Lots of fun stuff to read this week:
Yes, sometimes they are just talking about where to grab a nice piece of steak.
Dave Cameron did a fantastic job (yet again) summarizing the performances of the Mariners’ position players in 2007. Part one tackles offense and position adjustments, while part two tackles fielding. This comment is a fun and brilliantly helpful explanation of position adjustments. I’m sure I’ll be quoting it in a full blog post one of these days.
For all you volleyball fans out there, your search for statistical analysis of the sport is over. Check out VolleyMetrics.
I’m not much for history, even baseball history, but Steve Treder wrote an awesome article for The Hardball Times about Mel Ott’s forgotten legacy. Ott had more career Win Shares than Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, and Mike Schmidt.
Short and sweet: Pudge Rodriguez walked 9 times in 2007.
Jacob (of the VegasWatch blog) put together a model to predict the MVP winner, similar to Bill James’ Cy Young toy. I love stuff like this because it points out how completely goofy major awards voting is. If this is how voters think, why do we care about the award:
RBIs — If your team makes the playoffs, each RBI is worth 0.84 points; if not, you only get 0.55.
Tango posted an analysis of how the Diamondbacks outperformed their Pythagorean record by using WPA and leverage. To summarize, the hitters were 5.7 wins on the clutch side, the starters .9 wins un-clutchy, and the relievers 4.0 wins clutchy. There’s certainly some skill to leveraging your bullpen, but those 5.7 offensive wins are probably mostly luck.
Humbug Journal penned a sonnet about parity in baseball.
MetsBlog presented some quotes of an Omar Minaya interview shortly after the Mets lost the NL East. I like this one:
I have always believed that you make change if it makes sense, not just changes for the sake of making changes?To me, we have the nucleous?We?re going to sit down and evaluate those things and if it means we need to make major changes we will make them.
Justin’s THT+/- fielding numbers have been updated through the end of the season. They’re certainly not perfect (definitely some issues with OF defense), but they’re about as good as you’re going to find from an open-source, non-play-by-play fielding analysis.
Here’s a link that’s not baseball-related, but is still fascinating. Hany Farid is a Dartmouth professor and leader in the developing field of digital forensics, which attempts to determine if and how digital photographs have been manipulated. Take that, National Enquirer. (Thanks, Ari.)
LA Snark posted their top 101 baseball blogs. You have time to do some reading, right?
The 2007 results of the Fans Scouting Report are in (well, without any analysis). Fans ranked each player in seven skills, without regard to position.
Mets fans, stop reading now. WasWatching tried to start a discussion of Mets jokes about choking down the stretch. Like this:
How many Mets players does it take to do the laundry? One. However, if there is any folding to do, then all twenty-five show up.
Brian Gunn gives a great run-down of Walt Jocketty’s strengths (making killer trades) and weakness (no farm system) at MLB Trade Rumors.
viva el birdos has an email interview with Jeff Luhnow, a Cardinals executive.
Squawking Baseball interviewed my favorite manager, Manny Acta.
PITCH f/x is all the rage. Here’s some more info about it, from what it is to how it’s used.
If you’re a Padres fan, check out Geoff Young’s year-end review of his pre-season predictions. It’s nice to see people owning up like that.
The Mockingbird points out that Russ Adams was a fantastic September call-up — for the second time in his career.
Ever wanted to take a cross-country tour of all the MLB ballparks, but didn’t have the time or money? Here you go.
Finally, if you like voting (and who doesn’t?), go vote in the best internet baseball poll and show the BBWAA who’s boss.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Share This
Sky is a baseball fan and racket sport afficianado living in upstate NY. His favorite color is orange and is just about ready to give up on his life-long dream to become the next Magnus ver Magnuson (World's Strongest Man). His favorite baseball teams are the Yankees and Red Sox, proving that there's hope in the Middle East.