. To me that really misses the point. A "Moneyball" player is an undervalued player for any reason whatsoever. So, yes, we still look for undervalued players. However, there isn't a universal scale of value in baseball, as no player holds precisely the same value for all 30 clubs. Often times "undervalued" simply means finding players who may have more value for us than they would for the player's current team. It doesn't imply that the current team has somehow overlooked the value of the player. That other team has a different composition of personnel and under that composition the player doesn't have as much value as he would have in our composition. We're all trying to manage portfolios of players that need to be somewhat balanced across various attributes as well as between short-term and long-term goals.

New York Yankees Update breaks down the A-Rod 60 Minutes interview. I'm amazed CBS doesn't post the whole interview online. The one clip I found was A-Rod's answer to the Barry Bonds question, which I thought was just right.

Maury Brown interviews Bob Dutton, president of the BBWAA about the recent additions to the association.

The Boston Globe translates an interview with Hideki Okajima from Japan. The whole conversation is very good, but I found this interesting:

Y: What, in your opinion, is the reason for your success this year?

O: My best pitch in Japan was a curve ball. But with a more slippery American baseball, my curve wasn't curving as much as it did in Japan. So I had to figure out a different ball. Then after I figured the pitch [the change-up] out, I kept the use of the pitch to a minimum in the spring and the first part of the season, because I didn't want my opponent to know about the ball. I'd only use it at the crucial moment. The pitch is what they named the "Okie Dokie"

So there's a difference in Japanese baseballs that allow pitchers a better grip. Does anyone know why?

Joe Hamrahi interviews Ned Colletti, and comes away impressed:

And finally, I asked Ned what he might have done differently in 2007 if he had the chance.

That's a great question. I'm sure there are. One thing I know I wouldn't have done differently. I'm glad I didn't trade 3 or 4 kids at the deadline. I think that decision will prove to be valuable for a very long time. People ask about the young players all the time. Teams need young players.

How would you like to have Martin who's 24, Loney who's 23, Kemp who's 23, Billingsley who's 23, Broxton who's 23, and you add Kershaw to it, and you add LaRoche to it and you add Chin-Lung Hu to it, and you add Tony Abreu to it...and you let it get better for another year...and that's not to say we're going to sell off 2008. We can still win in 2008. Think about the pitching staff we could have...Billingsley and Elbert and Kershaw and McDonald...that's possible a year and a half from now. And you have two guys, Billingsley and Kershaw who are legit number 1-2 starters. You'd have a great catcher, you'd have a great first baseman, you'd have a guy at SS who might win the gold glove one day...a guy like Matt Kemp who hasn't even played that much baseball. He's played about 5 or 6 years baseball. He might wind up being a great centerfielder! So how do you (trade 3 or 4 of your top kids)? If we can stay the course, we can have something very special for a very long time.

So Dodgers fans, are you excited yet?

That was disappointing. It was just a sound bite promoting a Warren Buffett special.

If you're at your TV set, CNBC interviews Alex Rodriguez this hour.

My 1979 Strat-O-Matic team, the Pinto Hatchbacks, was know as the Amazing All Right-handed Lineup (AARL). Rusty Torres, a switch hitter, was the only player who would bat lefty against right-handed pitchers (it wasn't a great lineup). Bronx Banter interviewed the read Rusty Torres, whose claim to fame is taking part in three forfeited games.

My 1979 Strat-O-Matic team, the Pinto Hatchbacks, was know as the Amazing All Right-handed Lineup (AARL). Rusty Torres, a switch hitter, was the only player who would bat lefty against right-handed pitchers (it wasn't a great lineup). Bronx Banter interviewed the read Rusty Torres, whose claim to fame is taking part in three forfeited games.

Joe Torre does his first post-Yankees interview:

Former New York Yankees Manager Joe Torre will visit the LATE SHOW with DAVID LETTERMAN, Monday, Oct. 29 (11:35 PM-12:37 AM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

This will be Torre's first broadcast network television interview since leaving the team. On Thursday, Oct. 18, Torre rejected a $5 million, one-year contract to return as manager of the Yankees, ending his 12-year affiliation with the team. During his tenure with the Bronx Bombers, he led them to four World Series titles, 12 straight years in the playoffs and became the second winningest manager in Yankee history.

http://www.squawkingbaseball.com/?p=25Squawking Baseball interviews Nationals manager Manny Acta. I love his take on the international draft:

SB: How would you feel about an international draft?

MA: I'm not a fan of it. People talk about it limiting costs by stopping bidding wars for the top guys. But that's just the top guys. For everybody else, it could actually make things more expensive. There are so many kids down there that are dying to come up and be big leaguers. The system as it is is good for both sides. If you institute a draft, less kids get signed. That's bad for the kids obviously, and bad for the teams since the more players you sign the better chances you have of striking gold.

The same holds true for the domestic draft. Get rid of them both and go back to a scout and sign system.

Blez at Athletics Nation sits down for his annual chat with Billy Beane. Here's Beane on why he let players go for nothing on waivers:

Blez: As for the guys you let go on waivers, Kennedy and Loaiza, is the fact that they were let go for nothing an indication of their lack of market value? Because you never want to let go of something for nothing, right?

Beane: Yeah, that is true. In fairness to the players, it's probably not fair to answer that question. In those cases, having the flexibility in the payroll is a big addition. If I said there was no interest in this guy or no interest in that guy...

Blez: In other words, we can draw our own conclusions as to how it happened?

Beane: Yeah, exactly. The thing about trade market is that it's always fluctuating. I'll give you an example. As great a player as Mark McGwire was for us, and I was an assistant GM when Sandy (Alderson) was here, with the Cardinals it turned out to be a great deal for them. But I've said this to you before, only one team had interest in him and that was the Cardinals. That was the only team that thought they could use that player. You never know. The misconception people have in trade value is sometimes is all over the map. For players you can have a player that you have a ton of interest one week and then none the next week.

Beegcellent Baseball posts an interview with me.

Joe Hamrahi spoke with Cameron Maybin last August. He's slated to bat second tonight in New York if the rain stops.

Cobra Brigade interviews Carlos Gomez, the author of the wonderful pitching mechanics pieces at The Hardball Times.

MetsBlog.com talks to Jason Stark in their latest podcast. Scroll down the left sidebar to find the audio player on the site.

Maury Brown sits down with Mark Shapiro, GM of the Cleveland Indians. I like his approach to free agents:

All that accentuates is that we need to try to stay out of the free agent market whenever possible ... and when we do enter into the free agent market, there is hopefully a realistic desire to supplement rather than build the core talent - because I just don't see us ever being able to compete in the free agent market for core talent ... it's just the very rare, exceptional occasion when that is going to happen.

That's what the Yankees did so well in the 1990s. They had a solid core of players they developed in their farm system, and supplemented them with players from other organizations via trade and free agency.

Lion in Oil interviews Keith Law, formerly of the Blue Jays and currently of ESPN. Here's his view of the biggest problems in baseball:

I've never thought steroids were that big of an issue, and as a fan, I really don't give a Juan Pierre whether or not these guys used steroids or HGH or horse tranquilizers or whatever. The steroid "scandal" is about 90% media sanctimony, and I guess the only good thing there is that it gives me another point on which to rail on the mainstream sports media.

The two biggest issues in baseball to me are the seemingly intractable problem of pitcher injuries, and the totally tractable problem of penurious owners. The first one is a serious issue, because we're getting to the point where pitchers - particularly young ones - are almost treated like disposable assets, and we're seeing ridiculous contracts handed out to pitchers who have mediocre but existing track records because of the shortage (perceived or real) of pitching.

The skinflint owners, on the other hand, represent an easily fixable problem. The revenue-sharing system, as it is, is asinine, because it penalizes teams that run their businesses properly and rewards teams that run them poorly or that run them on the cheap. Competitive balance is innate to baseball, in my opinion, as long as you don't have owners who are draining the profits out of their teams each year rather than reinvesting in the product. This is their legal right as owners, but it's bad for the game.

The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal sits down with Bill James:

After a lifetime of studying the game, Mr. James reckons he still has plenty to learn. The internationalization of the game is one source of new wisdom, he says. "One of the great things about the Cubans and the Japanese is that they develop their own traditions and a lot of the things we think they know they don't necessarily buy into. Incorporating those other traditions is a source of wealth for baseball, and if we're smart, we'll do more of it."

Ichiro Suzuki, the Seattle Mariners centerfielder and perennial hits leader, is one example. "He's a great player while violating 48 rules about how everybody is taught to hit," Mr. James says. Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, the wily Cuban-born New York Mets pitcher, is another case in point. "We have a set pitching pattern, and then you get a guy like El Duque doing everything wrong and he beats you. It's a wonderful object lesson for all of us."

Matthew Cerrone recorded an interview with Omar Minaya that you can hear at 6:30 PM EDT at MetsBlog.com. From Matt:

The conversation is mostly about life as a GM, why it is different than just running a fantasy team, what it takes to make a trade - it's not so Mets-specific, as it is about the job.

He'll post about the discussion tomorrow if you miss the audio today.

River Avenue Blues interviews Keith Law about the upcoming MLB draft.

Joe Aiello of Big League Baseball Report interviewed me late last week about the upcoming season. You can listen at his blog.

Pat Andriola at Shea Faithful interviews Bill James. I though this answer was interesting:

Pat Andriola: The St. Louis Cardinals had an 82-Pythagorean-win season last year, but went on to win the World Series. Are there any changes to the system that could make it less of a chance affair, and would you want to make those changes if you could?

Bill James: I'm not a great fan of the Wild Card. But it is tremendously important, for the health of the sport, that the best team doesn't always win. That's the real problem with the NBA. . .the best team is going to win in the long run, and everybody knows it. The season becomes a long, crushing battle in which, ultimately, you have no chance to escape justice. . .as opposed to college basketball, which is vastly more exciting, simply because you never know who will win, and therefore have to do everything you can do to maximize your chance. In the NBA you don't really HAVE a chance to win, if you're not one of the two or three best teams, and everybody knows this on some level. . .therefore, why play hard, why dive for the ball on the floor, why fight for the rebound, why sacrifice your body to score a point, when you ultimately can't win. No sport can survive if the best team always wins.

This is the macro version of why I like baseball better than other sports. Sticking with the NBA, if the game is on the line with three seconds to go, Michael Jordan gets the ball; the best player on your team takes the last shot. The twelfth man on the team never even sees action in that situation. But in baseball, you never know who is going to be up in that spot. You hope it's David Ortiz, but sometimes you get Luis Sojo, and sometimes Sojo comes through. In baseball, you never know who the hero is going to be.

Bronx Banter writer Alex Belth sits down with Red Sox blogger Curt Schilling to discuss the pitcher's writing on the internet.

Schilling: I'll tell you what I've realized in the last 48 hours. I did a blog a couple of days ago and basically explained my contract situation. Yesterday, there was an article written by John Tomase in The Boston Herald. The article is, John introduces my blog, quotes my blog and then finishes the article. I just did an interview without having to deal with the media. I wasn't edited, I wasn't clipped. It was what I said, how I said it. If I've got to take s*** and if I'm going to wear labels, I'm going to wear them because of things that I've said and done.

Yanksfan vs. Soxfan interviews Jay Jaffe about the upcoming season for the Yankees and Red Sox.

Patrick Sullivan interviews Red Sox assistant GM Jed Hoyer at The Baseball Analysts. If you think he leads an exciting life, there's this:

Pat: So from the day you were hired until now, can you share the most mundane task ever assigned to you and the best, most impactful and high-profile work you have done?

Jed: The other night Brian O'Halloran, our Director of Baseball Operations, and I were at a Kinkos in Phoenix putting together arbitration binders until 4:30 in the morning. It doesn't get more mundane than sticking each individual number on a divider while the guy behind the counter is listening to a sci-fi book on tape - and somehow trying to stay awake. That task is up there on the list - and is certainly the most recent.

However, he does get to do exciting work, too:

I have had a ton of great projects too - heading out to Arizona to try to sign Schilling and spending two days in NYC with ARod in December 2003 were great experiences because it is so rare to negotiate without the filter of an agent. I think the most fun I have ever had working for the Red Sox has been preparing for the post-season advance scouting meetings. Every single time I wind up nearly pulling an all-nighter to get all the materials and video ready for the meeting - and it never feels like work. Preparing for a playoff series - and watching how Varitek devours the information and asks incredible questions - is an amazing experience.

The interview is well worth your time.

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive in March.

Sports Media Guide interviews Derrick Goold, beat writer for the St. Louis Cardinals. His comments on Albert Pujols are quite interesting.

By way of the Turkmenbashi of the Blogosphere, a link to an incredibly long interview with Scott Boras and a note on how it contradicts the reported story of the transfer of Johnny Damon from Boston to New York.

I found it interesting that Boras collects his own baseball data, duplicating the businesses of STATS and BIS.

Q. Can you talk more about resources you have here?

A. Upstairs, we've got about 30, 40 people, their job all year around is information, data. We keep track of every pitch in baseball.

Q. Your proprietary system?

A. All proprietary. It's all our own, we've spent millions of dollars getting our computer system to a level where it's - I'll have to go upstairs and show you.

Q Who's feeding you the video?

A. We get that from DirecTV, local feeds. We have satellites, we pull it all in and then we basically chronicle it for each of our players, digitally, and put it away for players. We have their at-bats, their pitching performances, every game is chronicled.

Seems like it would be cheaper to buy it from a third party.

Matsuzaka Watch interviews Will Carroll on the Japanese pitcher, and there's a great discussion about pitch counts (PAP is pitcher abuse points).

MW: Something I wanted to ask you, since we began to e-mail back and forth...I did a piece a while back using a PAP chart that I was running on Matsuzaka, just to see how he stacked up, and it's off the charts compared to even the most abused Major Leaguers....

WC: It doesn't work.

MW: Yeah, I was wondering what's your perspective on it? Why doesn't it work?

WC: A couple things. First off, PAP is based off a five man rotation and even though the Japanese use five man there's more rest days in there, so it essentially factors out to six days rest, which is something I'm curious about...his adjustment to that...the five days versus six. But, it's just a different game. It's not played the same way, and all the assumptions made off PAP were based off, I wanna say, it went back to like 1978.

Japan is actually more equivalent to the 60s, and we're working on this project where we're doing this book on pennant races and two of the chapters I'm working on are 1934 and 1967. So I'm looking at all these pitch charts and it was just different. They didn't throw as hard, but they would throw 150 pitches a game. And, there weren't as many strikeouts because they were throwing for ground balls. And I think the Japanese have been kind of the same way. They are a little more strikeout happy so I think that they're throwing harder, especially from the games I've seen. But even so, the strikeout totals, and the strikeout rates equate more to a game of the late 60s or early 70s than the PAP era, so I just don't think the math works.

There's a lot more. I get the feeling there's some combination of GM/manager/starting staff that can exploit pitch counts and a four-rotation to give themselves a huge edge. The right combination hasn't come along yet, however.

Shea Faithful interviews New York Daily News beat writer Adam Rubin about the upcoming Mets season.

PA: What do you think of the Moises Alou signing?

AR: You have to be concerned overall with the age of the Mets -- Jose Valentin and Damion Easley both 37, Alou 40, and Glavine and El Duque. That said, given the crazy contracts to outfielders such as Juan Pierre (five years, $44 million) and Gary Matthews (five years, $50 million), a commitment that only guarantees one year actually seems prudent. And one of the reasons David Wright struggled at times was a lack of protection -- either because Cliff Floyd wasn't hitting or because he was out of the lineup. You only need to look at what Alou did to the Mets last year in San Francisco hitting behind Barry Bonds to know what he can mean to the Mets as a No. 6 hitter.

Evan Brunell received an A on his paper about baseball blogging in which he interviews a number of internet writers, yours truly included.

Joe Mauer talks about his off-season. It involved a trip to Japan, commericals, a new workout, the flu, and two breakups:

Q: Your pal Morneau is trying to adjust to all the attention after winning the AL MVP. Have you given him any advice?

A: I'm not too worried about him. I think he's handled the MVP about as good as you can.

Q: He won't be your roommate this season.

A: No, he got his own place. But he's still pretty close to my (townhouse in St. Paul), across the river in Mendota.

Q: Will you miss him?

A: I don't know if I will. (laughs) I won't have to clean up after him.

Q: Oh, one last thing. You still dating Miss USA?

A: No, that's over. That ended in, I think, November. I'm single. I'm young.

Frank Thomas speaks about his health and other matters to the Toronto Star:

Dressed head-to-toe in black, he looks like he's carved from the stuff they made the tabletop out of. Two hours a day in the gym, every day but Sunday, will have that effect. And he looks happy.

"I'm feeling great," Thomas says. "I'm feeling normal. It's taken three years to get to this point, where I don't ache when I get up in the morning."

And Thomas weighs in on steriods:

"Ten years into (my career), my goal was to get into the hall of fame. It's a rough road. It takes a lot of big games," Thomas says. "I want to play another three or four years to cement my hall chances."

Another legacy will be how he goes in. Thomas is the one of the few big bats of his generation never linked with steroids.

"I'm proud of that. To be honest, I think I'm one of the guys that made a lot of these guys do (steroids), because I came in with the big football build. It was my advantage," Thomas says.

Steroids use was well underway when Thomas arrived in the big leagues, but he has a point. It's perfectly fine to be born Frank Thomas, but it's somehow immoral to make yourself into Frank Thomas. (I'm not arguing safety of steroids here. If there was a perfectly safe way to change you body through drugs, people would still object.) Yet, it's fine for someone like Adam LaRoche to change his body chemistry to improve performance. Why is someone's lack of attention okay to cure, but not their relative lack of testosterone?

It seems to do with how we perceive normal. People see the drugs LaRoche takes as moving him toward normal. Taking steroids moves you away from the norm instead of towards it. Still, if what we're interested in watching natural talent, we shouldn't be watching LaRoche, either.

WasWatching interviews Michael Morrissey about his new book, The Pride and the Pressure: A Season Inside the New York Yankee Fishbowl. Michael is also blogging in support of the book here.

Via FishStripes, Gaslamp Ball posts an excellent interview with Tony Gwynn. After all these years, Gwynn realizes the value of a walk:

Do you think another player will hit .400 again?

Yeah there will be and again he needs to be open, he needs to be disciplined and be consistent.

Do you know anybody playing today that could do it?

Sure, Barry Bonds could do it. He walks a lot. He's brought another facet that I hadn't thought about. I had never thought about a guy that would walk 200 times a season and it makes it a whole lot easier. You know what for a long time I thought you had to be like Ichiro. You had to break the hit record and walk a little bit so that you could do it. Barry Bonds comes along and he hits .380 and walks 200 times. Not being healthy works in your favor, it doesn't hurt you it helps you. You play in 5 games a week you walk whatever times a week and get 6 hits in 14 at bats you are gonna qualify for a batting title. There are different ways to get there, and his way I hadn't thought about. You flat out get there. The guy who does it is going to have to be media savvy because the scrutiny that will come from making a run like that is gonna be unbelievable.

I'm surprised Gwynn didn't get this until now. He was very close to Ted Williams, and Ted drew a ton of walks to help him hit for a high average.

Todd Zolecki interviews Bill James on the Phillies. I like the way Bill gets right to the heart of the matter:

Q: There's been an argument made that this lineup has too many strikeouts. Are strikeouts a lineup killer as some suggest?

A: Well, am I imagining this or did the Phillies lead the league in runs scored? It seems to me that's really more important than how many strikeouts you have. The idea is to score runs. To me, if you're going to score that many runs it makes more sense to focus on making the starting pitching as solid as you can and improving from there.

See his comments on Pat Burrell and Jimmy Rollins as well. Bill likes Jimmy more than I thought he would.

Baseball Digest Daily interviews Bill James on the 2006 Fielding Bible Awards. Here he talks about Mike Lowell:

Mike Lowell is the best defensive third baseman in baseball. He's extremely interesting to watch. He keeps his glove hand, his left hand, very relaxed, and he doesn't appear to anticipate the hop at all. What I am saying is. .. the announcers, the veteran baseball people will tell you that the key to making the plays is to get your body in the proper position to make the play. But in fact, if you actually watch the fielders, very often they can't handle a tough hop or a line drive at an awkward angle precisely because they're trying to play the ball with their whole body. They're relying on positioning their body to make the play, and when something happens that makes that impossible, they're just SOL. Lowell, if you watch him, seems to be saying "it is easier to react with my left arm than it is to re-position my whole body in anticipation of the play." He stays balanced, stays loose, reacts late and has extraordinary confidence in his ability to snag the ball with his glove at the last moment. I've never really seen anything like it before, but this looseness and unusual confidence, for example, gives him a remarkable ability to charge a ground ball. He can change a slow grounder top speed because he knows that, bad hop or good hop, in-between stride or on stride, he can slap at the ball with his glove and pick it out of the air.

The interview is definitely worth the read.

Sports Media Guide speaks with former Yankees beat writer Sam Borden. Borden provides a glimpse into the hectic life he led covering the Yankees.

Q. Do you have ulcers?

A. I don't think so. I haven't lost any hair. I haven't lost my girlfriend either which is a big deal. People always ask me how we've stayed together. You have to have somebody extremely understanding - and my girlfriend is. I'm away 220 nights a year and there are a lot of phone calls during dinner. There are abrupt exits to work on a story. The job can take a toll on your personal life. It may seem like a dream job to guys from Westchester, but guys also like having beers with their buddies and Friday night dinners with their girlfriends.

Maury Brown publishes an interview with Steve Lyons about his firing from Fox.

Bizball: Do you think it's a situation where they were looking for an excuse?

Lyons: You know, it's certainly possible, but I would hate to make that assumption only because I think that if I did, I'd be no better than what they did. I can only take at face value that they fired me for the press releases they put out - as far as I know - I didn't really see it. That I was fired for having made a racially insensitive comment. They didn't say anything about anything else I did. They didn't say anything about any past problems that they had with me. So, I can only take that at face value. If I said, "Hey, maybe they were looking for something," then that means I'm inferring something that they didn't say, exactly the same way that they did to me, and the reason I got fired.

NBX posts an interview with Bill Cleary, great grand newphew of one of the founders of the Yankees about that team's shady beginnings.

Martin Gandy is in the process of publishing several interviews with current Atlanta Braves players. His first, with Marcus Giles, is here.

Harold Reynolds just gave an interview to Charley Steiner on XM. Sue at XM MLB Chat rounds up the conversation.

Harold said he's "pressing charges to get heard," has date set with mediator and ESPN at the end of September. He was never told of charges by ESPN, just came out in media.

It looks like this story is not over yet.

Evan Brunell interviews Red Sox top draft pick Daneil Bard.

I'm interviewed at the Educated Sport Community.

Earlier today Outsider Radio recorded an interview with your truly. You can listen here.