peter

Fantasy baseball advice for those who ask.

The Scold

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Michael Sokolove – New York Times

Those of use who love sports have been dealing with the issue of performance enhancing drugs at least since Jim Bouton wrote Ball Four (that would be 1970). This is important because the Dick Pound fueled hysteria over the past few years has actually done some good (there has been plenty of attention paid to figuring out how to implement testing regimens) and some bad (like even when certain athletes test as clean they’re tarred with the PED brush).

In this story (which I believe will be available to NY Times subscribers only come Tuesday or Wednesday) Michael Sokolove profiles Pound, explains why he is the way he is, explains why his quest is quixotic, and does a fair job of laying out the path to the future of sport.

Essentially, people with like chemistry will compete against one another. There will be levels based on chemical compositions and ratios, and if you’re a PED taker or a freak of nature, your actual chemistry is what will matter.

I’m confident to predict that when this comes true, the big money league will be the one in which the athletes run the fastests, jump the farthest, hit the ball hardest. Everything else will be minor league.

HitTracker :: Home run tracking and distance measurement

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HitTracker :: Home run tracking and distance measurement

Greg Rybarczyk, an engineer with an interest in the flight of major league baseballs, has created a rather amazing trove of information about last year’s home runs, including his special formula for determining the actual (he calls it “true”) distance a ball would have flown if it didn’t land above grade in the seats or hit a light standard or the glass wall of a right field dining establishment.

This sort of information is very important when we look at other people trying to track the steroid era or the juiced ball era or what have you based on homer distances.

Greg includes his weather and altitude correctors so that other adjustments can be made.

I’m not really sure how much real value this is going to have in its present form, but I hear that he’s hoping to enter this information for all batted balls in 2007. While that will duplicate at least some of the information that Baseball Info Solutions is keeping, it’s hard to argue that we don’t want multiple sources for what is inevitably less-than-objective data.

We’ll leave it to the next generation to figure out how to get all the data keepers interested in sharing.

But I Regress…

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Dave Studeman — The Hardball Times

I always thought that Regression Analysis took its name from the fact that you start with the outputs and determine by regressing to see how important the inputs are, though I now have no idea whether that’s based on anything but my own magical thinking.

Dave Studeman’s story here is fascinating for the historical content (which has nothing to do with baseball, a little to do with statistics and much to do with other things) and because he does such clear work showing the dynamics of regression to the mean (which may well be the origin of the term) as they pertain to baseball.

At the end he references a story by Chone Smith about player projection which turns out to be an interesting rabbit hole in its own right, but that’s for another time.

Column: Boras is still draining the well

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Yahoo! News

Because of the way I have Word Press set up I lose sight of the site when I blog it. I have to fix that, but for now let me cite (my daughter, by the way, is studying homophones) this story for citing a stat (number of pitchers to average 18 wins per year for seven straight years since 1969) while only giving the answer for six of them. Did the writer do it because the other six would support or undermine his overall argument? Do you think.

I can’t be sure until I figure out who the others are, but I have a strong suspicion.

Marcel 2007

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The World’s Greatest Baseball Performance Projection System

Those of us who spend a lot of time making baseball projections have to tip our cap to Marcel the Projection Monkey. Marcel doesn’t spend that much time, even though time doesn’t mean that much to monkeys.

The point of Marcel the Monkey projections is that most of the information a projection system can contain is available in three year weighted numbers, with factors that adjust for age.

Those of us who make better projections (usually) than Marcel have to be humbled by how close he comes to besting us.

Straight Draft Post Mortem

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Baseball HQ

The link is going to take you to a page that requires a subscription of some sort to baseballHQ.com. I’m going to tell you what Ray Murphy’s straight draft research tells me that’s of interest to all of us: Fantasy teams that finished higher, on average, than other teams in the National Fantasy Baseball Championships had younger players than teams that finished lower. They also had players who had lower reliability scores (Shandler’s system) than other teams.

I’m fairly confident that the whole idea of reliability scores is a crock. Well, not in intent, but as a measurement. Manny Ramirez earns $31-$33 every year, until we decide that’s a reliable benchmark, and then he doesn’t. The problem with all ballplayers is that by the time they can be judged reliable, they’re old enough to become unreliable.

Ray’s conclusion is right, however. You need to stock up on the reliable players, and then take chances when the choice is between a reliable mediocrity and anybody else whose pulse might beat proudly.

I know, you knew that, but seeing the excellent numbers the NFBC throws off really helps. Which is a good reason to become a baseballHQ.com subscriber. For smart fantasy baseball analysis (and lots of it) there’s no better site.

The Official Matsuzaka Prediction Thread

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BBTF’s Newsblog Discussion

Somebody will average these all out, dropping the guy who’s predicting 29 wins (and a 1-0 loss on the last day of the season). I remember that last year around this time we were having similar discussions about Johjima (except we weren’t sure if his last name had an “h” or not). I’ve been working on an updated set of predictions for all players (not just positively valued ones) for a game mlb.com is putting out, and discovered a little too late that I didn’t have a Dice-K projection (he was far from signed when the magazine went to bed). So, here it is:

200 IP, 3.74 ERA, 17 wins, 9 losses, 55 walks, 180 strikeouts, 23 homers, 1.21 WHIP.

That’s a tweener, probably worth about $25 in an AL only league. I think he could be much better, but injury risk and the real chance that he’s not going to dominate would cause me not to chase him. I have him in the magazine at $14, but now that he’s signed and the adrenaline is flowing I’d go to $18 probably. Depending on what we see in spring training.

HUMMIN’ SLOWED BY STRUMMIN’

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Guitar video game hurt Zumaya’s arm

I’ve watched people play this game in Best Buy, and it sure looks like fun. Good to know it wasn’t the 233 100 mph or faster fastballs he threw that did him in.

Athletes’ unbeatable foe

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Credit the Los Angeles Times

Regular visitors know that my problem with anti-steroids and PED rules is that they’re impossible to administer fairly, and fly in the face of the self interest of almost everyone involved (that is, we like extraordinary athletes, athletes like to win, and they are paid to be better than everyone else).

This LA Times series doesn’t convince me of the credibility of all its witnesses, but it clearly shows the problems with the present testing procedures.

Needless to say, if you can’t trust the tests, then what’s the prototcol for?

Eephus

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YouTube

With all the money out there for Japanese players, you would think someone would pay this guy’s posting price. Thanks to Tim.