When I'm not writing record reviews or pseudonymous articles for Cat Fancy, I like to peruse baseball blogs. A quick scan of them this morning reinforced something that occurred to me a few years back: When it comes to baseball commentary, I vastly prefer bloggers and web-only writers to their print-journo counterparts. (Unsurprisingly, I don't feel the same way about rock criticism. But that's another post entirely.)

Why? To begin with, pro sports journalism is ridden with lame orthodoxy — the notion, for instance, that a player's toughness, scrappiness or grittiness makes him more valuable than reason, logic or a six-year-old's powers of observation would indicate. Also, I've always liked statistics, and many professional sports journos have about as much use for the right numbers (hint: batting average and a pitcher's win-loss record are both vastly, vastly overrated) as Dick Cheney has for our magazine. Anyway, check out some of my fave baseball blogs/sites and perhaps you'll see what I mean:

• Fire Joe Morgan

• Hardball Times

• Athletics Nation

• Baseball Prospectus

• Deadspin (not strictly baseball-related, still: very good)

Relatedly, I believe that my team — the Detroit Tigers, who've thus far sucked horse gonads — is going to be just fine.