Statistics

Baseball Prospectus Goodie

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Jim Baker’s Column

I stopped my BP subscription a year or so ago, not because I didn’t enjoy the writing of many of the BP guys, and didn’t value their observations, but because it was all getting a little familiar. For free, I’d attend every day, but having to pay made it a little easy to stay away.

I’ve been surprised how few times I’ve felt like I was missing something since. I still read the newsletter and the beginnings of the stories, and I’m still awfully impressed by a lot of the work that goes on at BP, but I end up feeling like I’m already on their page, I don’t need to be hectored about this and that.

But the lede to this story is choice. Or as my friend Fleming Meeks has said, cherce. Jim Baker discovers an orphaned pool of BP stats about teams and their rate of being shut out. What I learned is that the 1981 Blue Jays were shut out 20 percent of the time.

These days that seems pretty much impossible, but things in baseball change. 1981 was the dawn of Rotisserie baseball and baseball’s age of statistics. I have no other point than at this moment I wish I could read the rest of Jim’s story.

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.

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.

Judge: Fantasy leagues allowed to use MLB player names, stats – MLB – Yahoo! Sports

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MLB – Yahoo! Sports

My opinion is that this will was the rational conclusion, and it will also prove to be the best one for the fantasy sports business and the leagues, too. MLB has plenty to sell beyond the stats and names, and they will benefit because the grass roots development of leagues and games won’t be squelched before they start.

Should be: The Indispensible Baseball Musings

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Baseball Musings


DAVID PINTO WROTE: “Update: Jason Marquis is allowed to take a beating for the second time this year. He gives up two hits in the sixth before he comes out of the game. Just to finish his night off, the bullpen allows the runner they inherited from Jason to score. He’s charged with 12 runs. He allowed 14 against the White Sox earlier this season. Almost 30% of the runs Marquis allowed this year came in those two games.”

Pinto has created a baseball news site with fantasy relevance, excellent data tools, and it’s all free. Unless you do the right thing and pony up some cash, if you feel the way I do. I sent money last year and I’m not bragging, it wasn’t really enough. So I’m sending more this year.

Highly recommended.

As for Marquis, he’s killing me. Or Tony LaRussa is. I’d been riding the matchups the last couple of weeks (since the last time he was left in to take a beating) and it’s worked out well, so I didn’t see the spot to dump him. Mercy.