Excerpt

From the latest edition of the Joe Sheehan Newsletter:

"Kansas City Royals (17): I never get to talk about the Royals…. They've won 12 of 13 and 14 of 17 since the All-Star break, which makes Dayton Moore -- who said they could win 15 of 20 at any time -- prescient. Credit where due. It's not just the schedule; they went 5-2 on a homestand against the Tigers and Orioles, and going 9-1 even against a weak slate since then exceeds expectations. The decision to release Jeff Francoeur is mitigated by their burial of Johnny Giavotella -- their only real second-base option -- and continued use of Wade Davis as a starter. Their best hitter is a catcher batting .174 and they still don't do anything well on offense but steal bases. Going 14-3 gets them to -- or close to -- what will be a high point this season, but they're not going to catch the Tigers and even at this high point, they're the eighth-best team in a 15-team league.

"Call me in 12 days. Once the Twins leave town, the Red Sox come in, followed by the Marlins. Then the Royals go to Detroit for five games in four days. If the Royals have closed ground on the Tigers when they leave Detroit, if they're not still chasing three teams better than them in the wild-card race, then we can take all of this seriously.

"I suppose, after it all falls apart, the goalposts will be moved again, and staying sort of relevant in August and early September, finishing above .500, will be deemed a success. We'll hear about the challenges of a small market and the unfairness of it all, probably on a radio show while the Rays are preparing for a Division Series game, probably while Wil Myers takes batting practice, probably while votes are counted for Rookie of the Year."

Excerpt, v2.0

From the latest edition of the Sheehan Newsletter:

"Saying you want a drug-free game is an abstraction, buying in to an image of sports, of baseball, that has simply never reflected reality. In the same way that there was no such thing as loyalty before free agency, there's no such thing as clean before testing. If you could turn the Bud Squad loose in 1965 or 1982 or 1993, you'd find what reasonable people know to be true: many hypercompetitive athletes will do anything to be the best, ethics and laws be damned. With testing, with witch hunts, with 800-word screeds, we're trying to hold the present to the standards of the past -- standards that never, ever existed except in our sepia-toned fondest wishes."

The Next Big Step

There's a story I like to tell about the way my career developed. When I got involved with Gary Huckabay, Clay Davenport and the rest of the founding five at Prospectus, I wasn't looking for a writing career. I had a fiancée, student-loan debt, a journalism degree, a new job and a burning desire to work in baseball. I read Rob Neyer; I didn't want to compete with him. The job that developed, first through the BP annuals and then the Web site and writing for ESPN.com, just kind of happened. I looked up one day and realized that I wasn't on a path to something better, but that I actually had a great job.

I recognize now that I've gone through a similar path with the newsletter. I launched it -- well, relaunched it, after the first run in 2002-03 -- in May of 2010 because I wanted an outlet for the work I'd been doing while at BP. I saw it as a means of generating some money for work I enjoyed doing, while waiting to figure out what I would be doing next. It's more than three years later, and I look up, and the newsletter isn't a side project. It's what I do. I write more frequently and in greater depth for it than I do for any other outlet, and I put more non-writing time into it each year. The newsletter may not yet be my largest project by some measures, but it is the one I am most passionate about.

To date, I have always left a window cracked. Each year, I've set a fixed end date for the newsletter, usually the end of January, so as to maintain maximum flexibility to jump for other opportunities, or to bail out if the newsletter was no longer viable. If the Yankees call me and offer me a chance to play third base -- I have as many functioning quads as the starting left side of the Yankees' infield and I'm not that much older than those guys are -- I can't have an obligation to write hanging over my head. I also wanted to be careful about the date my commitment to the newsletter ends becoming a burden if subscriptions didn't keep up with expectations, where I'm writing at a huge loss for a dwindling audience.

I look up, though, and once again, I realize that I'm not on my way to something. I'm already here. The newsletter is successful and growing and fun and rewarding. It's what I do. I write for Sports Illustrated -- with tremendous pride, I should add -- and SI.com and I talk to great radio hosts around the country and, good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, soon enough someone will put my Charlie Brown head on TV again.

But the newsletter is where I live. It's been good to me, and it's time I start treating it as well as it's treated me. Effective today, newsletter subscriptions will be sold in rolling intervals. Instead of a fixed end date, new subscribers and renewals will be able to purchase subscriptions that will end not on January 31 of the following year, but 12 months to the day they subscribe. (Six-month subscriptions will also be available, and I may expand the options over time.) The annual subscription rate will be $29.95; I am going back to that price point for a few reasons, none all that significant in isolation but when combined, they push me back to the higher figure.

If you are a current subscriber as of July 22, having purchased a subscription for $24.95 or $19.95 or being given a Friends and Family subscription -- basically, if you're getting this in your inbox -- your subscription will end on February 14, 2014. That tacks two weeks on to every active subscription. Through August 30 -- operators are standing by! -- you can renew for a full year for $24.95! No matter when you renew, a renewed subscription will run through February 14, 2015.

I've doubled the subscriber base over three years despite having some life-sized monkey wrenches tossed into 2012. My renewal rate is nearly 80% despite not having an auto-renewal program (I still won't). As of this afternoon there are 1,418 paid subscribers. There are those of you who see an upside here I don't necessarily see, but I may be too close to it. Maybe I can get to 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 subscribers. Maybe there are that many people who will, to get back to first principles, recognize and support quality if given that option. We live in a media environment where something as high-quality as "Outside the Lines" is being buried by ESPN, and where the new Fox Sports One is building its brand around ex-athletes cracking jokes. Surely there's room for an alternative. Surely there's an audience for an alternative.

And if the Yankees give up on Luis Cruz and call me, well, we'll all figure something out.

Thanks!

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From 347* to 68: Final

*I have been calling this "From 348 to 68" all week. I thought we were up to 348 D-I teams. My bad.


I've spent less time on sussing out the bubble and writing about the process than I have in decades. No one reason -- the World Baseball Classic and day-job deadlines have certainly been a factor -- but unquestionably part of the reason is the data set we're working with. I wouldn't call this the "worst bubble ever"; the pool of teams under consideration for the final at-large berths is stronger than it was a year ago. It is, perhaps, the least interesting bubble ever. There just aren't hooks to argue about, and there aren't that many teams who are going to fall on the other side of the line. I have felt all week like I have less to contribute to the general discussion that I have in most years.

Championship Week was unusually boring. Very few teams -- Mississippi, maybe Maryland, maybe Southern Mississippi -- changed their case in a substantial way. Many more teams fell aside meekly, which meant that teams in the clubhouse who we expected to see get passed didn't.

I don't think this year's bubble discussion speaks to any larger truths about the game of college basketball, at least not any more than other years do. There's still a massive gap in the middle of the sport, where teams in the #7 through #16 conferences have very little access to quality non-conference games, and no access to quality non-conference games at home. While I appreciate the economics involved, it leaves us with an almost football-like lack of data points to determine relative quality. There's simply no reasonable way to compare the work of Middle Tennessee State and Virginia, or LaSalle and Iowa State. They play virtually different sports. Until and unless the second and third quartile of NCAA basketball teams get more opportunities to play the first, we're going to be in this position every March, guessing whether 28-5 over here should mean more than 20-11 over there.

Here's my best guess for 2013. Through Saturday:

Automatic Bids (30): SUNY-Albany (America East), Florida-Gulf Coast (Atlantic Sun), Louisville (Big East), Montana (Big Sky), Liberty (Big South), Kansas (Big 12), Pacific (Big West), James Madison (Colonial), Memphis (Conference USA), Valparaiso  (Horizon), Harvard (Ivy), Iona (MAAC), Akron (Mid-American), North Carolina A&T (Mid-Eastern Athletic), Creighton (Missouri Valley), New Mexico (Mountain West), Long Island University-Brooklyn (Northeast), Belmont (Ohio Valley), Oregon (Pac-12), Bucknell (Patriot), Davidson (Southern), Stephen F. Austin Northwestern State (Southland), Southern (Southwestern Athletic), Western Kentucky (Sun Belt), South Dakota State (Summit), New Mexico State (Western Athletic), Gonzaga (West Coast).

In (7): Miami (FL), North Carolina, Saint Louis, Virginia Commonwealth, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Florida.

Those teams will account for at least three and no more than four at-large bids.

On the Board (24): Wichita State, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Villanova, Marquette, Illinois, Michigan, Duke, Georgetown, Temple, Notre Dame, San Diego State, Arizona, Oklahoma State, Colorado State, Missouri, North Carolina State, Butler, Indiana, Michigan State, Kansas State, Nevada-Las Vegas, Syracuse, UCLA.

We started the week with 23 teams on the bubble. Baylor, Louisiana Tech and Iowa played themselves off the bubble the bad way. Illinois and Oregon played themselves off it the good way. (Oregon eventually won an automatic bid, but had become a lock before that.) Akron and Stephen F. Austin won their conference tournaments. (Edit: Northwestern State beat Stephen F. Austin in the final. Not sure why I forgot that, as I watched the game. SFA's profile takes too large a hit with the loss to remain under consideration for an at-large bid.--JSS) This morning, we have 16 teams for nine or ten spots, pending the SEC tournament final. Here they are in RPI order (source: CBS Sports):

Middle Tennessee State (29): Left for dead when they took a bad loss in the Sun Belt quarterfinals, MTSU may find the back door as the SEC collapsed and a number of other bubble teams failed to make a move. Comparable to some Utah State teams in the 2000s, the Blue Raiders dominated a mid-major league that didn't have a good year and that has become bottom heavy. Their best win is an increasingly valuable one over Mississippi -- barely a top-50 win as of today -- but it's also their only top-100 win. They have the low RPI on the board, but it wouldn't be historic for them to be left out. Their 1-3 mark against the top 100 damns the Sun Belt more than it does them. Their non-conference SOS of 6 is being heavily cited in their favor; as with Davidson a few years back, you have to win some of the good games you schedule, and they just didn't. Two road wins in the top 150.

Saint Mary's (30): Living off their BracketBusters win at home over Creighton, their only win over a tournament-quality team. They beat Harvard a year after that would be very meaningful, and that win and one of their wins over Brigham Young were both extreme squeakers. The Gaels' 7-5 mark against the top 100 isn't all that bad, they were 9-2 on the road and the subjective arguments break their way -- they have a lot of talent and "look" like a tournament team, for whatever that may be worth.

Southern Mississippi (31): On the margins, losing the conference championship game in double-overtime in a time slot where they were likely to have a lot of eyeballs on them might not have hurt them. They have two wins over teams in the field: Western Kentucky and Liberty. Their best win is at home over Denver. They were 3-7 against the RPI top 100.

These three teams are of a kind. I rate them St. Mary's, Middle Tennessee State, Southern Mississippi, and while I wouldn't go to war over that ranking, I'm good with it.

Minnesota (34): This is me being stubborn. 8-10 (or 8-11) in their conference, they have two decent wins in two months, both of which were squeakers, and they lost to Purdue, Nebraska and Illinois in their last three games -- and were a miserable 3-8 on the road, 5-10 R/N. With that said…5-8 against the top 50 and 11-9 against the top 100 are impossible to overlook. They're pretty much at the top of this list, and I'm about the only guy who hasn't officially put the Gophers in at this point. Could win two games, could lose by 35 Thursday at noon.

Colorado (38): The Pac-10 just isn't that good, substituting, as John Gasaway has noted, a different kind of mediocrity, a flatter one, for its more recent brand of one-bidness. So the pool of at-large teams looks a little better, but their qualifications are largely that they all beat up on each other, and they're five percent better than they were a year ago. Meh. Colorado's best road win is at a Dominic Artis-free Oregon, and they beat Baylor on a neutral court back when that almost meant something. 4-4 top 50, 9-9 top 100 get them in.

I'll come back to both those numbers a lot. "Did you beat tournament-quality teams?" and "Did you beat good teams?" are the coin of the realm. It's hopelessly biased towards teams in the big football leagues, but it's what we have.

Oklahoma (39): One win swings so many of these teams' chances. Take away Oklahoma's win over Kansas in Norman, and the Sooners are sweating out today. You can't take that away, of course, but there are a lot of teams in the mix that would love to have a team as good as Kansas forced to come play them at home. Florida and Missouri tried to get half the SEC in, and Duke did their best with Virginia and Maryland. Oklahoma is just 3-7 against the top 50, but 9-9 against the top 100. They're home.

Boise State (41): Were this the Sheehan Invitational, Boise State might be wearing white this week. It's not clear to me why they're not. Their road win at Creighton is better than the best road win of almost every team in this mix, and it's one of four top-50 wins (4-7) and eight top-100 wins (8-8). Boise State, in the Mountain West, played 11 top-50 games; of the teams under consideration, only Minnesota and Iowa State played more, and only Minnesota and Cal had more top-50 wins. Three of their losses came without Jeff Elorriaga. If this were Baylor, they'd be long in. This is the one team who, if left out, would represent a clear mistake by the committee.

Iowa State (45): It's hard to avoid the subjective here, as two losses to Kansas might have been two wins but for a fluke shot and a bad call. Not much separates them from Oklahoma but for their comeback win Thursday in the Big 12 tournament. Like St. Mary's, they look better on the court -- a better team than tournament case, if you will. I think they're closer to the line than most people do, but they're on the right side of it.

LaSalle (46): They beat the two best teams in the Atlantic N (edit: two of the best three, they didn't beat Saint Louis.--JSS) and picked up a Big Five win over Villanova before that seemed like it would matter much. The Explorers are one of the many, many teams that could have made their case by winning their final game this week. Their 6-8 mark against the top 100 isn't anything, and actually fairly week by the standards of this group. Maybe the one team on the bubble I'm genuinely lost in evaluating, and probably #37 or #38 in the end.

Mississippi (50): No big-conference school with 24 D-I wins has ever been left out of the tournament. Mississippi would have 25 as an at-large candidate. That doesn't have to carry the day, but leaving them out would be setting a new standard, and it's the biggest reason I think they're in. The SEC is barely a big conference this year, to be sure, but if I'm thinking like the committee, I can't see them not putting in a 25-9 SEC team that reached its conference final. even if in doing so all it did was beat the 6-10 version of Missouri and Vanderbilt. (Aside: why aren't we discussing Missouri, which is a hideous road team?) Mississippi's only tournament-caliber wins are over Unhome Missouri. However, 8-6 against the top 100 -- 8-7 if they're an at-large team -- and the 25 wins and the SEC runner-up status should be enough. Should.

California (53): Take everything I said about Colorado, right down to beating a weakened Oregon in Eugene, and throw in a loss to Utah in the Pac-12 quarters. They won an exempt event in November without getting a top-100 win in the deal. (I love the four-day ESPN events, myself, but the fields have been growing weaker, especially the Thanksgiving weekend ones.) Back to the standards: 5-5 top 50, 7-10 top 100. They'll be in.

(I was unusually stubborn about some of these teams this year. Not sure why.)

Massachusetts (56): They played a four-half stretch in February in which they blew a lead to VCU, lost to Temple by a point and fell behind to St. Bonaventure. That was fatal. Could have gotten in by beating VCU yesterday in Brooklyn, but fell apart late. Wouldn't surprise me if they were back in New York in three weeks. 0-5 top 25, 2-7 top 100 are bad numbers.

Kentucky (57), Tennessee (59), Alabama (60): Kentucky is 4-4 without Nerlens Noel and hasn't been competitive on the road without him. Alabama is 0-6 against the top 50, which is a strong indication you're not good enough. Tennessee has the best overall set of qualifications -- wins over Wichita State and Massachusetts carry some heft -- but that's a tallest-midget thing. I'm prepared for any outcome here, but Tennessee-Alabama-Kentucky is how I rate them, and only Tennessee seems to have a shot.

The bottom of the SEC has just fallen apart. Yay, football and all, but they've got to get it together. For teams to go 12-6 in conference and have RPIs this poor is terrible.

Virginia (75): This is USC from 2011, with a bunch of good wins and a bunch of bad losses. Forget the RPI and look at this: 4-3 against the top 50, 8-4 (!) against the top 100. No, you shouldn't lose to Old Dominion, but… Then again, 3-8 on the road and 3-10 R/N. It's a fascinating profile. More and more, I think the committee ends up picking the last few spots based on who you beat, and Virginia's track record against tournament-quality teams is as good as anyone's.

Minnesota, the Big 12 and Pac-12 schools are at the head of the line. Put the five of them in and that leaves four or five spots for 11 teams. Actually, four for ten, as Mississippi is going in one way or another. Kentucky is out, as is Massachusetts. So the final bubble looks like….

Last four in: Virginia, Middle Tennessee, St. Mary's, Boise State
Last four out:  Southern Mississippi, LaSalle, Tennessee, Alabama

Newsletter Extra: Perceived Problems and Actual Problems

The United States was eliminated from the World Baseball Classic last night by Puerto Rico 4-3. The loss means that the U.S. misses the semifinal round for the second time in three Classics, a result that has caused a substantial amount of hand-wringing this morning.

That the U.S. has not shown well in three WBCs is a perceived problem, not an actual one. The WBC isn't about showing what nation is the best at baseball. The design and timing of the event should make that abundantly clear. If you were serious about a global baseball tournament, you wouldn't hold the thing in March and you wouldn't play one-game round-robins and you really wouldn't invite China and Brazil and you wouldn't tell pitching-short teams they could only use their best pitchers for 65 pitches. The WBC's current design is like the MLB postseason, only much worse for gathering useful information about the relative quality of teams. Since the baseball media can't get their hands around the uselessness of a best-of-seven for determining relative quality, it's probably too much to expect them to not draw conclusions from a single game between the U.S. and D.R., or between the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

So we get this perceived problem of the United States not showing well in the World Baseball Classic. If there's one thing MLB does with passion and aggression, it's address perceived problems, be it pushing for increased penalties for positive drug tests despite a well-functioning testing program, or adding a ridiculous incentive to prop up the decaying All-Star Game, or introducing a one-game playoff round out of a sense of embarrassment that teams acted in their own self-interest in a division race. MLB loves fixing that which isn't really broken in an effort to placate a media completely unwilling to address complex, multi-faceted issues in all but the most simple of terms.

I make this prediction against that backdrop. The United States team at the 2017 World Baseball Classic will include almost all of the best American players at that time. The perceived failure of the U.S. team will cause the league and Bud Selig to place undue pressure on the game's stars -- most likely with a healthy dose of MLBPA-bashing -- to participate in the event regardless of how the players or their teams believe it may affect their preparation for the season. The perceived problem of the U.S. not showing well at the WBC  will be addressed by a faux solution that does nothing about the WBC's issues of timing and format.

The WBC is a marketing event, not a championship event. Anyone taking more than nine seconds to look at the thing -- held in March, including nations that absolutely suck at baseball but are included for their potential as markets, seeded in comical fashion, with far too few games to carry legitimacy -- can see that. Rather than address those problems, or better still, acknowledge that it's a marketing event, MLB will, in the grand tradition of the Coin Flip Game and "This Time It Counts", take the easy way out and raise up the issue of American player participation as the event's biggest problem. The 2017 U.S. team will be the best ever in the history of the World Baseball Classic.

And the WBC will still be a marketing event, not a championship one.