I am too young to have followed Gary Carter. I never met him, never read any books about him, and I can’t claim to have any specific connection with him. I knew he was a great ballplayer and somewhat of an iconic figure, but up until yesterday, that’s around where my knowledge stopped and began.

So I’m not about to attempt to write an obituary for Carter; if that’s what you’re looking for, there are numerous touching obits out there. I can’t stop reading them myself, and I recommend you at least read one in remembrance of Carter.

I suppose I could use this space to do a career retrospective. To look at how Carter stacks up against other all-time great player. To celebrate some of the finer moments of his career. Matt Klaassen had one of these earlier today, but for some reason, I’m feeling very un-FanGraphs-y right now.

We spend a lot of time here focusing on facts. Statistics. Data. Scouting reports. Things that can help us better evaluate players and teams, and make judgement calls about how they will do in the future, if they belong in the Hall of Fame, etc etc. We analyse, we parse, we dissect. Whether our motivation is for improving our fantasy baseball skills, becoming a more knowledgeable fan, or gaining a more pure understanding about this childish game, we’re all here searching for a higher Truth.

But on moments like this, statistics get thrown out the window. Heck, baseball gets thrown out the window. And it’s in these sort of moments where I’m reminded why I first started following baseball to begin with.

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It’s about time.

Although it’s only been a little more than a week since the A.J. Burnett coverage started, it feels like it has just gone on and on. Especially in this dead time of baseball news — Brett Tomko signed with the Reds? Ooh! — the movement of any significant player can draw the full attention of baseball obsessives. Thankfully, the Yankees and Pirates finally pulled the trigger Friday. The Yankees will eat a little over half of Burnett’s remaining contract, and in return the Pirates will receive two prospects: right-handed reliever Diego Moreno and outfielder and Name of the Year candidate Exicardo Coyones.

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With Spring Training approaching the Atlanta Braves claim to have put their historic 2011 collapse behind them. Unlike their brethren in collapse — the Boston Red Sox — the Braves made very few changes to the team or baseball organization in the wake of the collapse. Significant off-season transactions were limited to the firing of rookie hitting coach Larry Parrish, trading Derek Lowe to the Indians in a salary dump, and allowing shortstop Alex Gonzalez to leave as a free-agent and replacing him with Jack Wilson (and Tyler Pastornicky, as noted below).

The lack of moves by the Braves stands in contrast to the rest of the N.L. East where all of the other teams made major moves. The Marlins, Phillies, and Nationals all added major pieces through the free-agent market, while the Mets cut payroll and allowed Jose Reyes to move to the Marlins. While claiming to have an open mind about adding players later in the Spring, Braves GM Frank Wren seems to be betting that the Braves will be competitive without a major addition, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Mark Bradley:

If everyone bounces back, then we’ve got a good ballclub that doesn’t have a major need.

In essence, Wren is betting on regression to the mean. Hoping that players who struggled last year will revert to their normal performance level. In 2011 the Braves were generally quite good at preventing run, as there 605 runs allowed was second in the N.L. behind the Phillies. Scoring runs was the problem for the Braves, as they finished 10th in the N.L. with 641 runs scored. At what positions can the Braves expect increased offensive production this year?

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As you undoubtedly know by now, Gary Carter passed away yesterday. The Hall of Fame catcher had an outstanding career as a big part of the star-crossed Montreal Expos’ only playoff team and later a World Champion Mets team. My own first awareness of Carter was one Christmas or birthday long ago, when, although I did not collect baseball cards, someone gave me a pack, and a card bearing the image of a young Gary Carter was included.

Many pieces have been and will be written about Carter in the wake of his passing, pieces that will tell various stories of his memorable on-field exploits. Different people will have their own particular favorite Gary Carter “moment” for which there is no substitute. As a contribution to the ongoing tribute to Carter around the Web, here are Carter’s three biggest regular season hits as according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

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Read the rest of the Best Pitches series: fastball, slider, changeup, curve.

The final installment of our Best Pitches series is “other” pitches, meaning not (four-seam) fastballs, changeups, curveballs or sliders. A couple names pop up on this list who have been on one of the other lists, which exemplifies just how impressive those pitchers actually are. Another pitch is one that every person would expect to be on this list, which has been the case for the past 15 years.

There were a lot of pitches to choose from for this article, but I went to find the nastiest sinkers, cutters, splitters, knuckelballs, or screwballs that I could find. Below is the criteria used in Carson’s original post, along with the four pitches I included. Also, I broke the pitches down between relief pitchers and starters, doing two for each.

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When scouting at the lower levels, examples of “stuff” explaining statistics is pure prospect gold. In the case of Albert Campos, few pitchers have had repertoires which have correlated so closely to statistical strengths and weaknesses from a scouting perspective. As entertaining as a scouts versus statisticians “Moneyball” death match would be, Campos is a prime example of the synergy between the two and how using the numbers to support what the eyes see make for stronger scouting reports.

Video after the jump

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Scott Kazmir will throw for scouts on Friday.

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes.

1. Assorted Headlines
2. Video: Cuban MVP Jose Abreu, Hitting a Homer
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Washington Television

Assorted Headlines
College Baseball Season Starts
If I’m not mistaken, today represents the first day of the college baseball season. In any case, it represents the first edition of Baseball American Aaron Fitt’s Weekend Preview series for 2012. It’s a pretty mammoth work, that, but the weekend’s featured series appear to include 10th-ranked Vanderbilt at No. 2 Stanford and Cal State Fullerton (25) at Florida (1). The former series features Stanford right-hander Mark Appel — making the Friday night start for the Cardinal — and can apparently be viewed on the internets via CBS Sports ULIVE.

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Episode 141
Like important musician Lee Greenwood, Dayn Perry knows that he’s free. Unlike Lee Greenwood, Dayn Perry uses that freedom to morally objectionable ends — like, for example, ruining wholesome baseballing podcasts. Which, this episode of FanGraphs Audio is evidence of that.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 32 min. play time.)

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A year and a half ago, ESPN announced the launch of espnW, a digital brand aimed at women. The initial announcement in October 2010 was greeted by a great deal of skepticism in the blogosphere, from Tom Tango to Julie DiCaro. They feared that the site would patronize ESPN’s female viewers, especially after the ESPN VP in charge of espnW, Laura Gentle, suggested that the site might be about “women finding self-esteem in sports and about getting a pedicure.”

As DiCaro wrote, “Women already HAVE an ESPN. It’s called ESPN.” But espnW may not be as bad as its critics feared. I give you exhibit A: today’s sabermetrics primer, written by Amanda Rykoff (and already given the Tango seal of approval).
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