skyking162

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.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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: 4% [?]

I’m extremely proud to announce that I’m officially a professional baseball writer. (Notice I didn’t say expert baseball writer.)

David Appelman of FanGraphs fame asked me a couple weeks ago to write regularly for his website. I quickly agreed and we’ve finally worked out the details. If you’re not familiar with FanGraphs, it’s an amazing site that provides a bunch of features not found together anywhere else. For example…

• Traditional player stats, plus a bunch of less common batted ball stats, like line drive percentage, homeruns per flyball, and infield hit percentage. Check out Ben Broussard’s stats page.
• Graphs of 10 key stats, presented both as season totals, and 10-game rolling averages from within each season. You can also view the graphs by lefty/right or home/road splits, like Ben Broussard’s isolated power.
• The ability to compare up to three players on the same graph for any of the graph-able stats. You could, for example, compare the OBPs of Ben Broussard, Mark Teixeira, and Travis Hafner over the years. Check out that second graph, where the players’ seasons are lined up according to age.
• Win Probability Added, including TangoTiger’s Leverage Index. That’s right, every game’s Win Probability is graphed, including box scores and individual players’ WPA and LI. On the team page, season stats are compiled. League leaders are coming soon.
• And now, brilliantly written articles by moi. Speed Plots contain quick thoughts about a number of different players, while Daily Graphings (like the first one about my main Man Crush) go more in depth about one player. I may also try my hand at a game of the day column, using WPA.

I’ll still be writing pretty much the same amount at my own blog, since what I’ll be writing for FanGraphs is very player-specific, unlike most of what I’ve been writing about here. So it’s great news for all of you, my loyal fans — you get to read my writing in two locations. Lucky you.

Popularity: 3% [?]