In case you missed it over the weekend, Baseball Musings received information that Will Carroll is going to ESPN. Since that post, more data came in to indicate to me that it’s real. It’s great to see someone moving from the Internet to a major broadcaster.
This can only be good news for Baseball Prospectus. Over the years they’ve seen many of their good writers – Law, Huckaby, etc leave and have brought in crappy guys like Zumsteg and Carroll who “broke” the big story of Pete Rose being reinstated before any other news outlet. Since that story, Carroll has been breaking fake stories and reporting based on his extensive medical knowledge. This has helped lead to the decrease in quality at BP. Maybe this will be a step in the right direction for them.
I believe the Rose story was essentially correct. What Rose and Selig didn’t realize at the time was that once Rose admitted he bet on baseball, everyone would turn against him. A lot of people who supported Rose at the time believed Pete was railroaded. Once they found out Rose was the one lying for years, his support vanished.
I agree with Dave on the Rose thing. It didn’t help either that Rose’s confession came in the form of a book he was selling.
I just emailed Will and he sent back the following:
No comment.
Seems to me he’s still going to be at least affiliated with, if not full-on writing for, BP after this announcement (which is officially due tomorrow). His farewell post on The Juice says:
“You’ll still find me at Baseball Prospectus, Mind and Muscle, Total Texas Baseball, and soon, a couple new places, ones I think you’ll like.”
Doesn’t mean we’ll see a daily column anymore, but it should still be something.
I just hope the ESPN deal isn’t for another ATH clone, where people get paid to scream at each other, until the victor is determined purely by decibel levels.