SI did a poll to pick the most popular team blogs as part of their season preview, and since my favorite sox blog (one of four chosen for the initial poll) has been subsequently dropped from the SI team page, i thought i'd write a short post on it here, just in case anyone's interested. i have no stake in the site, nothing to gain from it receiving further exposure, etc.

so, the blog is www.soxmachine.com . it's written by a chicago ex-pat living in new york. the site is broken down into different sections, the two most regularly updated being "state of the sox," which includes game wrap-ups and weekly "awards" (i.e. fire-man, gas-can, gold glove & hands of stone, etc.) it's not a live-blog (like south side sox or one of the others does) but the comments section below each game post is usually somewhat active during and post-game. the other section is "sox machine," which includes season trends, player comparisons, and all the other general-interest sox stuff you'd expect, and it now includes minor league round-ups, which is a nice addition since i don't always think to check box scores or baseballcube for that info when i don't "need" it.

exile in wrigleyville (a sox blog by a northsider that i haven't much read) also currently resides @ soxmachine, as well as a "meet the sox" section with projections and details on the 25 - 40 man rosters.

all told, it's a cool site, regularly updated, and has plenty of insight for fans of numbers and laundry alike.

if there are any other sox sites not included in the SI poll that you know of and like, feel free to post em up, cause i'm always looking for stuff to read with my morning (sometimes afternoon, when i skip class, such as today) coffee.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll check it out. Do you also read Scott Reifort (sp?) blog? Pretty interesting and funny in game writing.

if scott reifort does WSI, then not really. it's a difficult page to navigate, kinda cluttered, and of the "big four" (as posed by sports illustrated) i tend to prefer soxmachine. south side sox is a little too "on the ledge" for me, WSI is poorly designed, and the other (i forget what its called) i wasn't even really aware of until the poll.

some other blogs (more general baseball / sport oriented) that i regularly read are:

the hardball times - lots of numbers/stathead stuff, but very well written. it's tough to combine those two traits, as certain writers of BP and other stat-oriented blogs show time and again. THT also does some good work on the business of baseball (i.e. stadium deals, contract evaluations, union vs. ownership, etc.) and interviews with other writers. their yearly annual is a great read, too, and has a lot of unique information that can't be found in the bill james handbook or anywhere else; i haven't tried their yearly "forecaster" but i have a feeling their forecasts are more accurate with regard to peripherals as opposed to dead on numbers. www.thehardballtimes.com

can't stop the bleeding - written by gerard cosloy (co founder of matador records) and david roth (of slate.com), targets mostly poor journalism and "who you crappin?" type of statements nationally. they also have a healthy dose of ire targeted at deadspin, which can't be a bad thing. www.cantstopthebleeding.com

fire joe morgan - a blog started by some friends that grew out of an email list in which they ridiculed certain baseball personalities for their hilarious "insight" into baseball. regular targets include: david eckstein, anyone who says j.d. drew isn't a "ballplayer" and alex rodriguez isn't a "true yankee," and of course, joe morgan and tim mccarver, as well as big-name nat'l journalists (plaschke, shaughnessy, murray chass). the pieces on joe morgan's espn chats are a must-read. www.firejoemorgan.com

mlb4u - a site / blog centered around player contracts and team spending. generally up-to-date facts and figures that are helpful for friendly argument and writing alike. www.mlb4u.com

fangraphs - site and blog dedicated to charting WPA (win probability added) for every game of the season. they've added live charting, as well as historical charting, which is pretty awesome. kinda nerdy, but worth a look. www.fangraphs.com

refierts; http://whitesoxpride.mlblogs.com/


kinda the sox official unofficial blog

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oh, that one. i did a google search for reiferts and was directed to WSI.

i did read reiferts for a while, but there's not a lot to keep me reading, as it's largely based on "scoops" which are kind of irrelevant now that information gets around so quickly. to use an example, knowing that john danks was going to pitch as of friday is something you can find out just as easily in a fantasy league as it is by reading an mlblog.