The Philadelphia Daily News has a new Phillies beat writer. And the new writer has launched a new blog.

David Murphy is a local boy who’s worked for the St. Pete Times and Myrtle Beach Sun-News, two very respectable mid-sized rags. His new blog is called High Cheese. So far, Murphy has been a prolific blogger, posting just about everyday. It’s good stuff.

I sent Murphy an email the other day asking if he’d be interested in doing an interview with our site. You may remember another Daily News sports writer, Paul Hagen, gave us an interview back in November. I thought it would be interesting to see how the new guy compared to Hagen, who is pretty old school in his thinking about the game, especially when it comes to MVP voting.

I haven’t heard back from Murphy yet. But if a recent article about Jimmy Rollins is any evidence, he and Hagen have a few things in common.

From High Cheese:

(Rollins is) coming off a year in which he set career highs in hitting (.296), home runs (30), RBI (94) slugging (.531), triples (20), runs (139) and converted 41 of 47 stolen base attempts.

 

Looking back, it is hard to imagine how any one else could have won the MVP trophy against those kind of numbers.

Here at Umpbump, we don’t think it’s that hard to imagine somebody else could have won the MVP. But that’s okay, David. We don’t have to agree on everything. And we’d still love to pick your brain and hear what it’s like covering the Phillies. So when you get a chance, shoot us an email. Let’s talk some baseball!

In case you haven’t been paying attention, Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin is at war with the blogs. And the blogs are winning.

But here’s something the blogosphere has yet to unearth.

In July, the Daily News asked Conlin — “a writer who has covered the game both then and now” — to reflect on what he misses and what he is glad has changed.

We bring you his responses, as well as our snarky comments, Fire Joe Morgan-style.

THREE THINGS I MISS

1. Sitting around with the scouts in media lounges around baseball listening to these rococo poets break down games to their most minuscule points, each wrapped in a rich velour of anecdotal remembrance and apocryphal yarns.

I learned a lot from those scouts. They tought me about the evils of “wishful fan numbers”. Oh, and speaking of wrapping oneself in rich velour, I picked up a few fashion tips, too. Did you know that Hawaiian shirts can be worn pretty much year-round?

2. Day baseball and our old 5 a.m. deadlines, which caused the executive decision of the day: Do I dare risk writing after having dinner with Paul Owens? Or do I write now and miss him ripping, “My little [bleep] shortstop?”

Answer: I didn’t dare risk missing dinner.

3. Being able to buy a player a drink or pick up a dinner check at a time when the major league minimum salary and baseball beat man salary were in the same low-rent ballpark. My first full year on the beat, 1966, I was making a little more than the ML minimum of $10,500. I loved big-timing rookies.

I still love big-timing rookies. And I can do it, too. After all, I’m making ballplayer money for two columns a week! And not 1966 ballplayer money, either. The DN “gave me a generous signing bonus, a quarterly performance bonus and matched the lump sum that would have accompanied the buyout package. They also continued the subsidy of my Florida condo that has been paying the taxes and monthly maintenance since 1987. By law, they had to begin paying me my full pension in 2004, so at age 73 I’m making the top salary at the paper plus collecting the biggest monthly pension check ever paid out.”

THREE THINGS I’M GLAD HAVE CHANGED

1. Not having to take part in the group “one quote serves all” interviews that have become the sorry lot of the baseball beat writer.

In fact, I’ve stopped doing any reporting whatsoever!

2. Not having to write my stories and columns on an Olivetti portable with an “i” key that sticks … Then sending the story via a 30-pound fax machine that was called a “Telecopier” at 6 minutes a page. They were fragile and you weren’t supposed to check them with luggage, but everybody did, so they didn’t have to risk a hernia carrying them a half-mile to the gate. It was fun to see them come careening down the baggage-claim carousel chute, hit the railing and fly open in a shower of cheap plastic fittings. After that came the Radio Shack 100s holding one 25-inch story that would be lost forever if you accidentally got unplugged, as there was no memory in the early ones.

Now I write my stories on an Apple MacBook Pro, but the “i” key still sticks. What, they can come up with portable music players that work under water but they can’t invent a barbecue sauce-proof keyboard?

3. Google, instead of having some harassed clerk look up an obscure fact in a library where any clips worth reading had vanished years before. They were the days when the morgue really was …

… was … umm, I’m sorry. My heart stopped for a couple of seconds there. It does that on occassion. Where was I?

We thought we had a pretty good story when, earlier this week, Philadelphia Daily News baseball writer and former BWAA president Paul Hagen agreed to do an interview with our site.

But it turns out we went after the wrong Daily News writer. Because when it comes to providing good copy, columnist Bill Conlin has no peer.

Yesterday, Conlin wrote a column about why Jimmy Rollins deserved the NL MVP Award. It was what we in the industry call a “blow job piece”. And it was, by any measure, pretty stupid.

Not long after its publication, Fire Joe Morgan took the bait and picked Conlin’s column apart, sentence by moronic sentence.

But today, the real fun has begun. Crashburn Alley emailed Conlin and very politely asked why he thinks Rollins deserved the MVP more than Mets 3B David Wright. And this is what Conlin had to say:

Know what, pal? Bash this. . .Tell your bloggers, my career against theirs. . .

And that was just the beginning. Conlin has (so far) emailed Crashburn three times. And each email is better than the last. You can read them all here.

You could interpret Conlin’s emails as just one guy venting his mounting frustration with the blogosphere. But I think it’s more than that.

I think Conlin’s angry (and often confused) words reveal a guy who is fighting a losing battle to remain relevant. Baseball and the way we evaluate players is changing. Conlin and many other baseball writers no longer speak the language.

But don’t shed any tears for Conlin, or any other baseball writer for that matter. It’s not like they’re the only journalists who have to deal with change. The entire field of journalism is in flux. Reporters are now being asked to carry video cameras. They have to learn to write for the web. They have to learn how to record and edit podcasts.

When Conlin says calls sabermetrics “wishful fan numbers that bear no semblance to reality”, I see a guy who has taken a look at his changing profession and at the changing game of baseball and said, “Screw this. I’m too old to change.”

And if the Daily News wants to continue to employ a guy who long ago stopped doing any meaningful reporting, a guy who doesn’t want to grow as a journalist, a guy who turns a blind eye to the changes going on all around him, it’s their funeral.

Tomorrow, MLB will announce the winner of the National League MVP Award. Candidates include Chipper Jones, Jimmy Rollins, David Wright, Prince Fielder and Matt Holliday.

A while back Paul and I debated who should win the award and he ultimately convinced me that David Wright is the clear choice.

I emailed that post to Philadelphia Daily News baseball writer Paul Hagen, who is the former head of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and asked him what he thought of Wright’s candidacy. Here’s what he had to say:

Umpbump: Like most Phillies fans I’m hoping Jimmy Rollins will win the NL MVP, while I fully expect Matt Holliday will win. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I was convinced that David Wright should win. What do you think of David Wright for NL MVP?

PH: I think an argument can be made for David Wright. However, I have to say that in the years I vote, I put a lot of emphasis on the word “Valuable.” To me, that connotes intangibles. I think that’s what differentiates the MVP from, say, a “Player of the Year” award. And it would be hard for me to find that much value in a player who was part of one of the most epic collapses in baseball history.

Umpbump: See, that’s funny. We’ve been having a long debate about the value of intangibles in the comments section of our site this week. Sarah, who is a columnist for the Boston Metro, thinks intangibles are extremely important. Paul and Nick, who are sabermetrics guys, think intangibles can’t be measured and therefore we shouldn’t worry about them.

Here’s what Nick had to say about intangibles:

This is different from saying that “leadership” as a skill doesn’t exist. I think we all have some idea that these intangibles *do* exist and *are* worth something. But I suspect that what they are worth is far far less than what the media types who KNOW because they’ve BEEN IN THE LOCKER ROOM say it is. It’s probably like clutch hitting - maybe it makes like a 1 or 2 percent contribution to winning or something, the rest of which is comprised of actually getting it done on the actual field.

Because, look, if “team chemistry” is as valuable as you columnists all say it is, then how do we account for all the teams that won World Series but totally hated each other? How do we account for all the teams that loved each other and loved their manager, but never won? How do we account for the fact that, even in the middle of the hottest hot streak, or the coldest cold streak, a player’s chance of getting a hit in his next at bat is pretty much *exactly* equal to his career batting average?

You can read the rest of Sarah and Nick’s thoughts in the comments section of this post.

As for Wright and his team’s collapse, I used to feel the same way. In fact, I wrote:

Believe me, if the MLB had an award for sabermetric achievement, I would support David Wright’s candidacy wholeheartedly. But how valuable can you be when you’re team implodes spectacularly when the games matter most?

But, as Umpbump Paul points out, you can’t blame Wright for the Mets’ failures. He was dominant down the stretch:

You simply can’t hold it against David Wright that the Mets fell apart. Did you know that he had a .360 AVG, .429 OBP, .602 SLG, 1.034 OPS in the month of September even though the team’s season was going down the tubes? Didn’t he perform “when it counted”?

I gotta say, I think Umpbump Paul is correct. As much as I’d like to see Rollins win, if I’m being honest I vote for Wright.

PH: That’s what makes it such a great debate. I still kind of hold to the idea that you can’t be that valuable, no matter what your individual contributions, if your team is falling apart around you. But I certainly understand the other argument.

Umpbump: I’m not sure that a total lack of consensus about the meaning of “valuable” makes it a great debate. I think we can have a great debate about the value of the save, or the merits of “small ball”. But arguing about who is the most valuable when nobody can agree what “valuable” means reminds me of when I used to talk to a friend of mine who was color blind. We’d be talking about the same thing, but seeing it differently.

I’d be happy to see MLB get rid of the MVP award and give out a Player of the Year Award, instead.

PH: When I was president of the Baseball Writers Association, I proposed that we add a Player of the Year Award. My thought was that it wouldbe the position player’s equivalent of the Cy Young, could honor a player who has a great year for a bad team and would also open up the MVP more for pitchers. It got no support.

As for doing away with the MVP, I disagree. I also think that if you can enjoy a debate about the value of a save or the value of small ball, you can certainly debate who was the most valuable player. But that’s just me.

Umpbump: Fair enough. We’ll agree to disagree. One last question: do you read blogs? And if so, which ones?

PH: As for blogs, I frankly don’t make a point of finding them. If I run across one or somebody brings one to my attention, of course I’ll read it.

UPDATE

Umpbump: Jimmy Rollins won the NL MVP. Who did you vote for?

PH: My top four, as I recall, were Rollins, Holliday, Fielder, Chipper Jones.

Umpbump: No David Wright?

PH: David Wright was not in the upper half. If it had been the Player of the Year Award, he wold have been.