The Royals Roundtable

Garth Sears, author of Royal Ingenuity: Where Pine Tar and Powder Blue are Revered, was kind enough to invite me to share a few thoughts on the Royals in a new roundtable he started over at Baseball Think Factory. The topics range from Dayton Moore and free agency, to the futures of Jimmy Gobble and Mark Teahen. Some readers will notice that a few of my comments are now a bit dated with the recent signings of Jamie Walker, Randy Wolf, and the revelation of the $51.1M bid for Matsuzaka. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Also wanted to mention that my column this week takes a second look at the issue of first contacts wherein I reverse myself. Turns out I hadn't considered an excellent study by Dave Smith (you can find an older version online) - the presentation of which I saw at SABR 36 this summer in Seattle. When that's taken into consideration it appears hitters have the relative advantage the first time hitter and pitcher meet at the major league level (using 2000-2004 data). I also take a look at performance over the course of the first 15 confrontations between hitter and pitcher pairs.