The end is Neyer

[TheSportsPredictor]

Rob Neyer's last ESPN.com article:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6904/bo-knows-amazing

 

[UNCGrad]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

 

[spnited]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

Extremely important to who?

 

[poindexter]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

Extremely important to who?

Baseball fans under the age of 60.

 

[Drip]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

Extremely important to who?

I'm with you on that one.

 

[Azrael]

Whom.

 

[spnited]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

Extremely important to who?

Baseball fans under the age of 60.

And sabermasturbators of all ages.

 

[playthrough]

Sorry to interrupt the bashing...and I don't know the guy...but I hope Neyer is leaving on his own accord.

 

[spnited]

I'm not bashing Neyer. I questioned one person's statement about him being "extremely important in sportwriting" and Mr. Pedophile took a shot as me.

 

[UNCGrad]

While Bill James is the father of sabermetrics and using them in writing/reporting/analysis, it is Rob who brought them mainstream with the ESPN platform. Yes, ESPN deserves much of the hell it gets, but it recognized Neyer as a new voice 15 years ago, and to see where the reporting using advanced statistical metrics has gone in that time is a huge credit to Neyer. Check Twitter and see how much the likes of Joe Sheehan and Co. are lauding him. And I don't think Neyer gets enough credit for his crisp writing on complex subjects.

 

[poindexter]

When plenty of people were still treating the internet like Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel [/crossthread], Rob Neyer was completely changing the way scores of fans thought about baseball on espn.com. More valuable as a baseball writer than a hundred Plaschkes.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

Rob Neyer was the gateway drug for baseball on the Internet. Can't imagine how many of us would be doing something different if not for him.

http://twitter.com/jonahkeri/statuses/32163083455565824

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Neyer goes to SBNation. Title on his byline = National Baseball Editor:

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2011/2/1/1967537/rob-neyer-joins-sb-nation-becomes-part-of-us-not-them

I always liked Neyer, more as a trensetter than as a writer. He was a must read back in the day when he was showing the enlightened masses that the conventional wisdom of baseball wasn't all that wise. I thought his great strength was in making things easy to understand. I didn't read him to revel in his great turns of phrase or his strong wordplay. And I haven't been reading much of him at all since he started focusing almost exclusively on his ESPN.com blog. It seemed like most of what he did on there was pick out something in the news and say, well isn't that interesting. So I don't know if I'll be following him to SBNation. Especially if his columns are like his first for them.

I certainly hope he doesn't become the Mr. Rogers of sportswriting, as this article suggests. "I'm no better than anyone else," he writes. Rob, maybe you're not better than EVERYONE else, but you're better than plenty of anyone elses.

And for those who wonder about his importance or influence ... his bio on SBNation does say he has written more words for ESPN.com than anyone else. Bill Simmons might need to say a word of 500 about that. But I'm sure Neyer's up there.

 

[cranberry]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

Extremely important to who?

Baseball fans under the age of 60.

I'm 52. He's of absolutely no importance to me, although I recognize that he is a Bill James disciple and among the leaders in advanced statistical analysis.

 

[Drip]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

Extremely important to who?

Baseball fans under the age of 60.

I'm 52. He's of absolutely no importance to me, although I recognize that he is a Bill James disciple and among the leaders in advanced statistical analysis.

That's what's wrong with sports. Too many egg heads trying to micro everything about a simple freaking game.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Neyer's columns on sbnation are worth .7 of his ESPN columns

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

Extremely important to who?

Baseball fans under the age of 60.

I'm 52. He's of absolutely no importance to me, although I recognize that he is a Bill James disciple and among the leaders in advanced statistical analysis.

That's what's wrong with sports. Too many egg heads trying to micro everything about a simple freaking game.

And here I thought it was rapists like Ben Roethlisberger and dog killers like Michael Vick. Damn egg heads!

 

[funky_mountain]

Neyer's columns on sbnation are worth .7 of his ESPN columns

i liked that.

 

[Dick Whitman]

He says it will be easy to find him again. Good thing. Neyer's been extremely important in sportswriting.

Extremely important to who?

Baseball fans under the age of 60.

I'm 52. He's of absolutely no importance to me, although I recognize that he is a Bill James disciple and among the leaders in advanced statistical analysis.

That's what's wrong with sports. Too many egg heads trying to micro everything about a simple freaking game.

Should teams not have statistical analysts in the front office? After all, it's a "simple freaking game," right?

Yes or no? Should they?

 

[Dick Whitman]

Neyer's columns on sbnation are worth .7 of his ESPN columns

i liked that.

Hilarious.

You know, it's really not that controversial or silly.

Between 60 and 70 percent of the time, a walk serves the same purpose as a single would have served.

The other 30 to 40 percent of the time, a single is better than a walk (ex. Man on second or third base).