FanPost

DLD - 10/29 - Rain, rain, go away

There's nothing here. Mobile users, rejoice.

So with the World Series resuming mid-game last night tonight(?), it poses an interesting question (well, one I heard this morning on ESPN). Cole Hamels was due at-bat, so it's not certain who will be sent in to pinch-hit for him, and with whom Tampa Bay will counter.

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SB Nation will be getting some serious financial backing:

Former AOL executive vice president of consumer and publisher services Jim Bankoff has secured a "mid-seven-figure sum" of venture capital for SB Nation, a startup network of sports blogs.

/snip

Bankoff will serve as chairman for the company. Tyler Bleszinski, whose five-year-old Athletics Nation blog in Oakland was a building block for SB Nation, will remain president of the company. He has this to say about the news:

Yes, the humble company that I started back in November of 2003 (AN will be five years old in just nine days) has blossomed into a thriving new media company with funding. I'm very thankful and lucky to be associated with the quality of people and blogs that we have here.

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NY Times readers sound off on the interesting health care proposal op-ed piece from Billy Beane, Newt Gingrich and John Kerry (recap: a medical staff of Scott Hattebergs would cure cancer).

The basic premise of the Op-Ed article by Billy Beane, Newt Gingrich and John Kerry is correct — medicine needs greater statistical analysis — but let’s not get carried away with the baseball analogy.

The number of variables in medical care (patient and treatment variability, co-morbid conditions) and degree of subjective interpretation (severity of illness) is far greater than in baseball.

It’s easy to overinterpret a single number or set of numbers (for example, surgical mortality rate) without context. And while changes in baseball occur gradually, changes in medicine are continual, making statistical interpretation harder. Today’s observer would recognize the game of baseball played in 1908 — not so in medicine.

I’m sure Mr. Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, would agree that not everyone in baseball or sabermetrics agrees on the value or meaning of many new statistics. Experts sometimes come to opposite conclusions with the same data. It’s the same in medicine.

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The A's official Web site has a piece on Adrian Cardenas and other A's in the Arizona Fall League.

He's also been able to get used to an old defensive home. A shortstop in high school, the Phillies moved Cardenas to second base after rookie ball because most felt he was better suited there and perhaps partially because of the presence of Jimmy Rollins. The A's, however, wanted him to work back at short. He got all of three games in there with Stockton before moving up to Midland and getting the news that's where he was going to play for the duration.

"I was nervous when I first got to Double-A and they told me I'd be the everyday shortstop," Cardenas said. "I was confident I could play there, but I was nervous at least until the first ground ball came. I'm new, I'm 20, with guys who are older and are in a playoff run. I definitely felt the pressure a little bit. Then I fielded that first ground ball and said, 'OK, I can do this.'"

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Ouch.

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On this day...

1929, stock prices collapsed on the New York Stock Exchange amid panic selling. Thousands of investors were wiped out.