Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted links. Since my Around The Web bookmark folder just passed the 50 page mark, it’s probably time to clean it out. Most of the links are no longer relevant, so I’ll spare you from having to sift through all fifty.
Do you like baseball? Do you like Nintendo? If so, you’ll enjoy this YouTube video.
One Dominican baseball academy has a great way to encourage hitters to make solid contact — threaten the lives of other campers.
Want proof that Padres’ hitters are unfairly deemed powerless? In 2007, they compiled the second-most road homers and the most road doubles. Sure, their road parks don’t include PETCO, but first and second? Wow.
Ross Roley has a fantastic article at Baseball Analysts about teams being way too conservative on the basepaths. For example, with two outs and a runner on second, the proper strategy is to try to score on a single even if the chance of success is as low as 40%. How often do teams succeed? Over 90% of the time.
Do you like baseball? Do you like Meatloaf? If so, you’ll enjoy the most pointless application of retrosheet data ever.
Platoon splits are quoted incessantly. Nate Silver explores how far your need to regress them towards major league averages in order to project future performance. Hint: more for lefties than for righties.
Tim Dierkes has a cool article outlining how the Elias free agent rankings are calculated. Here’s the summary: they’re stupid. Center fielders are thrown in with corner outfielders, first basemen, and DHs. Only infielders are judged on their fielding. Starting pitchers are ranked both on games started and innings pitched, and by both wins and win-loss percentage. The offensive stats of choice are batting average, homeruns, and RBIs. The one thing I like is that the rankings include two years of stats and not just the most recent season.
What does the strike zone actually look like? Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.
Maybe Curt Schilling’s 2008 workout plan should have included some sort of shoulder rehab.
Want more proof that baseball writers are crazy? Jacob models MVP voting and finds that, among other things, RBIs only matter if your team makes the playoffs and runs only matter if you’re a “table-setter”.
Remember that whole fiasco about players whose names start with “K” strike out at a higher rate than any other letter? Well, how’s this for an explanation: K-names are much more prevalent in the past 40 years, when strikeout-rates have sky-rocketed.
Wine-o-metrics or Wino-metrics?
An MLB team was so impressed with Tango’s Fan Scouting Report that they’re backing his foray into “scouting” college baseball players. If you watch D1 baseball, help him out.
How about some football? It’s easy to beat a team three times in one season, as long as you’ve beaten them the first two times. And how about the luckiest NFL teams in 2007? Looks like the Dolphins and Jets won’t be pushovers next year, and the Bucs are for real.
Do you need a good article to introduce your less stathead-savvy friends to the wonders of not making outs, total bases, and (gasp) linear weights? Studes has a good one.
Is baserunning a repeatable skill? Yes. How much does it matter? Really good baserunners are worth about five runs more than average baserunners.
I guess I should end things by explaining the photo of Roger Federer and Pete Sampras at the top of the article. ESPN, take it away.
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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.
February 16th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Thanks for the shout-out. Some great stuff in here. Love the bit on Meatloaf and Elias Rankings (although as you say, the system is ridiculous).
February 17th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I like the baserunning article. My research in beer league softball would tend to support the idea of advancing more aggressively.