Every spring Baseball Prospectus dusts off its algorithm, the formula that guides the computer that crunches the numbers and makes Baseball Prospectus devastating competition for Hot Type’s Golden BAT.
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But I digress. When the choice is between an algorithm on the one hand and what Hot Type generously chooses to call human wisdom on the other—well it’s no choice. And that’s why I’m pleased to announce that Ted Cox is this year’s winner of the coveted Golden BAT. Cox made his picks in last year’s pennant races the old-fashioned way. He played his hunches.
That case was made and remade, and eventually ceased to be interesting. Over time, the present custodian of this space found himself increasingly moved and deepened by the sheer humanity displayed by the winning scriveners, whose delight at winning is so intense that it’s redefined the BAT—which I see now as the one consolation a sportswriter can aspire to for that daily parade of wet towels flicked by steroid-addled noncommunicants in reeking locker rooms that constitutes his professional career.
The father of PECOTA, Nate Silver, had a sensational year personally, but he had it over at fivethirtyeight.com, the political Web site where everyone I know checked in first thing each morning during the presidential campaign and last thing each night.
Care to comment? Find this column at chicagoreader.com. And for more on the media, see Michael Miner’s blog, News Bites.
