This is the first in a two part series examining changes in the nature of sports coverage, player evaluation, and front office operations due to internet blogging and its role in the proliferation of statistical analysis of the game of baseball. Part one looks at blogs and their effect on sports journalism, as bloggers emerge as both important sources of information and objects of scorn by more established journalists. Part two will look at the way major league scouts view statistical analysis of baseball, and the the way the science has left and indelible mark on the way the game is played as well as its impact on front office transactions.

Those who keep up with sports blogs are familiar with the sometimes contentious relationship between bloggers and writers who cover sports in print media and bigger name websites. While often the target of ridicule from journalists, certain blogs provide in-depth sports coverage that is better researched than articles being put out by journalists with more proper pedigrees and resumes. However, anyone who has a laptop and an internet connection now has the ability to publish their journalistic musings, and the usual editorial filters that information passed through are no longer in place, creating a deluge of information of questionable reliability.

Bloggers at times have a very high opinion of the nature of their craft and their projects, often seeing themselves as digitally enlightened cutting-edge mavericks challenging an fossilized print media establishment that was hitherto unassailable and unreachable for comment or questioning, using available technology to create a more democratic and open exchange of information no longer dictated by the whims of complacent journalists and the editors who emboldened them.

At their best, bloggers provide superior coverage of local sports teams than entrenched hometown journalists coasting on their laurels and offering unsubstantiated, lazy opinions as fact in columns. Anyone who grew up in Minneapolis like I did knows that sportswriters in that city had a free pass for years to pawn off unenlightening, unsubstantiated crap and blithe name dropping as sports journalism.

Oft-praised Twins blogger Aaron Gleeman has a near-paralyzing hatred of Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Jim Souhan’s writing, and with good reason—Souhan has penned some of the laziest, poorly researched, asinine columns in any media field and for years has done a disservice to Twin Cities fans who depended on newspapers for sports information. Not to be outdone, Twins writer Bob Sansevere gave us the following article in which Souhan suggested a Twins trade involving Carlos Silva and Joe Nathan—after Silva’s contract had expired with the Twins—in exchange for Jonathan Papelbon and Jacoby Ellsbury. Uh, yeah. Keeping track of who is on your own local team’s roster when it’s your full time job is a lot to ask of a team beat writer.

So when bloggers come along—especially talented ones like the writers of Fire Joe Morgan, a site dedicated to (often viciously) exposing and deconstructing poor major media sports coverage—and offer insightful, thoroughly researched, and ehanced coverage of local and national sports, often times for free, its easy to see why the old guard of poor writers coasting on their credentials and journalism degrees feels threatened by them and pen nasty vitriolic, often idiotic diatribes against them. Scabs! Dillitantes!

Out here in the East Asian scouting world, certain blogs like Taiwanbaseball.com have established themselves as invisible but necessary behind the scenes players, info brokers, and invaluable sources of heavily sought-after information about amateur athletes. Executives from several front offices have approached me either via phone or email and asked me how some kid—who doesn’t even live in Taiwan and seems to be doing his site for no pay—has such in-depth information about amateur players, even crucial info about who players’ agents are and how much they’re asking for to sign when those GM’s themselves or even their local area scouts trying to sign them have no idea.

On the other hand, blogs can represent untrained hack sports journalism at its worst. In certain cases, especially in the case of speculative journalism about possible player movement, bloggers are simply pass off half-baked rumors found via google searches of other blogs from writers with no credentials, creating a kind of incestuous circuit of digital misinformation about transactions. One Australia-based area scout, doing his best to hide a venomous disdain in his voice, bitterly complained to me that misinformation perpetuated by blogs– often unintentionally–has the unwanted effect of distorting player values and raises the prices of free agents via rumors.Stylistically, due to their usually meta-critical narrative structures, (or the fact that their writers are single white dudes sitting around in their underwear writing in between visits to various porn sites can often take a somewhat adolescent, high minded, snarky, or even mocking tone towards the subjects they cover. One writer at a major media source in Japan told me that the worst thing a writer can do in an interview with a newspaper is mention that they’re a blogger. In the newsroom, the word is tantamount to untrained, unprofessional gossip monger with no qualifications.

In the best case scenario, judicious writers of blogs will allow criticism from posters who write in to critique, correct, or point out misinformation if it occurs, helping form an online community of like-minded writers that keep each other in check information wise. The always wise Westbay-san of Japanesebaseball.com, the English-speaking guru of NPB information and stats, will always swing by to make our house is in order when we report about Japanese baseball. Certain commentors have posted revisions to our reports about scouting here in Asia and clarified certain members’ roles in organizations.

The next installment of this article will examine the effects of blogging–and its deployment of complex, often bewildering form of statistical analysis of the game–on the business of scouting and Major League Baseball front offices.