Wall Street Journal on Baseball Blogs and Business
This weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal devotes quite a bit of space to baseball on the eve of MLB’s Opening Day. The front page article examines the growing scarcity (and hence the increasing cost) of snagging an MLB Opening Day ticket. Another article reviews this season’s new baseball books. From a Cape Cod Baseball League perspective, I found both articles interesting. The Cape League offers a quality evening of baseball for families at an astonishingly low cost. So while professional baseball continues to drive prices upward, the Cape League continues to offer a quality baseball experience for price of a donation. The book reviews are notable for one very interesting book and one that is critical of baseball blogs like CodBall. The...
Read MoreScouting Report: Cape-Rich Tulane University
NEW ORLEANS — I took in last night’s game between Cape-rich Tulane University and Nicholls State on a balmy Louisiana night. Falmouth and Wareham players factored heavily in Tulane’s 5-0 victory. Tulane (20-7) features current and previous Cape Cod Baseball players, including Aja Barto, Preston Claiborne, Shooter Hunt, Warren McFadden and Seth Henry. Claiborne came in to pitch an impressive two innings of middle relief with a mere 3-0 lead and a testy Nicholls State knocking at the door several times during the game. A radar gun put his fast ball at 91 mph. He looked solid both innings to me. He finished the 6th and 7th with no runs, no hits and one base on balls. Seth Henry made some phenomenal plays at third, including a diving stab that...
Read MoreWatch Cape League Games on the Internet?
Soon you may be able to watch live Cape League games over the Internet, at least from the Falmouth Commodores. A poll asking fans if they would watch streaming games has been on their site for quite some time now. In addition, Wareham has announced their plans to offer live streaming video. What do you think? Would you watch live streaming Cape League baseball? (Make sure to fill out the poll) Chatham has been offering live video via Teamline (with the help of Cape.com). However, they do not offer video archives of games. But, they do have several exclusive interviews on their site. Baseball.cape.com is home to all of the 2006 season’s audio archives (Note: I am pretty sure all of the January 2007 files do not have...
Read MoreChatham A’s Post 2007 Roster
Well, with just 80 days remaining until Opening Day of the Cape Cod Baseball League, we now have 80 percent of the team rosters posted. Chatham surprised its fans this week by posting its team roster earlier in the pre-season than usual. Our friend Dave B. provides some helpful insights into the ’07 Chatham roster: “Not surprisingly, there is the usual University of North Carolina influence with 4 Tar Heels gracing the Chatham roster. There are also 4 UCLA players on the early-season roster. There have not been a lot of Bruins in Chatham in the past, but this is John Savage’s third year as the UCLA coach since leaving UC Irvine after the 2004 season. There had been a pipeline between UC Irvine and Chatham in the past, so with Savage...
Read MoreCape Cod Baseball by the Numbers
Numbers don’t lie, but they do tell the story of the Cape Cod Baseball League better than any verbose blog. Of active major leaguers in 2006 who came from four year colleges, 37.28 percent played on the Cape. 111 of those players were hitters and 81 were pitchers. The average CCBL player who was drafted hit .245 in the Cape League and .241 in the New York Penn League (Class A-short season). These stats come to us this week courtesy of two of the best articles I’ve seen all year about the Cape Cod Baseball League. Both postings are deeply rooted in the kind of statistical research that inspires baseball hacks like me. (In fact, here is my chance to plug the must-have book, Baseball Hacks — tips and tools for analyzing and winning with stats. The...
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