About

Our original introduction-

     Nobody reads this blog yet, I'm not sure anyone ever will, but I feel we can't start here until some sort of proper introduction takes place. Maybe somebody will find this in the archives once we have tricked  them into reading our thoughts, ramblings and rants.

      The name 'Pitcher's Duel' was chosen because there's two of us: Nils Johnson (yours truly) and Andy Johnson. Despite our common last name, there is no relation. Our blog will have one theme, baseball, and hopefully not ever straying too far from that. Andy and I are both statistically inclined often drawing a lot of our inspiration from The Book by Tom Tango and Baseball Between the Numbers by Baseball Prospectus. However, I don't think we're close-minded to or dismissive of more traditional baseball-speak. I don't want to speak for Andy too much more, so I'll stop there.

      A little bit about myself, first of all, I love baseball. I like other sports too, but baseball is the one year-round constant obsession in my life. I played rec baseball through high school, and a ton of pickup ball down in what we called 'Johnson Field'. I'm a Twins fan by birth, which gave me a decade or so of good times and a year of disappointment in 2011. Now, I'm a 20 year-old Junior at the U of Michigan in Ann Arbor studying cell biology and econ. I don't have any formal writing experience, which I'm sure is pretty obvious just by reading this, but hopefully my work is somewhat readable and improves. You'll get to know me more as the blog continues and evolves.

      I'll do an introduction for Andy, but I'll try to keep it quick and let him expand later. He's just finishing up his Junior year at Bradley University, and will be a Senior in the fall. A few important things, first, he's a damn good pitcher. I went to a lot of games growing up and he regularly dominated high school hitters, which landed him a spot on the Bradley Braves. Andy had Tommy John surgery last fall, and is currently rehabbing, I hope/expect that he will write about that process. Secondly, he knows a ton about baseball. I don't know anyone our age who knows more about the game itself. Lastly, I believe he's a journalism major, so this blog should be right up his alley.

Time to get to work-
Nils