skyking162

I finally made the plunge — this blog has its own URL (skyking162.com, strangely enough) and I had some fun doing a re-design (thanks, Tom). Yes, I’m still a fan of orange and green, but in a bold move I also added some purple — check out the highly functional footer.

Make sure to change your RSS Feed, although if you’re reading this in an RSS Reader, you should be good to go. The feed link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/skyking162, and you can also subscribe by email at the top of the right sidebar.

I always like receiving email, so send your thoughts on the re-design or baseball in general to skyking162@gmail.com

Have a good one. Go Rays.

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This was a high-quality, medium-quantity week. My favorite articles were about…

… how the Tampa Bay Rays could improve their team by trading Carl Crawford.

… the fact that the wrong member of the overhyped 20-20-20-20 club is a 2007 MVP candidate. Bonus points if you understood the Ace Ventura reference in the title.

… the White Sox and their suckitude. I’ve already found some flaws in the numbers I used, but the general idea holds.

… how the increase in homeruns over the past twenty years was a self-perpetuating cycle. There’s even a cool flowchart diagram!

… a quiz I found in my favorite magazine about how to tell if your favorite player is under- or over-rated. This one got the site a whole lot of traffic, and it’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve written in a while. Fun, but dumb.

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Another solid week of posting in the books. There’s one article I’m particularly happy with — explaining exactly why Matt Holliday does deserve a penalty for playing home games at Coors. Why? Because park factors in an MVP discussion are not answering a “what-if” question. They are there to put the player’s performance into the proper context. Hitting .340 as a Rockie is just as valuable as hitting .315 for a team playing in a more neutral home park. Read the full article for a step-by-step walk-through of the issue.

Also check out…

• …why David Ortiz’s 2007 was not a down year and was, in fact, the best season of his career.
• …the final 2007 Pythagorean standings. There are some surprising results, such as the Braves “winning” the NL East, the Rockies as the best NL team, and the White Sox bringing up the rear.
• …why Jimmy Rollins deserves to be docked significant credit for making so many outs.
• …my World Series predictions.
• …the winners of the 2007 Rafael Palmeiro Gold Glove Awards. Based on Justin’s THT +/- fielding stat, these are the best fielders with a minimum of 28 games played.

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If you have your own blog (baseball-related or not) and are looking for more traffic, check out Blogrush. If you don’t care about such a thing, you can stop reading right now. Here’s how Blogrush works:

1. Sign up.
2. Add the code snippet to your blog, displaying five links to other related blogs. (My widget currently appears at the bottom of the sidebar.)
3. For every impression of the widget on your blog, you’ll get a link on somebody else’s blog.
4. Refer more people to sign up and get credit for some of their page impressions. I think you get some credit for your referrals’ referrals, too.

I signed up with Blogrush almost a week ago and about 10% of my measly traffic has come through the service since then. Not bad at all. If it continues to work, I’ll keep it around.

Go sign up.

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In case you haven’t read the awesome Brad Penny article yet, you can check it out over at The Hardball Times. Starting today, the Daily Graphings I write for FanGraphs.com will be syndicated at The Hardball Times. David’s articles have been appearing both places since last year and now mine get to join the fun.

Stay tuned for the dissection of American League teams, 2005 vs. 2006. (Hint: the Tigers are a lot better this year.)

Popularity: 3% [?]