About The Platoon Advantage

The Platoon Advantage is a general baseball blog dedicated to the ideas that Bert Blyleven was better than Jack Morris, Dwight Evans was better than Jim Rice, and Pete Rose should never be allowed within 100 feet of the Hall of Fame with or without buying a ticket. The Common Man and Bill believe that steroids are bad, but not any worse than what Eddie Harris used to throw in Major League. They aren't math geeks, but they believe strongly in the power of the math geek, and they love their baseball history. They (reluctantly) moved out of their moms' basements years ago, and now live in the Upper Midwest.

Newer writers Jason and Cee probably believe more or less the same stuff, may or may not live in their moms' basements, and they live on the coasts, so when they hear "Upper Midwest" they think this.

The Common Man
The pinnacle of manliness, The Common Man is ageless, for he is timeless. He is here and has always been here. He is eternal. The Common Man is Platonic ideal of manhoood. Husband. Father. Artist. Scholar. Lover. Fighter. Pack mule. Square peg in a round world.

He lives in an undisclosed location in the Upper Midwest, with The Uncommon Wife and The Boy, is an unabashed Twins fan, and an otherwise productive member of society. He makes his living blowing your mind.

Bill Parker
Bill is a lifelong Twins fan who was born in Minnesota but has lived everywhere. Things he likes include: Kirby Puckett; Greg Maddux; Dave Stieb; Lou Gehrig; John Updike; Ben Folds; Christina Hendricks; Panda Express; Vin Scully; Frank Sinatra; the Mariners; Kurt Vonnegut; the Cubs; Charlottesville, Virginia; Jeopardy!; Shane Mack; Patton Oswalt; The Killers; Stephen Sondheim; Cherry Coke Zero; 30 Rock; and words such as "vapid," "salient" and "intuitively."

Bill lives in Minnesota with his beautiful wife and two five-tool future stars. He's an attorney, and you can hold that against him if you want to.

Jason Wojciechowski
Jason lives and works in Los Angeles, but he grew up in northern California and became an A's fan around the time that Damon Mashore was making his presence felt in the American League. He watches bordering-on-impossible amounts of television, has conflicted feelings about the frankly hipster music he likes, owns more Dover math texts than he really needs, and totally did not excitedly poke his wife in the arm repeatedly that time he was two seats away from Michael Schur in a theater.

He has also maintained Beaneball, an A's blog, since 2003. He is inordinately proud of writing the "software" that generates the site.


Cee Angi
Cee Angi is the best baseball writer on the Internet according to her mother. She is first and foremost a baseball person, who attends more games per season than she would like to admit, and won't pass up the opportunity for peanuts (in the shell) or beer (especially if you're paying). Cee is an avid scorekeeper, statistics fanatic, and prefers real ticket stubs to the ones you can print yourself. Cee lives in Washington, DC currently, but has lived dozens of places and has trouble staying put. Her comfort zone is Bleacher 41 at Fenway Park, she hates Sweet Caroline. Cee's favorite things besides baseball include: her cavalier king charles spaniel, dating, ice hockey, bourbon, sleeping with the windows open, and starting lineup figures. 

Chris St. John
Chris is stuck in New Mexico, six and a half hours away from the nearest MLB stadium. Consequently, he spends most of his time with his nose in a spreadsheet acting like he knows what he's talking about. He uses parentheses excessively (but who doesn't) and prefers his prepositions at the ends of his sentences. He is the proud owner of a Nick Markakis shirsey and looks forward to telling everyone "I told you so" after his 3,000th hit. Unfortunately, none of his friends appreciate baseball the way he does, so he appreciates any intelligent conversation about the sport he can find. 

Mark Smith (retired)
Mark Smith grew up and lives in the Louisville, Kentucky area of the world, but he became a Braves fan because the Reds suck and the Cardinals were his dad's team. The Braves then won a World Series, Mark began a bandwagon jumper, and he continues to cheer for them as though the string of division championships was still intact. He likes long walks on the beach, singing in the car, yelling at Fredi Gonzalez, and pretending he has any writing ability and analytical skills whatsoever. Aside from baseball, he spends his time watching football, slapping a golf ball around, listening to bands he's not ashamed of liking even though he should be, and cooking. All in all, he should be ashamed of himself, but he's not.