I'm disgusted with Baseball Advanced Media. For those of you not familier with the situation it goes something like this:
MLB decided they wanted to cash in on the fantasy baseball crazy by protecting their stats. That means other places can't have them or use them for Fantasy Baseball. Copyright laws by the way state you cannot copyright a list of facts and figures so basically, stats can't be copyrighted. But MLB will try...oh yes, they'll try.
Then they decided to take it one step further and put Minor League Baseball on the same system. So now, all scoring is done through Baseball Advanced Media (aka BAM).
To a certain extent, as far as the fans are concerned it's great! If you can't listen to the game you can at least check the stats while the game is in progress. How this is actually handled on a club level however...
Well, according to Sean, the broadcaster for the Fort Myers Miracle, Benn - the Miracle statistician - calls into BAM at the end of each inning and gives them an update on what is going on. This is then entered into the computer and published on line. Needless to say, sometimes the person on the other end of the phone gets it wrong, and so Benn then has to call back in, usually at the end of the game, and get it corrected.
Sometimes I have to tell Sean to tell Benn if I notice something erronious, but, Benn is pretty meticulous.
Rather unfortunately, this has not been the case with the scoring for the GCL Twins.
Let's take the roster for example. The Twins drafted a Michael Cowgill in the 40th round, signed him, and sent him down to play Gulf Coast League. He's listed on the roster as Thomas. Okay, so maybe he's trying to change his name now that he's playing professional baseball, but everyone down at the park still calls him Mike, not Tom. Meanwhile "Esterlin" De Los Santos has suddenly become "Starling" De Los Santos. I mean, I don't know, maybe the Twins media guide is wrong but...
Then there is "Jon" Staatz, who is in fact named "Justin" Staatz. It took me a while to track him down, but when I went up to him and said "Hi, who are you?", he was definate about being a Justin.
Finally there is my new little buddy Dan Leatherman who, up until just today, was listed as being 5'11", 175 pounds and 30 years old. (He's 6'2", 195 and he says he's 22, by which I think he's 21 going on 22.)
You know, I spell one kid's name wrong and I get a nasty gram from a parent or girlfriend about it. I'd like to see a few of them send nasty grams to BAM.
Then there are the boxscores. On Saturday they missed a positional change. On Monday they missed a pitching change. I mean, okay, maybe I'm wrong and it wasn't Garcia on the mound, maybe it was Carreras, but it sure as heck wasn't Schoenbachler. (Jeff's just NOT THAT TAN, if you take my meaning).
Loek gets off the mound and is disappointed because we have the score at 4-2 when in fact it was 4-3, but I had Chris Parmelee's parents, some people from Joliet come to see Joe Benson and one of the players brother in the bleachers with me and we were all talking back and forth. So I lost a runner. It's easy to do. But to miss an obvious pitching change?
Then there is the questionable entry on June 28th where they have Brad Tippett pitching .01 innings and taking the loss. The next day they have him down for a save after pitching another inning.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just saying it's unlikely the Twins allowed him to throw on two consecutive days.
And I know for a fact that he pitched the 29th as I was there, but I don't think that loss on the 28th belongs to him.
Meanwhile, if I'm right it was Garcia and not Carreras that relieved Schoey on Monday, and I'm pretty sure I checked the roster just to be sure, then he certainly didn't pitch the following day in Sarasota so that was someone else.
Ah...you say, you're nitpicking.
You're right, I am. But these kids play down here in relative obscurity with almost no coverage. Is it too much to ask that the coverage they do get be correct?
And I know whoever is doing the stat work, is not calling back into BAM to correct things when they go wrong. So then this stays on their professional record?
I dunno. I think we had problems last year too, so maybe I should see if I can figure out if a erronious stat from last year (and I think I marked the errata on the boxes) is listed in the media guide that way.
And maybe by next year Michael, Esterlin and Justin will all be Thomas, Starling and Jon in the media guide as well.
::sigh::
But you know, if I did pick up my toys and pack it up, who would provide the right information to the general public? And granted, I'm not perfect, not even close, but when I do see something wrong on the site, I fix it.
Not so with with BAM it seems, as there is no one to complain to.
Maybe Saturday I'll ask Milt or Jake about it and see what they say.
Meanwhile and speaking of Parmelee's folks...We got on the subject of Angel stadium. They live close enough to see both the Dodgers and the Angels, but prefer the Angels. I don't blame them. That's a beautiful stadium.
They also said he prefers wood bats to aluminum and that he'd played in the summer wooden bat leagues for a couple of years.
"That's good," I said. "Because if he can hit the high school with a wooden bat, I'd hate to see what he can do with an aluminum one."
I think that's going to be our new little bit when he comes up to bat. "Common Chris, hit the high school again!"
"Let's go Parmeleeeeeeeee!!!!! Out of the park and into the football stadium!"
I'm sure we can come up with a few more as we go along.
The current concessious -- and we don't have a tape measure on that -- but we think that first home run went like 420 or 425 feet. He wasn't just over the fence. He was WAY over the fence.
When we were talking out of the park on Saturday I said to Knappy "I love Joe Benson. He's a great little player."
"Yeah, he says, "and that Chris Parmelee isn't too bad either."
Naw....he's an overachiever, is what he is.
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