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Breathlessly

Since you don't get the reader feedback there, I'll nitpick & note here that you said Augie Ojeda's killing the Phillies, though his team's playing the Cubs.

Don't you see how lucky you are not to have to deal with reader feedback now?

I'm enjoying it a lot.

Yes, reading and enjoying. Thanks for the great work!

It's fun for me to read you when you're not functioning with the assumption that it's us that's reading it. That is to say, you know you haven't tutored the readership, and you know you can't defend your assertions (at least publicly). Is that what you mean when you say it's harder than it looks? And can I possibly right a more mono-syllabic sentence than that first one?

Good stuff Jay....+1 indeed.

I think they're very good. You're considerably better at it than I thought you'd be, and I mean that in as a big compliment.

You're about as talented as anyone I've read in using statistics to analyze an argument in a way that's fun to read; you're a lot like Gleeman in that sense.

However, you're much better at writing about baseball on this sort of "general" level, the way Oleny, Law, etc have to write about it, than Gleeman is (in my opinion) or anyone who's as good with stats as you are.

Frankly, it's exactly the kind of stuff ESPN should be running-easy to read yet actually based in level headed analysis and facts.

With the Cards out of it - probably for years to come now, barring some miraculous pitching acquisition by a yet-to-be-named GM - I'm all the more appreciative of good baseball writing and someone who can make me care about their team. These blog posts do better than that, even. They're damn good reading during a damn good time of the year.

And your description of most Yankee fans as "baseball hicks" was exactly on point. But out here in St. Louis we get different breed of "Yankee fans" who know nothing more about baseball than they do about basektball, when they faithfully wear their Laker jerseys. It's sports fandom-as-fashion, and it was doubly sickening to see these fools switch their Yankee caps for Red Sox caps in 2004, and then line up to see Fever Pitch in the theaters, paying money to see Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore lock lips on our disgraced ballfield. (I still believe that movie was the primary reason why we had to tear that ballpark down.) Here where baseball is religion, there is no greater heresy.

Good luck in beating the Yanks, and in so doing, giving these misguided souls a reason to take off those accursed hats.