Friday Forum: Why We Love Baseball

To wrap up our "Why I Love" week of warm-fuzzies (see 'em all here), we asked our staff a to write a few paragraphs on a really simple, intentionally open-ended question:  


"What is the one baseball-related thing you love the most, and why?"


So before we get back to being hateful bastards, here are each of our flowery sissy-pants answers to that question. Believe it or not, I went to the list randomizer on Random.org, typed in each of our names (plus Dan Hennessey's, who wrote a great guest post for us last week and will be popping in for at least a couple more), and it came out in the following order:

Friday Forum: Our Award Picks

Another Friday, another forum. This week, I (Bill again) polled the TPA staff and got full ballots from each of us for each of the "major" awards: AL & NL MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and Manager of the Year. 


The Platoon Advantage is a proud member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, and this post doubles as our site's ballot for their parallel awards: the Stan Musial Award (for the top player in each league), the Walter Johnson Award (for the top pitcher), the Willie Mays Award (top rookie) and the Connie Mack Award (top manager). Accordingly, the "ballots" below represent an aggregate ballot formed from combining all our picks; each first place vote got a number of points equal to the number of slots on the ballot (10 for MVP, 5 for Cy Young, 3 for the others), and each one-step-lower vote got one point less, such that the last slot on the ballot was good for one point. For a spreadsheet showing each of our individual ballots, click here. 


We've got a tie for the AL MVP, which is fine, but then I flipped a coin to determine the AL Stan Musial Award winner. I also flipped a coin to determine the last spot on our AL Connie Mack Award ballot. Our comments were submitted in different ways; sorry for the inconsistencies. If it helps, it kind of bugs me too.

Friday Forum: Our Postseason Picks

I (this is Bill, hi!) used to really hate postseason predictions. They're pretty pointless, really. Even the "worst" playoff team has a pretty decent chance of beating the best, especially in a five-game series, and that people spend so much time analyzing these things and declaring what the key factors are and all that just seems silly to me. They're always wrong; the Yankees could be playing the Tigers and everyone could agree that the key factor for New York is Robinson Cano, and you can pretty much count on Cano going 2-for-15 and the Yankees winning in three. My little statement in this regard, for the past couple years, has been to flip a coin to determine the playoff results, and then sort of reverse-engineer a phony justification for the picks.

Well, a few things happened: (1) we have this whole staff now; (2) it occurred to me that pointless and fun/interesting aren't necessarily mutually exclusive; and (3) the coin flip results worked out terribly twice in a row (2009, 2010). So, I polled the staff and got everybody's predictions, and you can see them below. I also flipped a coin, because I just can't stop. So here they are, with explanations below the table:

Friday Forum: Favorite Fifth Outfielders

Two nights ago, The Common Man got to talking with Christina Kahrl about the endangered species known as the 5th outfielder. With teams increasingly (and stupidly) determined to carry 12 or even 13 pitchers, there simply has not been enough room on the bench to carry more than four pure outfielders, even on National League teams. We’ve been left with, in some cases, 5th outfielders masquerading as 4th outfielders, or, in Sam Fuld’s case, starting left fielders. It’s sad. There is not really a place for the Marvell Wynnes or the Doug Dascenzos in baseball today.


But that allows us to start a new feature here at The Platoon Advantage, a Friday Forum, wherein we all weigh in on a topic in a couple hundred words or less. When we're done, feel free to share your own favorites in the comments.  So here, without further ado, are our favorite 5th outfielders: