Baseball Prospectus writer and editor Joe Sheehan appears on the most recent edition of Bill Simmons' podcast for ESPN to discuss many things stats related in baseball.

Although Sheehan doesn't go into minute detail, I think it might serve as an excellent primer for people here who are interested in exploring - or just having a working map of - the fever swamps of statistical analysis in baseball, but maybe don't feel like reading a lot about it.

He gives the context for why certain stats are currently seen as more important than others and touches on issues past, present, and future. (I thought his short discussion about the possibility of health-related or injury-related performance projections was quite interesting)

Even though Simmons isn't a great interviewer ("Okay, well, hey, let me ask you this..."), I think he actually manages to be a pretty effective interlocutor in this instance. I wasn't holding out much hope, considering his podcast with Aaron Schatz from Football Outsiders last year devolved pretty quickly into Massholism and Simmons claiming credit for thinking up stats that already exist. But, as I said, there seems to be less of that here. Or maybe Sheehan just parries it well.*

Warning, it's around 45 minutes long:

(*Simmons seems to have been ignorant of Line Drive Percentage: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/statpages/glossary/#ld%)

The Pittsburgh Pirates released pitching prospect Olivo Astacio...because he attacked a teammate with a bat. o_O

Ken Griffey Jr., playfully yelling moments earlier from his corner of the Cincinnati Reds clubhouse, suddenly is talking in almost a whisper before a game last weekend in Atlanta.

It is flat and unemotional, reflecting no remorse or bitterness about a nine-year-old decision that dramatically altered his career.

"I wouldn't change anything," says Griffey, who was traded to the Reds on Feb. 10, 2000. "I had to leave Seattle when I did. I just had to. They know the real reason why I left."

More than eight years after departing Seattle, it might be time to leave again, perhaps returning to the Northwest.

"It's everybody's dream to go back where they started," the 38-year-old right fielder says. "Everybody who plays the game would love to go out the way they see fit."

I say good for him!

Fay gets a chance to talk to krivisky

Here's a link to a remarkably positive view by Dusty on Edwin Elpidio Encarnacion and his errors. Dusty actually says EdE could win a gold glove someday.

OK, maybe a bit hyperbolic. In order to do that, Edwin is going to have to hit better than David Wright, but you get the picture, right?

From Hal McCoy's Blog:

Now a smidgen of bad stuff. Second baseman Brandon Phillips has his nose out of joint. After getting three hits (two homers) Sunday, he refused to talk to any media, telling them, "Just get out of my space and leave me alone. I don’t feel like talking. Nobody talks to me when I’m going bad. They just write crap. When I’m going good, everybody wants to talk to me. So just leave me alone."

But if he wants to be left alone, so be it

Has anyone seen anything calling out BP directly? I have seen reports about the team struggling over all, but I don't really understand where he is coming from.

Once Yankee Stadium is demolished at the end of this season, Hinchliffe will be the last place left in the metropolitan region where Negro League baseball was played. Hinchliffe was host to the "Colored Championship of the Nation" in 1933 and was the home field for the New York Black Yankees from 1934 to 1937 and 1939 to 1945. In 1936, it was also home to the New York Cubans.

"They bought a lot of peanuts," said Dan Oliff, 86, of Glen Rock, who made a dime for each dollar’s worth he sold to the baseball fans, black and white alike, as a vendor at Hinchliffe in the 1930s.

He grew up on Carrol Street in Paterson and still remembers the day a skinny-legged new kid on the block asked to join the neighborhood stickball game. "He picked up the broomstick, and I think he hit it 10 blocks," Mr. Oliff said of Larry Doby, who, in 1947, nearly 12 weeks after Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, joined the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first black player in the American League.