Q&A With “Clubhouse Confidential” host Brian Kenny

From Derek Carty at Baseball Prospectus on November 7, 2011:

This weekend, I had a great chat with Brian Kenny, former “SportsCenter” anchor and the soon-to-be-host of the MLB Network’s latest show, “Clubhouse Confidential,” television’s first sabermetrically-slanted baseball program. “Clubhouse Confidential” debuts tonight at 5:30 EST, and I had the chance to talk with Brian ahead of the premiere about his background with sabermetrics, what we should expect from the show, and some other topics. You can check out the press release announcing the show here to get some additional background.

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DC: How much do you keep up with modern sabermetric work that’s being done on the internet at places at Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times and such?
BK: Constantly. Every day. It’s what I love to do. I read both of those sites, I read FanGraphs, I play fantasy baseball, so I’m always looking at player evaluation. Now that I’m with MLB Network, I’ll be watching games every day, and my mind won’t be cluttered with football or basketball or hockey, which is going to be more fun for me than ever before. Basically, I try to read anybody with insight, anybody who is asking the right questions and trying to answer them in a logical way.

DC: Who are some of your favorite people like that?
BK: Peter Gammons is someone who I love to read and who evolved like that into the modern age. He’s actually going to be heavily involved in the show along with people like Joe Sheehan, Rob Neyer, and Vince Gennaro. Basically, I’m looking for interesting people to talk about baseball. We’re going to bring the brainpower onto the show, and I think there’s a real thirst out there for that—especially among the thinking fans who aren’t buying into the old stuff anymore and who are wondering, “What’s a real analytical approach to this?”—while still having fun. It’s not going to be a math class; it’s still baseball, but it’s going to be asking the first question and then, once we have that, moving on to the next question and the next question. How good is C.J. Wilson or Albert Pujols? Let’s not just answer this kind of question in broad strokes, but really try to be specific and come up with a good answer.

Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=15457



Originally published: November 7, 2011. Last Updated: November 7, 2011.