Bingo. Anybody talking about trading Weaver for Teixera? (Weaver’s a free agent–but you get my point.)

I don’t think beat writers are as valuable as they once were. Most days, the stuff they put in the newspapers is practically a rote recitation of the notes you can find on the Tigers website. To me, Lynn Henning is the only Detroit sportswriter who provides any unique analysis/insight about the Tigers.

As for Knobler’s loyalty to Leyland, it pales in comparison to Steve Grinzel’s apparent loyalty to John L. Smith:

http://www.mlive.com/spartans/.....tml#200533

I also agree with Kurt, without the beat writers we wouldn’t have any information. They’re also in a tough spot in that they can’t really be too critical or they run the risk of having access which is key for their job.

As for some of the other columnists, Parker is a joke. He has no redeeming qualities as a writer or analyst. I became much more of a fan of Sharp during the Tigers run in that he was often the voice of reason.

Most of Bonderman’s improvement from 03-04 was due to a decrease in league wide scoring. His ERA+ went from 92-93, so he only really improved by 1% compared to league average.

However, I’ll take a 24 year old Bonderman coming off the best year of his career vs. a 30 year old Weaver coming off one of his worst years, and it isn’t very close.

Still, I would not say this is the first year Bonderman has been better than Weaver. I would argue that Bonderman has been more valuable since he came into the league. They both had high ERA’s in 2003. But Jeremy has more CG, more shutouts, 100 more Ks (623 vs. 510), given up less HRs (86 vs. 104). Plus, he’s managed to increase his winning pct. each year despite playing on fairly inept teams over that span (expect 2006, of course), while Weaver is basically .500 over that span with some pretty good NYY, LAA, and STL teams.

I don’t think there is much debate over which of these two has better “stuff”, but Bonderman was young and learning, while Weaver had already shown what he had.

Parker can argue a wash, but its still a poor position.

I’m sure Bilfer agrees, blogging is a lot easier with beat writers doing their jobs.

I thought pairing Tom Gage and Parker was genius. On one hand, we have the beat writer, who knew the team inside and out and whose predictions turned out to be pretty good week to week. On the other hand, we have this columnist who saw the team play, like, once and who doubted all along. I wondered what the point was, unless the point was to show how out-of-touch Parker’s opinions were. In any case, I didn’t even bother reading him by the time he started “following” the team in October.

Half the time I think they’re the only journalists who know how to do their jobs.