Quashing a Rumor

It appears that I may have started a rumor.

Catching up on my reading, I discovered that DrDetecto posted an entry in the SportSpot.Net Mariner's page summarizing my comments on a USS Mariner thread. The topic headline reads:

Mariners Scouts ASSIGNED to Read Us?, No wonder they're hot this winter ;-)

The Mariner Optimist picked up on this last week, too (where I came across the DrDetecto post initially):

And it sounds like Bill Bavasi not only listens to scouts and sabermetricians, but he reads the M's blogosphere too.

To this I respond:

The only person affiliated in any way with the M's professionally who I can say with absolute confidence that he/she reads the M's blogs is Seattle PI M's Beatwriter John Hickey.

The only reason I even know this for sure is because I directly asked him:

Thursday, Feb. 10 · 12:38 p.m. PT

Paul M. (Oly, WA): Considering the sheer number of M's blogs in particular (especially with authors uninhibited by red-penned editors and maniacal deadlines) and their rapidly increasing readership, do you consider blogs competition, or do you look at them merely as one more potential source of information? Certainly as a reporter, they're probably less of a concern for you than they might be for an opinion columnist, but I'm still curious as to your perspective on the blogs, and how much attention you pay to them. Thanks!

John Hickey: Hi Paul, Interesting question. I am an on-again, off-again reader of blogs. The Mariners have a fanatical following among bloggers, and these are people who know their stuff. Do they drain readers away from the P-I? I don't know the answer to that. I do believe that a reporter (me, for example), who is on the ground for all of spring training and for most of 162 games with the team has insights that the bloggers can't match. On the other hand, the bloggers have a way of asking questions that sometimes slip through the cracks (and having ready answers for them, too). I think that blogs will play and increasingly big role as fans look to have their thirst for information quenched.

In no way shape or form was I saying in my USS Mariner comments (copied/pasted from one of my earlier blog entries) that Bill Bavasi actually reads the blogs. As I responded to the Mariner Optimist: I suppose it would be hard to spend much time on the Internet without reading a baseball blog or two, but he never directly said anything about reading blogs. I take his comments as that he spends a little time reading local sports beat writers (writing both for Seattle and for other teams) on the Internet and that he actually expects his scouts to do the same.

Let's hope this "rumor" doesn't end up on Fox Sports' web site :-)