Statistics

Heater Magazine – Home

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Issue No. 1 2007

Looking for batting order information for Matt Murton and Cliff Floyd earlier today I remembered that Heater Magazine has such stuff. I nipped over to www.heatermagazine.com, downloaded the giant weekly compendium of stats, charts, baseball writing, more charts, graphs, lists and more charts and found exactly what I was looking for. Plus the writing of this year’s Guide rookies, Craig Brown and Jeff Sackman, and the always excellent Dave Studeman and Deric McCamey.

There’s also a Saturday supplement. This is what Baseball Weekly might have done with their stat pages, but instead John Burnson put it together. It’s cheap. Just $19 samoleans for the whole season.

The only problem is that all the information really makes me want to have one of those 30″ Apple CinemaDisplays on my desk. But even without it, this is one useful bunch of baseball/fantasy information.

Ps. I don’t make any money on this. It’s just highly recommended.

Last Patton $ on Disk 2007 Update is Live

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Ask Rotoman News

For those who have been tracking the P$oD07 updates all spring, the final one was posted last night. It includes the Patton software, merge files for those looking for updated bid prices from Alex Patton, Rotoman, and Mike Fenger, my latest (and last) projections for the year, and text lists and an Excel file for those who simply want the stuff.

Thanks to all of this year ‘s and future customers. May you kick butt all season long.

Patton $ on Disk 2007 March 29 Update is Live

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The Prices are updated

If you’re looking for a cheat sheet with Alex Patton’s and my updated 4×4 prices, as well Mike Fenger’s 5×5 prices, along with my projections, updated through Thursday, at a price, click this link. You also get Alex’s excellent roto evaluation software, though you probably won’t want to tackle learning the software if your auction is this weekend.

Enth.com

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a baseball stats database and search engine

I received a press release today about enth.com, another database of baseball stats since 1871. The interesting things they’ve got going:

They’ll have daily updates with inseason stats from Stats Inc., and

They have developed a natural language query to get at the data.

Which means you can ask Which player hit the most Home Runs in 2006 and played more than 20 games at shortstop, and get a list of the top 10. The problem right now is if you ask the same question but substitute 2003 in the query you get no answer.

But that’s what beta software is for. Will this prove to be a better approach than those used at baseball-reference.com and baseballmusings.com? I think I’m always going to prefer a forms based system, but I’m not ruling out the possibility. And it’s always great to see smart people giving us a chance to explore new systems.

Good luck, enth.com.

Same Pitchers, Different Stats

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Same Pitchers Different Stats 2006

This is an excel file about 100K.

We’ve run this chart in the Guide in the past, when we’ve had an open page, and I had a request from a reader that I post it. Here’s what the caption said in the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2005:

ERA and Ratio do a decent job of describing what a pitcher did, but not necessarily everything about how well they did. While putting together the magazine we consistently look at the BB/9, K/9, and HR/9 metrics. These tell us how well a pitcher kept runners off base, got outs without the ball being put into play, and kept the ball in the park. These pitchers are ranked by their relative effectiveness in these three measures last year, from best to worst.

The other two columns show the opponents batting average against a pitcher on balls in play (HR and strikeouts are removed), and for all at bats. We’re less sure what to do with these, though a high AVG-BIP is thought to indicate that the pitcher had some bad luck. Have fun.

Looking at the results, it’s clear that comparisons between starters and relievers don’t have much validity. And with two 100 IP starters near the top of the chart, workload probably plays a part there, too.

Still, if Ben Sheets can stay healthy he clearly has his effectiveness back. He’s not going to be cheap but he could be a bargain.

Patton $ on Disk 2007 is now available

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www.askrotoman.com

For those who swear by it, the release of POD07 is a big day. We’ve been squashing some bugs the past week, as it were, and everything seems to be working okay now. So, if you want the software that has my projections, Alex Patton’s and my 4×4 bid prices (actually mine aren’t in yet, but they will be by the March 1 update at the latest) and Mike Fenger’s 5×5 bids, lightning fast operation and a myriad of ways to incorporate your own ideas into the mix with ours, now is the time.

There will be updates on March 1, 15, 22, 29 and April 5. Getting all the projections and bids balanced to league budgets and up to date is a constant project for us, and the data develops as spring training progresses.

I encourage you to visit the discussion board over at alexpatton.com, to ask users about the software and your expected uses of it.