I’d venture to say that 100% of major league rookies are “a far cry from Maddux.” As for the other statement, I’m not sure I need to see “flashes of dominance” in Bailey’s first six starts – but I think I have. That high fastball has blown away some fair hitters, like Eric Chavez, Stephen Drew, and Grady Sizemore (the 3 guys who’ve struck out multiple times vs. Homer). He’s a long way from being a major league stud, but we need to keep things in perspective.

Bailey has not been impressive so far. I have seen all his starts on the road that were televised and the home ones live. His fastball is pretty good even in the low 90’s, will a little tailing movement away from left handers. His change is decent but erratic and not a ML pitch yet. Same for the curve, but worse. His arm action on the curve is weirdly slow, tipping the pitch. He is a far cry from Maddux, and certainly has not shown the flashes of dominance we’d hope for.

And yet Gammons and McCoy are in the Hall of Fame

If you mean the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, m]neither are in the hall. We’ve been through this before. Sportswriters and broadcasters cannot be inductees into the Hall per HoF rules. From the HoF website:

The J.G. Taylor Spink Award, named after the late editor of The Sporting News, has been voted upon annually since 1962 when Spink himself was the recipient of the inaugural honor. The award honors a baseball writer (or writers) “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing” and is presented at the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony by that year’s President of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA).

The award is voted upon annually by the BBWAA, via a meeting and subsequent “show of hands” either at the preceding year’s World Series or Winter Meetings. A nominee is recommended by the BBWAA’s Screening Committee prior to the meeting. Each award recipient (not to be confused with an inductee) is presented with a certificate during the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and is recognized in the “Scribes & Mikemen” exhibit in the Library of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

This page provides the relevant text and the list of honorees. McCoy was honored in 2002; Gammons in 2004. There is a similar page with relevant text for Ford Frick Award winners like Marty.

But even if your shorthand were correct, it’s a straw man. There is no relationship between being an honored sportswriter and being right. And while I’d like to think Gammons’ age gives him a special status (since we are contemporaries), it doesn’t. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Gammo pick up on this – he’s referenced Carroll and B-Pro in the past – and report it in his ESPN blog next week. (In all fairness, Peter has done a good job of getting the basic of modern statistical analysis disseminated to the wider fan audience.)

All you are showing is a bias to given source because that source meets your personal definition of acceptable. It’s like saying you believe something because Britt Hume said so on Fox News but don’t believe the same thing because Jim Lehrer said it on PBS.

I think you’d be surprised with the access Will gets from teams. But I’ll leave that to him to explain if he chooses.

Still doesn’t explain the ridiculous opposition to him.

It’s more information we can have as fans and do with as we please. We can believe everything he says as gospel or we can disregard everything because he doesn’t have BBWAA tag some want him to.

Or we could take the information he provides, along with the many other sources out there, and use it to inform our own opinions.

Otherwise, he’s no different than us blogheads.

Carroll knows what he’s talking about, even if I don’t dig the cryptic nature of the Bailey warning. (It makes it hard to know whether Will’s being vague due to source considerations, or b/c he doesn’t have a source and is basing his opinion on his own observations – either one is probably a valid basis for the warning, but they aren’t the same, and being so vague invites skepticism).

And yeah, Rick’s comment at #23 was pretty silly – as if accurate information can only be transmitted through the prism of 40-year veteran writers. Some reporters/writers are good, and some aren’t. Some veteran writers are lazy, and some aren’t. And they all end up reporting nonsense from time to time. (Or, I could’ve short-cut that entire paragraph by just saying, “Hal McCoy.”

There you go Will.