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I love to read. And, most especially, love to read good sports Journalism, sportswriting, and story-telling, especially as it relates to baseball in general, not just Fantasy Baseball. However, often times I may miss certain articles or stories due to my own limited world-wide-web reach. As such I would love to have a forum section for people to be able to share such interesting articles, journalism, pictures, videos, and most especially just good reads in general that others may not be aware of/seen/have access to, etc. during the course of the season. Please use this as forum for sharing of such exceptional baseball sportswriting. My first contribution is this piece by Bob Nightengale that highlights the differing hitting approaches of Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips. This generated much Twitter reaction, especially as it relates to Brandon Phillips ' comments. Whichever side of this debate you fall on (and we all know which side Doughboys falls on), it is none-the-less an interesting and controversial read.

COZ

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ml ... /70337854/

Read it this morning. Phillips' quotes surprised me a bit and I agree more with Votto's approach. Must say though that I respect and understand what Phillips' point was.
Very interesting how some teams are constructed too. I think many past A's teams were constructed and groomed with the votto approach. I think this year's Red Sox team especially the middle of the order will lean more towards the Phillips approach.

Nice article. I think this is what frustrates Votto owners for fantasy purposes. All else being equal, for fantasy purposes I'd much rather have a player with Phillips' batting approach than Votto's batting approach. (Now, if it was an OBP league ....) I'm also thinking that when the Reds signed Votto to that humongous contract (which now looks plain silly), it was not to bat second and set-up other players to drive in runs. The Reds paid for the next Miggy Cabrera and got Rod Carew (OK, maybe not the best analogy, but you know what I mean).

Mike

to me this is somewhat generational. at some point in the USA the "process" became what an athlete was taught. before that it was "purposeful action" to a result. votto is just very process oriented- a soccer player if you will-and he doesn't care to think in terms of "winning". he just thinks of his at bats. phillips believes his team can't win unless SOMEONE drives in runs- and tries to do just that. you either believe that humans win more when they think about winning or they win more when they think about the process and not the result. ps- the reds- to me- just never seem to score as much as you think they should and the A's with guys like rudi and jackson won some world series and the a's that want to take walks have won zero- but they have done "well".

btw- dear doughboys and also dear votto lovers. votto said HE WILL NEVER CHANGE so good luck with him getting back to where he was 3-5 years ago. he said he was young and energetic back then. now- just wants to take his walks , not exhaust himself trying to hit homers.

Interesting.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12485 ... imate-play

COZ

Here is an interesting commentary on YouTube about MLB's new StatCast, Brian Price and the future of baseball. It's a little over 6min long.

https://youtu.be/Go_tR1HOg2Y

Exit velocity is 5 parts pitcher, 1 part hitter according to this article..... .......

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-b ... t-pitcher/

For those of you that have a Netflix account, there is a documentary available that I watched the other day.
Very entertaining.
It's about Dock Ellis.
He pitched in the 1970's, primarily with Pittsburgh, but also had one excellent season with the Yankees.

Ellis won 138 games during his 12 year career, but he is mostly remembered for two things;

throwing a no-hitter against the Padres while he was high on LSD.........



.......and wearing curlers on the field during batting practice.........





You will hear both stories and learn much more about Dock in the movie....

Great action photo by Jon Soo Hoo of the catch, Adrian Gonzalez, and the umpire all in one frame
Click here.. https://mlblogsdodgersphotog.files.word ... 5js146.jpg to see larger version.


Here is a second photo of the catch with photographer Jon Soo Hoo in the shot.

Wow. What an awesome photo. Thanks for sharing, Russell.

COZ

Interesting.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/book--disd ... 39227.html

COZ

.

Team hitters use chainsaw, hammer etc instead of a bat. One hitter gets a HR facing plate backward.

Crazy!

https://youtu.be/uhHNmhv1zEg

.

Great Halloween cosutme:

(not baseball but I have no business posting to NFFC)

Just gloriously stumbled on this beautiful work of sportswriting for you baseball historians. Found it worthy of a share.

http://grantland.com/features/mlb-win-p ... ogi-berra/

COZ

COZ wrote:Just gloriously stumbled on this beautiful work of sportswriting for you baseball historians. Found it worthy of a share.

http://grantland.com/features/mlb-win-p ... ogi-berra/

COZ

Good article. Thanks for posting it.

https://twitter.com/jahappster/status/5 ... 8445233152

COZ

Good read.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraps ... s-of-2015/

COZ

I read the first couple of quotes in the link above before it was interrupted with a new page showing a number of apps, one of which had to be selected to continue! I enjoyed the quotes and will look for the article on fangraphs. Just wanted to rant about how often our internet paths are waylaid.

Wow.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... tment.html

COZ

COZ wrote:Wow.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... tment.html

COZ

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/mlb-must-h ... 53782.html

Again Passan nails it. One of my favorite baseball sportswriters around. Did not even realize that the Cardinals, with last pick & Astros with first pick in 2013, were drafting one spot ahead of Astros when Correa was accessing their database. Will be interesting to see what Manfred does in terms of punishment.

COZ