It really is pretty amazing, considering the media attention given to each. But it is what it is, and what it is is a route.

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Why are TV ratings so high for sports right now? A couple theories.

Also, I love this chart — it’s the number of status updates on Facebook during the gold medal hockey game:

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This is really cool. As soon as Google started allowing extensions for the Mac version of Chrome, I mentioned to my friend Mark (who knows nothing about baseball, by the way) how awesome it would be to have an extension that lets you search a bunch of the top baseball sites either at once, or individually. A couple weeks later, it’s done. You can install it here.

Right now, it has Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus, Stat Corner, First Inning, Cot’s, and Minor League Splits. If anybody can think of others Mark should put in, let me know and I’ll relay the message. Also, if you’re looking to build a Chrome extension of your own, Mark can probably help you there too.

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My review of the latest edition of At Bat for the iPhone. Verdict: still worth the money, not a huge upgrade over last year.

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Last week, I tweeted about MLBAM’s $15 price tag for At Bat 2010, saying that even if they sold 5 million copies, that would only result in about $50 million after Apple takes its cut. As it turns out, BAM only sold about 1.2 million last year, when the price was $10. If you do the math, that’s about $8.4 million in revenue.

Now check out the NFL’s new deal with Verizon: $720 million over four years, or about 20 times what MLBAM is doing annually. This despite the fact that the NFL has no presence on the iPhone or Android, except for a DirecTV-branded app that will stream games for subscribers of the NFL’s Sunday Ticket Superfan service.

I have no idea what kind of return Verizon will get on this deal. But you’d have to think there’s some value there, considering the NFL just finished a similar deal with Sprint that paid them $120 million per year. It is, after all, something that AT&T can’t offer on the iPhone.

The question is, would it be worth it for MLB to do something similar to this? Even at the new $15 price tag, MLB would have to sell 17 million copies of At Bat to match the NFL’s revenue — that’s not even remotely realistic. But if MLB offered mobile MLB.tv and Gameday Audio exclusively to one carrier, you’d have to think they’d do better than the $10-$20 million they’ll probably take in this year.

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I don’t think so, but that’s just me.

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In case you guys missed this yesterday, this is a pretty amazing resource for anyone who wants to learn about sabermetrics. It was put together by Steve Slowinski of DRaysBay, and he did a really fantastic job with it. If you’re a beginner, you’re the target demo. If you’re more familiar with advanced stats already, it’ll definitely be a good refresher.

Full disclosure: I’m involved with SocratED, the company behind the software. I think there are a lot of baseball-related courses that people can make with this (pitch f/x, anyone?), so if anybody has any ideas, or if you actually want to build one yourself, get in touch with me at the e-mail address below.

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