Hello and welcome to the Crawfish Boxes. This site is certainly part of an ongoing experiment by the good folks (including Marcos Moure, who you might have heard of) at Sports Blogs to see exactly how far this currently hot blog phenomenon is going to go, and the answers to that question should be interesting. But this site's existence will also answer a few questions that I myself have had.
Over at Astroland, I have--for the past four years or so, whenever the mood has struck me-- written occasional pieces on the state of the Astros. The thing about that occasional column is, I have no idea whether anybody read those posts or not. Astroland was set up primarily to be an encyclopedia of my own baseball card collection; it was a personal site, not designed to handle and never set up for feedback. I never even mounted an onsite ticker. And all that suited me well, except that now I'm in on the ground floor of a project that's going to require traffic. I suppose what I'm saying is that I'd be interested how you found out about The Crawfish Boxes, whether you're coming here from my other site, or from another Sports Blog.
I expect TCB to be extremely selfish of my time, but I also expect to have a bunch of fun with it. The Astros of this site's launch year are much worse than even money to advance into the playoffs, but despite this sad fact are one of the more interesting propositions in the club's history, I think. Win, lose, or draw, the 2005 Astros should invite discussion, and I will certainly attempt to provide a forum for that.
Those familiar with my writing in the past know that I am more of a historian than a sabermetrician. I guess you'll see some stats here from time to time, but the stats I like best are goofy, proving nothing: lists detailing the best OPS among pitchers with a sub-.400 winning percentage, things like that.
I have a certain amount of distrust for the sabermetrician's tools, and certainly take issue with a couple of their famous axioms.
For example, I believe clutch hitters exist, and I believe that the pitcher's ability to win is a specific if not easily measurible talent (which two of the current members of the Astros' staff, by the way, possess in spades).
I also believe that Craig Biggio is a lock for the Hall of Fame and that, more and more, Jeff Bagwell is not.
I could go on, but I won't, at least for right now. . . .I look forward to hearing from you.
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