ESPN Insider’s Keith
Law : Snarky and condescending, Law is by far one of the best baseball writers
at any level with his ability to seamlessly incorporate minors, sabermetrics and payroll
economics. Law’s resume; BA from Harvard, MBA from Carnegie Mellon, writer for
Baseball Prospectus and four years with the Toronto Blue Jays front office provides him
with a truly unique and valuable background to analyze and comment on professional
baseball. Although he was originally hired as the stats guy in the Blue Jay’s front office
he also gained extensive scouting ability in his time there making him one of the few
people that can talk about xFIP out of Fangraphs while discussing swing mechanics like
a scout.
Law is one of the few writers who have the means to travel extensively which means he
actually sees a great many of the top draft picks and nearly all of the top prospects. His
writing is mainly in the form of short blog posts with an occasional long-form article. He
is most renowned for are his free flowing chats that can range from top low A prospects
of the Cleveland Indians, to the best novel of the 1980s and how to properly brine a
pork roast. This year he started doing a podcast three times a week which is a must for
any serious baseball fan.
Baseball America : All of their
writers do great work by putting together the most comprehensive bi-monthly publication
and web site on the minors, college and high school baseball. Their annual Prospect
Guide is as close to a bible as anything that exists for the minor leagues. Matt Eddy is
the staff writer who has written about the Padres since 2007 and John Maffei has the
regular Padres’ coverage for the magazine and website.
Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin
Goldstein : Has been at Baseball Prospectus now since 2006 and his Future
Shock column and daily minor league updates are worth the subscription price alone.
Despite working for the stat laden Prospectus Kevin relies more upon compiling large
amounts of information from his scouting contacts and taking in as many Midwest
League games as he can. You can also catch some of Kevin’s work on ESPN Insider.
Minor League Ball featuring John
Sickles: Used to write for ESPN but now runs a popular website that is part of the
SBNetwork. Sickles for several years has also written a good annual prospect book
which involves a little more sabermetrics than Baseball America’s edition.
With the exception of John Sickles all of the above mentioned sites are pay sites so if
you have an interest in them by all means sign up for a subscription but we probably
will not provide weekly links to them because linking to something you can’t view kind of
defeats the purpose.
San Diego Media Minor League links: The Union-Tribune provides some limited
minor league coverage which is usually highlights from the previous night box score
and maybe some tidbits they hear from Padres’ brass. 619 Sports and Friar Forecast
will also occasionally run minor league features. The Friarhood has been the most
ambitious with a daily rundown of the teams in the system and weekly analysis by Peter
Friberg, who used to write for Ducksnorts.
Affiliate Media Links
The papers and websites listed below will be part of the weekly feature that we will
feature. All of them are public sites and if anyone believes that another newspaper or
website/blog that should be included, shoot us an email.
Tucson Padres
Newspaper: Arizona Daily Star
Tucson has its home opener on Friday, April 15 after two straight series on the road.
The local coverage began with a video profile of Wade LeBlanc, who
was the opening day starter.
Sarah Trotto, who will be covering the Tucson Padres this year, also had a nice feature on closer Evan Scribner along with an
accompanying piece on Simon Castro, although
Simon’s English has been pretty good for a long time.
Also Patrick Finley will be running a variety of small pieces called “snapshots”
that you can check out on the Daily Star site. He has a good interview with Terry
Kennedy, former columnist for the North County Times.
San Antonio Missions
Newspaper: San Antonio Express-
News
John Whisler will be covering the Missions this year and had a nice opening profile of
the team centering around the search for a place
to go bowling.
Lake Elsinore Storm
Newspaper: North County Times:
Nice story by Matt Null on the Padres’ biggest
prospect.
Websites/Blogs of Note: The NC Times also assigns reporters to cover the Storm and John Maffei, who also writes for Baseball America, provides some reporting on the system as a whole.
Fort Wayne TinCaps
Newspapers: Fort Wayne Journal
Gazette and the Fort Wayne News Sentinel
There are two daily newspapers in Fort Wayne with two beat writers who occasionally
even go on the road with them.
If you don’t go there already, you should read LaMond Tape and his TinCaps blog on
all things going on with the team. He comments on Donova Tate’s
latest injury.
Reggie Haynes has a nice article on new TinCaps manager
Shawn Wooten.
Finally we find out whatever happened to the man Denis had a serious “bromance” with.
.
Websites/Blogs of Note: TinCaps Announcer Dan Watson is the man behind The Watson Files posts an excellent blog on the
TinCaps which features news on the team, Midwest League, baseball and anything that
comes across his mind. Did I mention that he also features a daily musical guest? The
man is a true entertainer.