Apologies for the recent absence. Various and sundry reasons, ranging from the tail end of the book proposal submission to working on generating new assignments (the end of baseball season means a full-court press on college hoops pitches) to an impromptu weekend in Vegas.

That last was interesting–aside from the usual great time had by all, I also had my worst showing ever in sports betting. I’ll be posting about it, but not here. My buddy Chris Liss at Rotowire.com has invited me to join RotoSynthesis, the new running blog at the Rotowire site. I hope to have that post done in the next 24 hours, after which I’ll link to it and you can mock me for such terrible prognostication.

Otherwise, in brief:

–Like Obama’s Cabinet picks, including his “enemies close” approach to HillDog as Sec of State.

–Biggest winning streak for the Dow in a while. I’d hold off on getting too excited for now, though. Best to wait before considering new buys.

–Even if the economy has taken a chunk out of your disposable income, I highly recommend at least one weekend somewhere warm this winter. I was starting to get hit with a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder before this Vegas trip. Walking the Strip in 70-degree, sunny weather did wonders, aside from being with good buddies.

And finally, a reader poll. I’ve found myself with less work lately. Same goes for colleagues and acquaintances of mine who are writers, as well as friends in other industries. I’ve been going to the gym more lately with my spare time. Next up is to catch up some reading–books, not blogs, which gave me reader fatigue once the election ended.

So, dear readers: Are you also seeing slower workloads too? If so, what are you doing with your added free time?

For various reasons, I was feeling pretty down today. Went to play basketball in my league and started feeling better–our team improved to 2-0, and I played pretty well, probably something like 12-13 rebounds. So my mood was on the upswing.

Just got home, and got a note from an ESPN reader that’s going to leave a smile etched on my face…well, certainly through the weekend anyway.

Google any combination of “Monica Lewinsky” and “CC Sabathia”. Good times.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I stumbled across Typealyzer.com, a site that purports to analyze your blog and the disposition of its writer(s). I plugged in JonahKeri.com to see what would transpire. Here’s the result:

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

Have to say, that’s pretty good. And I’m even more like that when I’m blogging (as opposed to writing 40-page book proposals).

Of course now I’m tempted to write a scholarly 5,000-word essay about banana farming in Central America, just to screw with the the model.

In his Wednesday Wangdoodles roundup of various baseball blogs and links, my ESPN.com colleague and friend Rob Neyer was nice enough to link to my post picking Cliff Lee as AL MVP (welcome, new readers!).

Sadly, Rob had another link to pass along: A post by the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell, who picked RYAN HOWARD AND FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ as his MVPs.

Boswell writes:

All of the encompassing offensive stats __and there’s little difference between Total Average, Runs Created, OPS and others__ run the risk of overvaluing walks and singles while undervaluing the bases-clearly game-changing power of extra base hits. So, sometimes, you have to underline the obvious; for example, a first baseman with 146 RBI is “more valuable,” especially when he plays on a first-place team, than a first baseman (Pujols) with 116 RBI on a fourth-place team.

Don’t analyze beyond that. True, Howard can’t field (19 errors). And Pujols outhit him by .357 to .251. Howard strikes out a ton while Pujols walks constantly. But none of it outweighs Howard’s RBI total, built on his .320 average with runners in scoring position. For what it’s worth, Howard wasn’t even in the top half dozen in baseball in runners-on-base when he came to the plate. His 146 RBI wasn’t a fluke. He’s Mr. Multi-Run Homer.

and…

As for Pedroia, I’d pick him over his main competitors –Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer of the Twins. Pedroia and Mauer won gold gloves at valuable defensive positions __second base and catcher. Morneau is just a first baseman. Besides, Pedroia’s Red Sox made the playoffs, the Twins didn’t.

But in 30 years, nobody is going to remember anything Pedroia did this year. Howewver, Francisco Rodriguez saved 62 games for the first-place Angels may still be the MLB record.

Sigh. Tom Boswell was one of my earliest reads growing up as a baseball-loving little guy. I appreciated his Total Average stat and incorporated it into the readings of Bill James and Elias books that my dad bought me while I was still in grade school. Stats aside, Boswell seemed to have an understanding of the game and how it worked that topped the efforts of his colleagues. He was sharp, witty and almost always on point. I don’t know what’s happened since then, but none of those descriptions apply now.

I’ll always be grateful to Boswell for the work he did earlier in his career. Heck, my humble offerings will never amount to 1/1,000th the contribution that Boswell has made to baseball writing. But I’m afraid that Mr. Boswell needs to spend some time reevaluating his take on the game, or risk having baseball pass him by entirely.

Please, Tom. Pick up a copy of this book (I won’t see a penny in royalties, promise), or check out the work of…anyone. Rob Neyer, Keith Law, Tom Tango, MGL. Dave Cameron, the BP group, Hardball Times, Fangraphs, you name it. Better yet, check out the work of Joe Posnanski, an excellent mainstream media writer with no statistical training of any kind who’s learned to funnel the best analytic findings into his work, while continuing to write in an enjoyable prose.

Tom, I want to enjoy your work again. I hope you make the effort to catch up. I’m rooting for you.

Update: In discussing this further with my buddy Mark, I realize I wasn’t being entirely clear in my wish for Mr. Boswell, and sportswriters in general. I’m not advocating 1,000 new Bill James clones. I do expect people to take the time to learn what the new metrics mean and not blindly mock them (or any arguments, statistical or not) when they contradict their own inflexible point of view. Again, I refer to Joe Posnanski. He writes like a champ, he’s not a stathead by any stretch, but he’s aware of the research out there, wields it effectively when necessary, but does so with a light touch that makes it seamless. Very much enjoy reading his work.

I’ll take this a step further. If Tom Boswell gave up analysis altogether and just focused on Roger Angell-style writing for the rest of his life, that would also be great. I love sportswriting that’s devoid of numbers, when done right, too. More than I like sportswriting WITH numbers, actually. Roger Kahn, Roger Angell, Ring Lardner, W.P. Kinsella, Allan Barra, David Halberstam–these are some of my favorite writers of all-time, baseball or otherwise.

If you’re a storyteller in your writing, be the best storyteller you can be. If you’re an analyst in your writing, be the best analyst you can be. If you’re a hybrid of both, be the best hyrbid you can be. Effort and thought. That’s what I ask.

Update 2: Speaking of JoePos, he takes down Boswell with aplomb here.

Constitutional lawyer and prolific blogger Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com gives us the scoop on Eric Holder, who just accepted Barack Obama’s invitation to become Attorney General — making him the first African-American AG in the nation’s history.

Some good stuff, especially regarding abuses of the Patriot Act:

When you look at some of the things that have done under the spirit of the [Patriot] Act, where you detain citizens without giving them access to a lawyer, where you listen in on attorney-client conversations without involving a judge, these are the kinds of things that have been done in the name of the Patriot Act by this administration that I think are bad ultimately for law enforcement and will cost us the support of the American people which is a vital tool to be successful in this war on terrorism . . .

I think in a lot of ways, the problem that I had with the enforcement of the act is that this administration said essentially trust us. We’re not going to involve judges, we’re not going to report to Congress on what we’re doing, and I think our history has shown us that we are best when we operate as people governed by the law as opposed to putting our trust in people and that’s the problem I have.

You have to deal with this whole question of secrecy and the way in which the administration has conducted itself. You need to involve judges. If you’re going to look at business records or library records, this should not be something that’s simply done by the executive branch without the involvement of judges.

That’s from 2004. The guy’s been out front about everything from the AG’s job being a check on the President’s power, to condemning the U.S.’ policies of torture, to opposing warrantless wiretapping/spying on citizens.

Sign me up.

My favorite sport, capable of stealing a good six hours of my day on the right lazy Saturday or Sunday. Well, ESPN and its family of networks is sorely tempting me today/tonight/tomorrow, with TWENTY-FOUR HOURS of consecutive live college hoops action (games in places like Hawaii allow for the late/early weird start times).

I’m watching Syracuse vs. Richmond as we speak, and reminiscing about Richmond’s dramatic No. 15 over No. 2 win over the Orange back in the ’80s. At the top of the screen, ESPN is streaming messages left in the reader comments section at ESPN360.com. It’s funny/bad/ridiculous enough to read the gross misspellings and ludicrous statements made by anonymous posters when you’re actually online. But on my TV screen? Comedy gold. And what’s even funnier is that ESPN presumably culls messages to get the very best ones, the comments that lack profanities and have something useful to say.

My favorite so far:

The 3-point shot is the great equalizer in college basketball. It allows for so much parody between the big boys and the mid-majors.

Parody indeed. You go, WWL!

As the site has done for every MLB awards pick, ESPN.com has its survey of 27 baseball writers up for AL MVP. The real award will be announced at 2 p.m. ET, so I wanted to comment on the picks now, before the news comes out.

First, here’s the survey.

Dustin Pedroia 14 votes
Joe Mauer 4 votes
Justin Morneau 4 votes
Francisco Rodriguez 2 votes
Grady Sizemore 1 vote
Kevin Youkilis 1 vote
Cliff Lee 1 vote

Which of those picks would you say jumps out at you? Let’s evaluate each of these candidates one by one:

Dustin Pedroia: By far the most common pick, and also the player I expect to win the award. A Yankee fan friend and I have taken to calling him Dusty McHustlePants (my buddy because he hates the Sox and Pedroia drives him crazy, me because I delight in writers and broadcasters who praise Pedroia’s grit/hustle/scrappiness, while ignoring the fact that he’s also a very talented athlete). Pedroia has a decent case for the award, hitting .326/.376/.493 while playing excellent defense at second base. I see very little difference between a player who had a great season on a 50-win team and a player who had a great season on a 100-win team. But if you like your MVPs to hail from playoff squads, Dusty meets that requirement too.

Joe Mauer/Justin Morneau: The fact that the same number of panelists voted for Morneau as for Mauer just leaves me shaking my head. There’s no adjustment made for position (high-offense first basemen are a dime a dozen; catchers who hit like Mauer are surefire Hall of Famers), and too much emphasis placed on context-dependent stats like RBI, with too little emphasis placed on a far more telling stat like OBP (Mauer finished 2nd in the league at .413, even won the batting title to placate the Wee Willie Keeler-voting set). Aside from adjusting for positional averages, I give catchers bonus credit for playing the most grueling position on the diamond, and for the fact that playing 162 games (or even 150) at C is impossible, resulting in a built-in disadvantage in counting stats both traditional (HR, RBI, R, H) and sabermetric (VORP, Win Shares).

Joe Mauer was the best position player in the American League this year. While I only ranked a personal Top 7, I’m not sure that Morneau would’ve made my Top 10.

Francisco Rodriguez: I’m not going to pick on any specific voters for this pick, ESPN or otherwise. Let’s just say that if you believe the 4th-best closer in the league should be the MVP, Jerome Holtzman is shedding a tear from the afterlife at the monster he created.

Grady Sizemore: Keith Law goes it alone on this one, and it’s a highly defensible pick. There are some voters who’ll have a hard time voting for anyone who hit .268 (well, not the geniuses who picked Ryan Howard in the NL, but other folks). Many others will ding Sizemore for playing on a non-contender. But name any advanced stat — VORP, WARP, WPA, Win Shares — Sizemore is very near the top in every case. He’s the second-highest position player on my ballot of seven, for the record.

Kevin Youkilis: Now here’s an interesting pick, by Buster Olney. Youkilis trumps Pedroia, Mauer, Morneau and almost everyone else in the league with a lovely line of .312/.390/.569. He played on a playoff team and played his usual strong defense at first base (while filling in capably at third when needed too). My preference of Mauer, Sizemore and Pedroia over Youkilis just comes down to those three playing tougher positions. Youkilis gets dinged a bit for missing 17 games too (even Mauer played 146 to Youk’s 145).

And lest we forget, Youkilis is the star of the best clip in the history of the Internets. I’ve seen the clip about 6,000 times, and I’m still never sure if Orsillo and Rem-Dog are going to make it all the way through without having a coronary.

Cliff Lee: Wait, what insane asylum escapee picked a starting pitcher on a .500 team for AL MVP?! Why, it’s the horribly unphotogenic Canadian in this photo, of course!

Actually, picking Lee wasn’t that difficult for me. While it’s not a perfect measure of value, VORP has Lee (76.5) well above the best AL position player (A-Rod at 62.4, surprisingly). In fact, Roy Halladay is much closer to Lee in that category than A-Rod, Mauer, Pedroia, Sizemore or anyone else.

VORP doesn’t account for defense, though. And here’s where picking a pitcher gets tricky. Those who would never pick a pitcher for MVP are almost always right, even if a simplistic reason like “That’s what the Cy Young is for” misses the mark. Basically, when you’re a position player who get to double-count your value, with a full season of both offensive and defensive contributions. Even the best defensive moundsman gets only 35 stats (or 80ish relief appearances) to make his mark with the glove.

So for a pitcher to win the award, I like to see a truly incredible performance from said pitcher, combined with no truly dominant position players in the league in that given season. Use Cliff Lee’s 22-3 record and 2.54 ERA if you’re a traditionalist, or his terrific Support-Neutral numbers if you’re a stathead, and you arrive at the same conclusion: In the era of the five-man rotation and closely monitored pitch counts, this was a season for the ages. So too, while we’re here, was Roy Halladay’s. That’s why I have Lee 1st and Halladay 2nd on my fake ballot.

My top seven:

Cliff Lee
Roy Halladay
Joe Mauer
Grady Sizemore
Dustin Pedroia
Alex Rodriguez
Kevin Youkilis

You might still disagree, and that’s cool. Just please, when you concoct a derisive name for me and my lame-brained pick, insert the adjective “Outlier” in with all those fine curse words. Like my colleague Rob Neyer’s defensible/lone wolf Lance Berkman pick for NL MVP (tops in the league in WPA thanks to great numbers in “clutch” situations, as well as better defense and baserunning than Pujols according to several sources), I prefer to be thought of as a thoughtful (though quite possibly wrong) contrarian. A true outlier.

And if you think I’m just pandering to my countryman Malcolm Gladwell on the day that his new book drops…well, you’re right.

Eh.

Update: Pedroia won, Morneau finished 2nd, as most of the world predicted. My pick Cliff Lee finished…12th!

Two other fun facts:

–Jason Bartlett got a 5th-place vote, probably from the same TB contingent that named him Rays MVP this season.

–Manny Ramirez finished third in NL MVP voting thanks to two months of NL play. Mark Teixeira was likewise traded to the AL at the trade deadline. He hit an off-the-charts .358/.449/.632 with the Angels, and was up against a weaker field of MVP competitors in the AL. Teixeira got 1 point in the voting. ONE POINT.

Update 2: Jay Jaffe has a rundown of the top AL players this season by WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) at Baseball Prospectus. #1 on the list? You guessed it, Cliff Lee.

Tom Hardicourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, I salute you.

Here’s his ballot:

1. Ryan Howard, Phil
2. CC Sabathia, Mil
3. Manny Ramirez, LA
4. Carlos Delgado, NY
5. Aramis Ramirez, Chi
6. Prince Fielder, Mil
7. Albert Pujols, Stl
8. Ryan Ludwick, Stl
9. Ryan Braun, Mil
10. David Wright, NY

Oh there’s so much more. You need to read the whole article. Basically Hardicourt’s argument is this:

You can go 0 for 500 with 2,000 errors from April to August. As long as you succeed in September and your team makes the playoffs, that’s all that matters.

The unfortunate retirement of Fire Joe Morgan’s creative geniuses leaves a void to mock something so glorious. Fortunately, the folks at Baseball Think Factory still do a fine job. I particularly enjoyed the submission of Transaction Oracle writer Dan Szymborski:

I could fill out an MVP ballot in a dream and have it make more sense. Sure, the ballot would contain maybe my old neighbor, Chester A. Arthur, a milk truck, and Jeff Reboulet, but it’d still be better than an MVP ballot that lists Carlos Delgado above Albert Pujols.

Oh, Jeff Reboulet. Your Hall of Fame moustache and utter randomness lives on in all our hearts. It’s for that reason that you remain the only baseball player to whom I only refer by an anagram: J. Fefe Trouble.

Congratulations to Albert Pujols for being named NL MVP.

I wrote about Pujols’ candidacy and how he compared to vastly inferior candidates such as Ryan Howard (great HR and RBI, but lousy AVG/OBP, terrible defense), CC Sabathia (half a season in the NL isn’t enough to warrant consideration), and Manny Ramirez (two months in the NL REALLY isn’t enough to warrant consideration). Today, friends of JonahKeri.com, St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer/blogger Derrick Goold and Rob Iracane, esteemed blogger for WalkOffWalk.com, were kind enough to link to my Pujols piece.

As I finished the FINAL draft of my book proposal over the weekend (thank you Buddha!), I also had to include 2-3 of my best analytical articles as part of the packet for the publisher. It occurred to me that my Pujols column is probably as good as any I’ve written on the analytical side, so I included it. I think I got more positive reader emails from the Pujols article than any I’ve ever written. It’s humbling to have colleagues also share their support.

So if you missed it the first time, please enjoy “Albert Pujols, Underappreciated Superstar”.

My latest from ESPN.com, guest-starring Wayne Garland, Andre Dawson…and the immortal Darren Dreifort.