MJK's post on Baseball | Latest updates on Sulia

What does it mean that baseball blogger Dan Turkenkopf has been hired by a Major League team?

Turkenkopf cannot say what team hired him or even what he will be doing for them. Major league teams have confidentiality agreements that make a Tom Cruise pre-nup seem lax. The obvious and true message is that Dan is a smart guy, not just with numbers generally, but with programming, which is almost as important to team analytics these days. But a secondary message, which should have gotten through long ago but still escapes many writers, is that for all of the "inside access" journalists boast about, for all of the stuff "mere bloggers" (I will leave aside the mom's basement stuff aside for now) do not know (and there is plenty), these "nerds" are getting hired, over and over again, to work inside baseball. That is, _really_ inside baseball, on team decision-making and data, not just how players behave in the clubhouse or who gives the best quotes or who gets the best anonymous, responsibility-free quotes from club executives. In other words, maybe we should stop pretending like the seamheads are the outsiders who need to grovel at the feet of the Scoops guys. I am thrilled that Dan's dream has been fulfilled, as was Mike Fast's and Keith Woolner's before him. However, I am no longer surprised. Wake me up when a team hires Jon Heyman or Ken Rosenthal or Bob Costas or Buzz Bissinger or whomever to help with baseball decisions. Just thinking about how ridiculous that sounds tells you all you need to know about the respective authority of each group.