Welcome to Bullpen by Committee, a blog where we plan on tackling topics including, but not limited to, baseball, baseball analytics, other sports topics, and sports book reviews.
Bullpen by Committee is run by:
Craig Kornacki
Craig Kornacki has enjoyed playing sports since he was a wee little tyke playing wiffle ball in the front yard. He has participated in fantasy sports leagues, especially baseball, for several years. Craig still holds out hope that Buffalo can get an MLB franchise, but will continue to enjoy America’s pasttime even if does not happen. Craig is an avid book reader and will be writing mainly book reviews for the site.
Chris Schreiner
Chris Schreiner abandoned his athletic career ambitions around the time he started to shave thanks to a lack of speed, hand-eye coordination, and the lack of ability to hit a curveball or a fastball. Instead he channeled that into a love of baseball simulations and fantasy baseball, starting with MicroLeague Baseball on floppy disks in the ‘80s.
He began playing fantasy baseball back in 1987 after reading Glen Waggoner and Robert Sklar’s “Rotisserie League Baseball” and with the exception of a few years around college and grad school still plays in the same league.
This passion led him to go into college as a math major to pursue sabermetrics but not seeing a clear path at the time (and despising differential equations) turned to psychology. But he’s never lost his love for the numbers behind the game of baseball.
Steve Pierpaoli
You probably remember Steve from his 1984 MVP season playing second base for Hills Department Stores. Maybe you heard about his inside-the-park grand slam against Dairy Queen that season, or his solo blast against the vaunted Grease Monkeys in a 21-1 loss? (Perhaps the Lancaster Bee archives are available online).
Alas, Steve peaked athletically as a 10-year old – the aptitude did not match the enthusiasm. So Steve diverted his fascination to the “numbers” of baseball. His proudest pre-teen accomplishment was simulating a 10-team league using the Statis Pro board game (a much superior cousin of Strat-O-Matic). Games were carefully scored in pencil on lined loose leaf, and a typewritten (look it up, kids) summary of stats was provided to his friends. By high school, Steve evolved to use modern technology – he spent math class figuring out that the random number generator function of his Texas Instruments graphing calculator could be used to create a poor man’s simulator. Unrelated, Steve did not fair well in calculus.
Today, Steve participates in a bragging-right fantasy baseball league (you probably recall his 2006 championship). He wants to grow up to be one of those part-engaging writers-part-insightful economists, somehow blending the art and science of baseball. To Steve, the sport offers something new from each unique vantage point: It’s measured and exacting and can be endlessly quantified – yet these molecules of minutia form the building blocks of baseball stories and characters and legend (Is this guy serious – who writes this stuff?).