JonahKeri.com

The proliferation of writers and bloggers covering sports on the Web, combined with the explosion of social media, all but guarantees that no strong opinion will go unnoticed, or unchallenged, by someone else. So many writers are out there fisking so many other writers, you half expect a pack of scribes to start waving madly at a foul pole.

Normally I try to stay out of using someone else’s work as the impetus for a column or post. But Tim Marchman wrote a blog post that’s so thought-provoking, and so pessimistic, that I felt compelled to respond. Chalk up that compulsion to the subject matter, but also to the post coming from Marchman, one of the best sportswriters on the planet.

Here’s a brief synopsis of Tim’s “five reasons to think the coming decade is going to be a crashing bore”. Do check out his piece in its entirety — it’s a good read.

1) Technological advances

…Every club looking at the exact same accurate information will lead to monoculture. Current evaluative metrics, which are quite crude, are already having a bit of that effect; truly granular ones will even more so.

Marchman actually answers his own concern here, noting that as technology makes objective evaluation of players’ performances easier and more accurate, teams will need to become more and more creative to find an edge. Evaluating a prospect’s personality to see if he has the work ethic to get the most out of his abilities and the focus to avoid the temptations that come with being young, rich and worshiped will become more important, he explains.

I agree, and I’d go one further. Every time baseball advances in some way, the big concern is that everyone will start doing things the exact same way. When Moneyball came out, skeptics worried that Billy Beane and the A’s would stop looking so smart once other teams started directing their resources toward signing high on-base hitters who recognize the value of a walk. The skeptics were right — and they were also wrong. The market did indeed adjust, teams started paying full value (or close to it) for on-base hounds, and the A’s fell from their perch after a stretch of multiple division titles.

But it didn’t take long for teams to find new market inefficiencies. The Tampa Bay Rays seized on the value of defense (and how undervalued it had become), built a team full of vacuum cleaners, and sailed to the AL pennant in 2008 – one of the most unlikely runs by any team in baseball history. Two years later, every club has gotten smarter and is now paying close attention to defense (Note: All generalizations of increased intelligence in baseball by definition exclude the Kansas City Royals).

You can bet there’s some enterprising GM or Director of Baseball Ops or brilliant intern hunkered down somewhere with a bunch of charts (or enlightening scouting reports, or both), about to discover the next major market inefficiency. Then two years from now, that team’s third baseman will grace the cover of Sports Illustrated, with a huge headline splashed across his chest: “How ‘Bout Them Pirates?” (or pick whatever other current also-ran team you like – except the Royals, of course).

The point is, technology will never be perfect. And even as technology and awareness improve by leaps and bounds, there are so many smart people working in baseball, or even completing a Master’s thesis or an 11th-grade science project, that someone will find an edge. It was that way in the past, it is that way now, and it will always be that way in the future.

2) Postliteracy

The beat writer’s job is devolving into the maintenance of a Twitter feed, ‘hits’ on TV and radio and quickly turned ‘takes’ on the issue of the hour, more substantive writing is supported by a half dozen or so outlets that probably won’t exist in recognizable form in 10 years…

…I can’t, for example, be the only one to think that the rightly admired Joe Posnanski is courting burnout by dropping multiple five to ten thousand word blog posts every week in addition to his real writing, though we’ll continue to hope he’s Iron Joe McGinnity.

*First off, JoePos could retire tomorrow and we would still honor his Koufax-like peak.

*Please don’t retire, Joe. I’m even lifting your asterisk + italics move to ask nicely.

Marchman does have a broader point, though. Beat writers in particular, some of whom are in business to break stories as well as cover games, can have great pressure thrust upon them to get the news out before everyone one, which by necessity means posting on Twitter, or at most writing a quick graf on their employer’s Web site.

I’d actually take this a step further and note that the book industry isn’t in the greatest shape. In the fall of 2008, venerable publishing house Houghton Mifflin announced it would halt buying manuscripts, or even taking submissions from agents or writers. That was the exact time at which I was pursuing my own book deal, and there were rumors floating around that other houses were in trouble and might follow Houghton’s lead. The gun wasn’t quite in my mouth at that point, but I’d pulled it out of the drawer and started eyeing it.

The landscape has improved somewhat since those dire days. Different surveys offer different numbers on the latest percentage of American adults who still avidly read multiple books, let alone a book, in the span of a year. None of those surveys paint a pretty picture. Kindle isn’t going to solve this problem, as much as Amazon might wish it to be true. Short-form writing is gaining in popularity because short-form reading is gaining in popularity. Tough to see that trend reversing.

Still, that doesn’t mean long-form writing will go away completely. We might see the next generation of great writers punch out 10,000-word blog posts on their SmartPhones while riding their state’s fancy, new eleventy-billion-dollar high-speed rail system. Maybe the Pulitzer winners of 2019 will compose epic-length screeds by double-tapping their right temple and activating Microsoft Word 20.0 For The Brain. Whatever the scenario, great writing will always exist, the same way innovation in baseball will always exist.

3) Death of television

This is a big one. If you thought the death of newspapers was ugly, wait until you see the death of cable as it converges with online, much to the latter’s advantage.

We may well see fewer people follow baseball in the future, as more entertainment options become available. According to a recent episode of “The Office”, for instance, Hardcore Parkour is the Internet sensation of 2004.

So there’s that.

Yes, this could pose a problem for baseball. On the other hand, MLB has done a phenomenal job of finding and exploiting new sources of revenue, starting with the rapid growth of MLB Advanced Media. Ten years from now, we might all be watching games on our iTablet 9G devices, with no games available on over-the-air TV and a scant few showing on ESPN Ocho. But it’ll still be baseball, and the Florida Marlins will still pocket enough revenue-sharing dollars every year to buy half of the South Pacific. No worries.

4) The economy

If the economy has really turned Japanese we’re probably in for some hideous effects: A labor stoppage out of the next CBA negotiations for one, and the death of some major league towns for another.

The next person who can accurately predict what the economy will look like in a year, let alone a decade, should be dipped in bronze and worshiped for being an all-seeing, all-knowing deity. Tim makes some good points about some of the shakier MLB markets. But who the heck knows. Detroit’s best hope may now be to become the first fully self-sustaining city, with farms on every corner. The Tigers will need someone to cover all that green space, and Austin Jackson is said to be a nifty fly-catcher.

5) Doping scandals

I don’t know or really care what guys are on these days, but it isn’t nothing, and we’re in for a repeat of the world’s least interesting scandal once people figure out that various famous players held up as admirable because they claim not to use drugs actually do use them.

Wouldn’t shock me one bit if some of the most famous players of the past generation are outed as PED users. But the reaction won’t be what Marchman expects.

Already we’re seeing the first wave of outrage die down, as Hall of Fame voters start to take a second look at candidates like Mark McGwire, while younger writers shrug off the witch hunt that’s plagued the sport to focus on the game on the field. If anything, a rash of PED revelations might make it easier, not harder, to digest the impact of performance enhancers in the game. This would allow all of us to finally come to terms with PED usage, and hopefully move on.

UPDATE: We go back to the JoePos well for this little passage from his Hall of Fame ballot story at SI.com, on why PED hysteria has been overblown (and why it will eventually blow over):

Mark McGwire

Verdict: Yes

We can argue back and forth about whether McGwire — a probable steroid user — should get a Hall of Fame vote. People feel strongly both ways. I have felt strongly both ways. I have finally come to this: The game was different then. There was no testing, and steroid use was tolerated AND accepted AND probably encouraged. It was part of the game the way spitballs were part of the game, the way gambling was part of the game, the way segregation was part of the game, the way amphetamines were part of the game and so on and so on. Baseball is testing now, and they seem reasonably committed to eliminating performance-enhancing drugs, and that’s good. I’d prefer a clean game. But it doesn’t change what baseball was in the Selig Era*, and McGwire towered over that era by mashing long home runs.

A-yup.