Home MLB'Weekly' Hit Ground Ball Saturday round-up

From famine to feast. The first week provides so many stories and flashpoints, after five months without competitive baseball, that you are a victim of information overload. After a few days of simply being glad to have baseball back in our lives, the first weekend of the MLB season is the period when baseball fans can really settle in for the next six or seven months.

With so much taking place (games to enjoy, articles to read, key moments to discuss etc), it’s easy to run out of time when it comes to posting little pieces of news or general thoughts. So, rather than publish several short posts, I thought I would put together a ’round-up’ post today.

Baseball Basics for Brits

A couple of BaseballGB news items first. You may have noticed a new tab in the main navigation bar. I’ve finally launched my Baseball Basics for Brits and two volumes have been published so far: ‘The Major League Baseball Season’ and ‘MLB Rosters’. Volume three should be available by next weekend.

Weekly Hit Ground ball

One of the main features at BaseballGB last year was my regular Sunday column, ‘Weekly’ hit ground ball, that looked back at the week that had just taken place. During the process of collating all of the articles into a single ‘season review’ volume, I debated whether to bring it back again for 2008. Well, I’ve decided that I will, only in a different format. The 2008 edition will include a main piece on a key topic from the week, followed by a short summary of which teams and players have had a good or bad seven days. The first one will be published tomorrow, so let me know what you think.

British Baseball news

Mark Tobin has revealed on his excellent British Baseball Data website that the line-up for this year’s British National League has been announced. The competition will involve seven teams in 2008, as opposed to ten in 2007. It looks like the Sheffield Bladerunners, the Halton Jaguars and the Birmingham Maple Leafs have all dropped out of the National League North, while all four teams from the 2007 NL South return for the new season.

Europeans in the Majors

The essential Mister-Baseball website highlighted the performances of two Dutch pitchers in MLB this week. Rick van den Hurk, who had a very promising debut year in the Majors in 2007, pitched well for the Marlins in his season opener against the Mets. Atlanta’s Jair Jurrjens, acquired from the Tigers in the Renteria trade over the off-season, got the win in his first Major League start on Thursday against the Pirates. Pim van Has notes that their success in the States will almost certainly make them unavailable for the Netherlands’ Olympics roster, but look out for them in the WBC next March.

MLB.tv and ‘Condensed games’

MLB.com’s 2008 multimedia services have been the source of much debate over the past week, not least here at BaseballGB where visitors from different parts of the globe have posted their comments. The main gripe against the MLB.tv service has been the introduction of the footage being shown in 16:9 aspect, making a true full-screen view impossible for those of us with 4:3 aspect monitors. MLB.com made a slight change yesterday by displaying the footage in ‘letter-box’ style with black stripes at the top and bottom (and on both sides in some cases, depending on the footage), rather than the previous display which put the footage at the top of the screen and left a large black space at the bottom. Centring the footage does lessen the impact of the black space and MLB.com probably dropped the ball by not using this display in the first place.

While I generally support the criticism of the sudden move away from the 4:3 footage, I had the chance to watch MLB.tv on a 16:9 monitor the other day and have to admit that it looked fantastic. I’ve been reliably informed by someone who knows a lot more about these things than I do that 4:3 monitors are likely to go the way of floppy disk drives in the very near future as well. So there are valid reasons why MLB.com have gone down this route, but I still believe they might have taken this step a little too early. Loyal subscribers who’ve enjoyed full-screen footage in previous years shouldn’t be forced into buying a new monitor (without warning) to continue getting that service. While I will no doubt upgrade to a 16:9 monitor at some point and enjoy MLB.tv even more, it’s a shame that I’ll have to use a slightly inferior service in the meantime.

And talking about an inferior service, the removal of ‘condensed games’ is a real blow to us international fans who found them an invaluable way to tackle the ‘time difference’ difficulties we face. The Rewind recaps are good in themselves, but are a poor substitute for the 9-10 minutes of highlights we had become accustomed to. ‘Condensed games’ were initially advertised as part of the 2008 subscription and, while MLB.com’s terms and conditions mean they are legally entitled to change the product, taking them away without warning (again!) isn’t much of a way to treat your customers.

Gameday analysis

Finally, MLB.com have made some significant upgrades to the Gameday Service and I’ve been impressed by the way various features (such as the game wraps and video footage) have been added into the Gameday window in such a neat fashion. I noted in a previous post that the addition of ‘pitch type’ data, and the fact that the necessary cameras have now been installed in all thirty stadiums, would prove beneficial to the pioneers using this data. Josh Kalk’s interesting article on the Hardball Times about Tim Hudson’s start against the Nationals bears this out.

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