An Apology to Keith Law

I’m an idiot.
Friday, while having a bit of down time at work, I went to the Brewers’ area of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal website, and found Tom Haudricourt’s post on ESPN’s Top 100 prospects, in which Haudricourt noted that Law had ranked outfielder Matt LaPorta as the 37th best prospect in the country, and pitcher Manny Parra as the 41st best prospect.
In my haste, I posted my uneducated opinion, starting my reply with what I meant to be a tongue-in-cheek start. Needless to say, one of Mr. Law’s colleagues had e-mailed me informing me that this was in somewhat bad form. Therefore:
I apologize to Keith Law for my disparaging comment.
Keith, first, thank you for your work. Keith is a bonafide journalist who actually gets paid to study baseball (note: I’m jealous)…here is the introduction Keith wrote about his rankings:

I now present to you the ESPN Scouts Inc. Top 100 Prospects Ranking for 2008. To prepare this list, I’ve re-read my scouting reports, watched some old draft videos and most importantly, I’ve ignored team officials who lobbied for their players.

Players who have lost their rookie eligibility are not eligible for this list, nor are players coming over from either of the major Japanese leagues; while they’re rookies for the purpose of the Rookie of the Year awards, they’re not “prospects” in any sense of the term. I consider a number of factors when ranking prospects, including ceiling, probability, expected time to reach the majors and expected time to become contributors in the majors, but I do not consider factors like whether the player has a place to play in his current organization, or whether his big league club’s home park is friendly or unfriendly for him, although I may mention such things in the comments. Unlike last year’s list, I’ve expanded the scope to include players with little or no pro experience.

As anyone can see, Mr. Law has spent far, far more time learning and understanding players than I could ever dream of doing. Again, thank you for your work in making baseball a better sport. To lend even greater creedence to his rankings, Haudricourt noted in another post that Baseball Prospectus also ranked LaPorta ahead of Parra (again, I hastily commented my opinion, and sincerely hope that I did not insult anyone at BP).
As for me, I cannot offer any solid defense, other than I generally have low regards for bloggers–myself included–because anyone with a computer can post their half-baked opinions on the internet. While I try to make my posts interesting, entertaining, and informing, I have no delusions that I am anywhere close to being an accomplished journalist such as Mr. Law, and I ask anyone that reads this to please, please, take the words of true, accomplished journalists such as Keith Law over the banal musings of an old fart such as myself.