Viva El Birdos (Free subscription) | yesterday
November 18, 2009 - St. Louis sportswriter Jeff Gordon reacts to the news that both Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright were passed over for the Cy Young award in favor of 15 game winner Tim Linececum. View full size photo » before i get into discussion, i would like to say that I do not believe that the bullpen is the biggest issue for the cards in 2010. last season, there was much kvetching...
The Hardball Times (Free subscription) | yesterday
Bill James has a couple of interesting articles up on his subscription site . The first one quickly chronicles the history and inexorable rise of the strikeout. To sum up: "Strikeout rates have increased in the majors in every decade since 1920, except for the 1970s." The strikeout has gained ground steadily for many, many years for two fundamental reasons: strikeouts are good things for...
Sliding Into Home (Free subscription) | yesterday
- Joe Girardi may not have won AL manager of the year but he was able to snag a couple other awards. Girardi was named the March of Dimes Sportsman of the Year and will be honored at the 26th annual March of Dimes luncheon on December 2nd. Venus Williams was named sportswoman of the year. - The New York Knicks also named Girardi the winner of the Sweetwater Clifton “City Spirit” Award for...
VDARE.com: Blog Articles (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
In the 1970s and 1980s, Bill James put a lot of effort into predicting how well young players would do. In 1988, he summed up 15 things he’d learned, and three of them related to forecasting young players’ development: Minor league batting statistics will predict major league batting performance with essentially the same reliability as previous [...]
The Hardball Times (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
In the 2010 Hardball Times Baseball Annual, Bill James took a look at predicting whether a player will do better or worse in 2011. To read the article in its entirety, ACTA Sports (the publisher of the Annual) has made it available as a PDF here . The gist of the article is the idea of taking as many different indicators of performance as possible and fusing them into one list of hitters and pitchers...
Red Reporter (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
38. Miller Huggins Played as Red Primary Position Career Rank Peak Rank Prime Rank 1904-1909 2B 50 34 26 Percent Breakdown of Value Best Season Best player on Reds Hit Field Pitch 1905 Never 75% 25% 0% Awards/Honors as a Red Leading the League On the Reds Leaderboard Inducted to Hall of Fame – 1964 Walks – 1905, 1907 Singles – 1906 -11th in career sacrifice hits -20th in career walks...
FishStripes (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
This might seem like a far-fetched idea, but I'm sure there were at least a few people who were disappointed when The Bonifacio Experiment ™ finally ended last season. You know, like... maybe some of the members of Emilio's immediate family. If you were one of those three people, our friend JCR at the Sun Sentinel has dug deep into the Bill James Handbook to find a reason for you to be filled...
True Blue LA (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
More photos » by Gus Ruelas - AP "Dude, we're so alike! Our career similarity score is 934, which is my seventh-best comparison and your tenth-best!" - Matt Kemp on discovering Similarity Scores (AP Photo/Gus Ruelas) Browse more photos » Before there were such things as CHONE, Pecota, and Bill James' annual projection for players, there was a charming little thing called Similarity...
Pinstripe Alley (Free subscription) | 18/11/2009
More photos » by Jae C. Hong - AP Browse more photos » I know we discussed it ad nauseum during the playoffs, but I have to mention one last thing about video review (probably the last time before next season). Instant replay/replay review/video review, whatever you want to call it, it's been a success. It's been around for a little more than a season (beginning in September of 2008), and...
Another Cubs Blog (Free subscription) | 18/11/2009
I’m off to bed soon so I’m going to wait to explain this until tomorrow. I just wanted to put this up. Bill James came up with a method to predict whether or not a player who had 400 or more PA’s in a season would be at least as good the following season. This was published in The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010. High scores are better, but all of these correspond to a percentage...
Bluebird Banter (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
The nice people at ACTA Sports sent me a copy of the Bill James Handbook . Baseball books are my favorite thing in the world. Free ones are better yet. The main part of the book is the career register that gives career stats for every batter and pitcher that played last season. It also has fielding stats and the Fielding Bible voting. One of the interesting bit they have is a listing of what each player...
True Blue LA (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
More photos » by Matt Slocum - AP Andre Ethier and Manny Ramirez join fellow outfielder Matt Kemp as the only Dodgers projected by CHONE to have an OPS of .800 or above in 2010. Browse more photos » Last month we looked at the projections from the 2010 Bill James Handbook . Now, the second set of projections are in, from Sean Smith of the wonderful blog Anaheim Angels All The Way . His...
Lone Star Ball (Free subscription) | 16/11/2009
More photos » by Mike Fuentes - AP about 1 month ago: Texas Ranges' Elvis Andrus, right, slides safely home against Tampa Bay Rays' Gregg Zaun in the fifth inning of a baseball game in Arlington, Texas, on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009. (AP Photo/Mike Fuentes) Browse more photos » I've been reading Bill James' Historical Baseball Abstract recently, and something that caught my eye... He discusses,...
Gaslamp Ball (Free subscription) | 16/11/2009
More photos » by Lenny Ignelzi - AP You want to know how Heath Bell lost so much body mass? It be called Wii Fit Plus. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi) Browse more photos » I've been sitting on the rest of these projections for the Padres because it's a pain in the ass to transcribe the PDF over to a table in HTML. Rather than do that, I'll just upload the set of projections from the Bill James...
River Ave. Blues (Free subscription) | 16/11/2009
Projection season is upon us, folks. Bill James’ 2010 projections have already been posted on individual player pages at FanGraphs, and CHONE’s batter projections hit the interwebs yesterday. Instead of talking about projected offense today, I’m going to change gears and focus on projected defense. Jeff Zimmerman at Beyond the Box Score created weighted UZR [...] Post from: River...
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