Knowing Our Roll - December 2012

It has been a while since I've done one of these but there is some great stuff out there on the Baseball Blogosphere right now and a lot we haven't talked about.  Be sure to take a look at our hand-picked Blog Roll (now located at the bottom of our traditional page) for team-specific blogs of interest and blogs discussing general baseball happenings.






* The Blue Jay Hunter has a lot of good stuff on the re-tooled Blue Jays squad. 


* The Tribe Daily discusses the three-way trade which sent Shin-Soo Choo to the Reds, Trevor Bauer and Drew Stubbs to the Indians and top-prospect Didi Gregorius to the Diamondbacks.


* Crawfish Boxes has an interview with Pitch F/X Guru and Astros Baseball Analyst, Mike Fast (think Peter Brand, Jonah Hill's character in Moneyball).

And last but not least...


* The Hall of Very Good has a great post written by Madison Murphy, daughter of Dale Murphy, discussing why she thinks her dad belongs in the Hall of Fame.  In case you hadn't heard, the Murphy children have launched an online campaign in support of their father's Hall of Fame candidacy and I must say that their argument is compelling and timely.  By the numbers, Murph is a borderline guy but when you add in character, integrity, sportsmanship, etc., he's a definite yes.  The question is, does that stuff really matter and if so, how much?  I think it does matter.  It's clear from that Baseball Hall of Fame Website that it does (here's an excerpt from the Official HOF web sit discussing election rules and eligibility):

5. Voting: Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

Of the six items listed, half of them have nothing to do with statistics and one of them is very subjective.

I feel that now is the perfect time to make a statement that character and integrity do indeed matter more than the numbers.  We are using character judgment calls to try to keep out guys like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire but those guys still rule the talk amongst baseball pundits.  You want to make a real statement that character matters, vote Murph in.  Vote the guy in that was inducted into the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.  Vote the guy in who started the foundation called "IWon'tCheat" which is aimed at teaching kids to play the game within the rules - injecting integrity into the future.