Outside the Box
Keeping track of Baseball-Reference.com and the stathead world / RSS/Atom FeedThursday, September 8
Monday, March 12
Sean Forman's Blog - Baseball Primer
This is likely the last post here for awhile. I direct you to the exact same weblog, but in a new area. I've also changed the name to something very boring as I also have a column of longer articles and wanted to use the OTB name for that. Visit the site kick the tires etc. There is a welcome message there, so you can leave comments there. The comments are set up a bit differently, but the Albert Belle thread points out that some changes likely needed to be made as the page was nearly a MB of text.
This is likely the last post here for awhile. I direct you to the exact same weblog, but in a new area. I've also changed the name to something very boring as I also have a column of longer articles and wanted to use the OTB name for that. Visit the site kick the tires etc. There is a welcome message there, so you can leave comments there. The comments are set up a bit differently, but the Albert Belle thread points out that some changes likely needed to be made as the page was nearly a MB of text.
Baseball Primer - baseball for the thinking fan
Here you go thinking baseball fans. Our new content site is up and running. Discuss it here, there, or anywhere. We've made an effort to be very open to user comments and feedback, so please send us some and we'll try to be responsive.
By the way, the Albert Belle thread is longest thread I've ever seen on a discussion board resembling this. You guys are on fire!
Here you go thinking baseball fans. Our new content site is up and running. Discuss it here, there, or anywhere. We've made an effort to be very open to user comments and feedback, so please send us some and we'll try to be responsive.
By the way, the Albert Belle thread is longest thread I've ever seen on a discussion board resembling this. You guys are on fire!
Wednesday, March 7
March 7, 2001 - Albert Belle: Hall of Famer?
Keith Woolner runs an interesting comparison of Albert Belle and Kirby Puckett. I particularly agree that personality is what puts Kirby into the Hall of Fame and keeps Belle out. Don Malcolm has an interesting take on why this is the case. Sorry, but you'll have to wait for when BaseballPrimer.com opens up. I'm guessing on Friday.
Keith Woolner runs an interesting comparison of Albert Belle and Kirby Puckett. I particularly agree that personality is what puts Kirby into the Hall of Fame and keeps Belle out. Don Malcolm has an interesting take on why this is the case. Sorry, but you'll have to wait for when BaseballPrimer.com opens up. I'm guessing on Friday.
Tuesday, March 6
Pitcher Usage and Pitcher Abuse Points - Baseball-Reference.com
I've pulled the original article on pitcher abuse points. I am revising it and hope to publish it on Baseballprimer.com later this week. You all will be the first to know. My reasons for pulling the article are given using the link above.
I've pulled the original article on pitcher abuse points. I am revising it and hope to publish it on Baseballprimer.com later this week. You all will be the first to know. My reasons for pulling the article are given using the link above.
Monday, March 5
Baseball-Reference RSS Feed
If you are big-time computer geek, such as myself, you might know what this means, otherwise it has no impact on your life whatsoever. Essentially, if you are a website operator you can now get a feed of the latest posts on Outside the Box.
If you are big-time computer geek, such as myself, you might know what this means, otherwise it has no impact on your life whatsoever. Essentially, if you are a website operator you can now get a feed of the latest posts on Outside the Box.
Sunday, March 4
Slow down in postings
Outside the Box is going to move
within the next week, so you will likely see a slow down in the postings. Probably none until the new site opens: baseballprimer.com. I'm excited about the project. It has a lot of neat things going on and I think you will enjoy it. When tied in with baseball-reference.com and some of the really neat things Jim Furtado is doing it's going to be pretty cool.
Outside the Box is going to move
within the next week, so you will likely see a slow down in the postings. Probably none until the new site opens: baseballprimer.com. I'm excited about the project. It has a lot of neat things going on and I think you will enjoy it. When tied in with baseball-reference.com and some of the really neat things Jim Furtado is doing it's going to be pretty cool.
Saturday, March 3
Pitcher Usage and Pitcher Abuse Points - Baseball-Reference.com
I've spent the whole day working on this article and I finally have it done. You can comment here or you can go to the page and make comments at the end of that page which might be better. I look forward to your comments.
I've spent the whole day working on this article and I finally have it done. You can comment here or you can go to the page and make comments at the end of that page which might be better. I look forward to your comments.
Friday, March 2
Yahoo! Sports - MLB Minnesota at Boston Box Score
Look! Look! A real live spring training box score. Not one of those crappy little line scores that you can't tell anything from. ESPN.com has boxscores as well, but I prefer the simplicity of a plain text box score. MLB.com has changed the box score to a more vertical format. I don't like it. You can't see all the batting stars with a single glance. Give me the side-by-side comparisons.
Look! Look! A real live spring training box score. Not one of those crappy little line scores that you can't tell anything from. ESPN.com has boxscores as well, but I prefer the simplicity of a plain text box score. MLB.com has changed the box score to a more vertical format. I don't like it. You can't see all the batting stars with a single glance. Give me the side-by-side comparisons.
Thursday, March 1
Iowa Farm Report And User Generated Comments
I'm still a tad down about the demise of IFR this off-season, but I would lay even odds that it will return next off-season.
That said, something I've thrown out here a few times is the idea of user snips of info on the players. For instance, users could add some biographical data, for instance, during the 1999 off-season Frank Thomas went through a difficult divorce. Or Mickey Mantle wore the number 7, or any of a number of other things.
Why I'm talking about this is that I want to get as much info as possible, and I want to make it as easy and useable as possible. I think that requiring a simple registration and password protection would be the best approach. This way users could make a series of contributions and you could alter or view all of your comments at once and folks could easily see the sum of the users contributions.
One of the frustrations of the IFR was I had this slick means to user contribution, but received very little user input. I'm sure I was way under 100 legitimate comments. I received a lot of illegitimate stuff like "Hey Brian haven't seen you since HS give me a call sometime." or "Derek, I'm Christy from the party. I thought you were cute, call me so we can hook up sometime." I am not kidding.
I tried offering books and other inducements, but I still had very middling input. I realize minor league players are much lower profile, but I'm just wondering what would be a way to induce more user involvement. $.20/comment? If that works too well, my wife might run me out of the house. I could probably swing a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com every three months. One entry for every comment accepted.
Some of the more popular services that make use of user content are napster which you know about and the CDDB, which houses track times and names for nearly every CD in existence. That's how your computer CD player knows what tracks are on your CD while the CD player in your house doesn't.
All that data is user generated, but the reason the CDDB aggregates data so well is that the user entering the data receives a distinct benefit for entering it, their CD player now displays the tracks from They Might Be Giants' "Severe Tire Damage". It is almost coincidental that the data is uploaded to the CDDB database for everyone else's benefit.
What sort of benefit would a person receive for entering data onto my site other than piece of mind?
Is there a tie-in service that I could provide that people would enjoy? Researchers might like a "locker" to store data, but that is a relatively tiny group of users.
Here is what I'm looking for. For what reason would my brother Chris (a huge Darin Erstad fan) add a comment to Erstad's page mentioning he was a punter for the National Championship Nebraska Cornhuskers in 1994? I'm not sure that a benefit to him exists. I just thought I would throw that out to the list and see if we have any "outside the box" thinkers out there. BTW, any ideas that get mentioned here are for anyone who wants to use and implement them.
I'm still a tad down about the demise of IFR this off-season, but I would lay even odds that it will return next off-season.
That said, something I've thrown out here a few times is the idea of user snips of info on the players. For instance, users could add some biographical data, for instance, during the 1999 off-season Frank Thomas went through a difficult divorce. Or Mickey Mantle wore the number 7, or any of a number of other things.
Why I'm talking about this is that I want to get as much info as possible, and I want to make it as easy and useable as possible. I think that requiring a simple registration and password protection would be the best approach. This way users could make a series of contributions and you could alter or view all of your comments at once and folks could easily see the sum of the users contributions.
One of the frustrations of the IFR was I had this slick means to user contribution, but received very little user input. I'm sure I was way under 100 legitimate comments. I received a lot of illegitimate stuff like "Hey Brian haven't seen you since HS give me a call sometime." or "Derek, I'm Christy from the party. I thought you were cute, call me so we can hook up sometime." I am not kidding.
I tried offering books and other inducements, but I still had very middling input. I realize minor league players are much lower profile, but I'm just wondering what would be a way to induce more user involvement. $.20/comment? If that works too well, my wife might run me out of the house. I could probably swing a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com every three months. One entry for every comment accepted.
Some of the more popular services that make use of user content are napster which you know about and the CDDB, which houses track times and names for nearly every CD in existence. That's how your computer CD player knows what tracks are on your CD while the CD player in your house doesn't.
All that data is user generated, but the reason the CDDB aggregates data so well is that the user entering the data receives a distinct benefit for entering it, their CD player now displays the tracks from They Might Be Giants' "Severe Tire Damage". It is almost coincidental that the data is uploaded to the CDDB database for everyone else's benefit.
What sort of benefit would a person receive for entering data onto my site other than piece of mind?
Is there a tie-in service that I could provide that people would enjoy? Researchers might like a "locker" to store data, but that is a relatively tiny group of users.
Here is what I'm looking for. For what reason would my brother Chris (a huge Darin Erstad fan) add a comment to Erstad's page mentioning he was a punter for the National Championship Nebraska Cornhuskers in 1994? I'm not sure that a benefit to him exists. I just thought I would throw that out to the list and see if we have any "outside the box" thinkers out there. BTW, any ideas that get mentioned here are for anyone who wants to use and implement them.
Wednesday, February 28
Yahoo! Sports: MLB - Shawn Green doesn't care how much others earn
Of course, I don't know if Shawn Green is the right person to ask about making more money. He was paid $14m for being the 13th best right-fielder in the major leagues last year according to xWins, and yes that is park adjusted. To be honest, it looks to me that the writer was more interested in making the distinction than Green was.
Of course, I don't know if Shawn Green is the right person to ask about making more money. He was paid $14m for being the 13th best right-fielder in the major leagues last year according to xWins, and yes that is park adjusted. To be honest, it looks to me that the writer was more interested in making the distinction than Green was.
Crisis at the Corner
Holy Cow! Why hasn't this been a top story of spring training? Derek Jeter takes a few days off and it is all over the papers.
Adrian Beltre has a leaking wound from an appendectomy. He can't eat, has lost 20 pounds, and needs an IV every night. He hasn't had solid food for 50 days! And has to wear an "abdominal bag".
And I read about it while looking for more Sheffield articles. I knew he had had surgery, but I didn't imagine it was quite this dire.
I'm surprised the teams don't have medivac insurance for their Latin players. They could fairly easily fly them out to Miami at a moment's notice.
Holy Cow! Why hasn't this been a top story of spring training? Derek Jeter takes a few days off and it is all over the papers.
Adrian Beltre has a leaking wound from an appendectomy. He can't eat, has lost 20 pounds, and needs an IV every night. He hasn't had solid food for 50 days! And has to wear an "abdominal bag".
And I read about it while looking for more Sheffield articles. I knew he had had surgery, but I didn't imagine it was quite this dire.
I'm surprised the teams don't have medivac insurance for their Latin players. They could fairly easily fly them out to Miami at a moment's notice.
Yahoo! Sports: MLB - The Inside Corner: Dodgers can live with Sheffield
Former Angels GM Bill Bavasi is writing a column, and it appeared here. It is pretty good, though we'll see about Marquis Grissom's ability to help the Dodgers. I think his comments on Sheffied were well thought out and I laughed at his comments about Sheffield's effort in left field.
Former Angels GM Bill Bavasi is writing a column, and it appeared here. It is pretty good, though we'll see about Marquis Grissom's ability to help the Dodgers. I think his comments on Sheffied were well thought out and I laughed at his comments about Sheffield's effort in left field.
Hank Aaron Statistics - Baseball-Reference
I've acquired some expanded biographical data (height, weight, place of birth, etc.) and I was playing around withhow to best present it.
I was also thinking that the links to other sites should appear higher up. Oftentimes, I find myself looking for a split and using baseball-reference's player links to get to the page and then jumping to ESPN from there. This would make it easier to do that.
I also am thinking about using page anchors listed in the heading area to allow folks to jump to lower in the page (batting, fielding, leaderboard, postseason, similar, comments), but there can be problems if the pages don't render quickly enough and interior links tend to confuse more than help.
Any improvements on how this data is presented?
I've acquired some expanded biographical data (height, weight, place of birth, etc.) and I was playing around withhow to best present it.
I was also thinking that the links to other sites should appear higher up. Oftentimes, I find myself looking for a split and using baseball-reference's player links to get to the page and then jumping to ESPN from there. This would make it easier to do that.
I also am thinking about using page anchors listed in the heading area to allow folks to jump to lower in the page (batting, fielding, leaderboard, postseason, similar, comments), but there can be problems if the pages don't render quickly enough and interior links tend to confuse more than help.
Any improvements on how this data is presented?
ESPN.com - MLB Message Boards
Welcome to Outside the Box, society page for the sabermetric set. Apparently, Rob's fans on his message board at ESPN have been peppering the editors at ESPN with questions regarding their resident sabermetrician.
Speaking of society page, it's pretty much a done deal that I'll be going to the SABR convention in Milwaukee this July. (Unless I don't finish my dissertation at which point I'll be locked in the apartment all summer.) I don't know how many readers here are SABR members or live in Milwaukee, but something we might want to look into is getting together at a Brew Pub or something, some night and have dinner and watch some games. It's early on now, but something to think about.
Welcome to Outside the Box, society page for the sabermetric set. Apparently, Rob's fans on his message board at ESPN have been peppering the editors at ESPN with questions regarding their resident sabermetrician.
Speaking of society page, it's pretty much a done deal that I'll be going to the SABR convention in Milwaukee this July. (Unless I don't finish my dissertation at which point I'll be locked in the apartment all summer.) I don't know how many readers here are SABR members or live in Milwaukee, but something we might want to look into is getting together at a Brew Pub or something, some night and have dinner and watch some games. It's early on now, but something to think about.
Mark Scapicchio's BASEBLOG
Look! Another baseball weblog. By the end of the summer there will likely be 20-50 of these things being produced. You can get your own at blogger.com.
Look! Another baseball weblog. By the end of the summer there will likely be 20-50 of these things being produced. You can get your own at blogger.com.
Tuesday, February 27
Works of Bill James
I don't know if there are any Bill James fans who read this, but you might find this interesting. It is a complete rundown of every article that the Shakespeare of Sabermetrics ever wrote. Self published, abstracts, magazines, the who nine innings.
I don't know if there are any Bill James fans who read this, but you might find this interesting. It is a complete rundown of every article that the Shakespeare of Sabermetrics ever wrote. Self published, abstracts, magazines, the who nine innings.
February 26, 2001 - The Week In Quotes
Good quotes in this weeks BP week in quotes. Some of them are so ironic it's just laughable.
Good quotes in this weeks BP week in quotes. Some of them are so ironic it's just laughable.
VHOF: The rec.sport.baseball Virtual Hall of Fame (big page)
While I was away from rsbb, they completed the Virtual Hall of Fame election. Essentially, a group on rec.sport.baseball went back through history and held elections for each year. They've been at it a long time and now have 80 inductees.
While I was away from rsbb, they completed the Virtual Hall of Fame election. Essentially, a group on rec.sport.baseball went back through history and held elections for each year. They've been at it a long time and now have 80 inductees.
Monday, February 26
Yahoo! Sports: MLB - Manager has a little fun with trade rumors
This sounds a touch bush to me, but I don't belong in an MLB clubhouse, so I don't know what sort of crazy things go on there. It is interesting to note that Sheffield can block trades to half the MLB teams and KC is not on his no-trade list. It appears that the listed all the contenders thinking that a non-contender would never take on his salary.
The Phillies could be all over this. It's too bad they dumped Estalella because putting Sheffield in left, Burrell at first and trading Lieberthal and Lee for Sheffield might get it done. As they stand right now, they don't have what it takes to get a deal like that done.
This sounds a touch bush to me, but I don't belong in an MLB clubhouse, so I don't know what sort of crazy things go on there. It is interesting to note that Sheffield can block trades to half the MLB teams and KC is not on his no-trade list. It appears that the listed all the contenders thinking that a non-contender would never take on his salary.
The Phillies could be all over this. It's too bad they dumped Estalella because putting Sheffield in left, Burrell at first and trading Lieberthal and Lee for Sheffield might get it done. As they stand right now, they don't have what it takes to get a deal like that done.
Yahoo! Sports: MLB - Dodgers swap White for Brewers' Grissom
Brewers fans should be happy that they are out from under Marquis Grissom's contract for 2002, but Devon White is still going to make a bunch of money next summer. If Devo could actually hit right handers this might turn out to be a decent pseudo-platoon with Jeffrey Hammonds, but as it is he'll probably get 250-300 at bats filling in all over.
As for the minor leaguer, the Brewer have so little minor league talent that the chances of the Dodgers getting someone worthwhile are pretty slim.
Brewers fans should be happy that they are out from under Marquis Grissom's contract for 2002, but Devon White is still going to make a bunch of money next summer. If Devo could actually hit right handers this might turn out to be a decent pseudo-platoon with Jeffrey Hammonds, but as it is he'll probably get 250-300 at bats filling in all over.
As for the minor leaguer, the Brewer have so little minor league talent that the chances of the Dodgers getting someone worthwhile are pretty slim.
Friday, February 23
Yahoo! Sports: MLB - Thomas skips practice again
In cases like this, the players should be giving to their agents and not to their teams. They shouldn't expect the teams to take the risk of a long-term deal and then refuse to honor said deal. Teams need to play some hardball with these guys or it could get ugly. Of course, as much as they have made in previous years, they could probably sit out the whole year and not miss much. Except in Thomas's case, that might cost him a spot in the Hall of Fame.
In cases like this, the players should be giving to their agents and not to their teams. They shouldn't expect the teams to take the risk of a long-term deal and then refuse to honor said deal. Teams need to play some hardball with these guys or it could get ugly. Of course, as much as they have made in previous years, they could probably sit out the whole year and not miss much. Except in Thomas's case, that might cost him a spot in the Hall of Fame.
Outside the Box - What makes a good baseball website
"Vic" asked me what makes a good baseball website. Since I have the bully pulpit, here is my response.
My opinion is that simpler is better. I feel a site is much better off worrying about the service rather than the look of the site. For instance, I am constantly amazed at the utility of Yahoo. I use myYahoo and I can't imagine not using it more. Yahoo's graphic design is almost absurdly simplistic, but they understand that people are there to look at their services and not their design. I'm a pretty big baseball stats nut, so for this site I was worried most about how I wanted to use a site. I also tried not to constrict users in any way. The web is inherently non-linear, so lots and lots of links allow users to achieve a "Flow". I've also found that stating the obvious is important even when it appears obvious.
Testing is vitally important. I test my relatives on this site. I see how they look for things and whether they can find it or not. I know this site so well, that it is impossible for me to realize when something is clear or unclear.
As this page indicates, user feedback is important. My new site will have comments on every article.
Some of my sites haven't worked as well as I've expected, IowaFarmReport.com and theHILL are the two main ones. At IFR, I wanted user input on minor league players. I had envisioned a batallion of citizen scouts filing reports from games they saw. It just didn't happen. I think the main reason is that people saw no benefit to themselves for doing so. I'm not sure how to change that fact. With theHILL I think the information is just a little too esoteric for most people. Retrosheet is a great organization, but it's information is too specialized for all but a fractional percent of baseball fans.
For other sites, I would recommend concentrating on whatever service you provide. A link encouraging user input should be on nearly every page on the site. Users have great ideas and if they feel their feedback is valued they can give you some great ideas and point out problems you might not have seen before.
For statistics, I think making the information as unfettered as possible is the only way to go. If you don't do that somebody will come along and try to make it more useful.
Books I would recommend include: Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen (his site useit.com is very helpful), Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing by Philip Greenspun, and the Cluetrain Manifesto. There are a lot of others that I've used, but these are the three best. Clickz.com has some good info as well.
"Vic" asked me what makes a good baseball website. Since I have the bully pulpit, here is my response.
My opinion is that simpler is better. I feel a site is much better off worrying about the service rather than the look of the site. For instance, I am constantly amazed at the utility of Yahoo. I use myYahoo and I can't imagine not using it more. Yahoo's graphic design is almost absurdly simplistic, but they understand that people are there to look at their services and not their design. I'm a pretty big baseball stats nut, so for this site I was worried most about how I wanted to use a site. I also tried not to constrict users in any way. The web is inherently non-linear, so lots and lots of links allow users to achieve a "Flow". I've also found that stating the obvious is important even when it appears obvious.
Testing is vitally important. I test my relatives on this site. I see how they look for things and whether they can find it or not. I know this site so well, that it is impossible for me to realize when something is clear or unclear.
As this page indicates, user feedback is important. My new site will have comments on every article.
Some of my sites haven't worked as well as I've expected, IowaFarmReport.com and theHILL are the two main ones. At IFR, I wanted user input on minor league players. I had envisioned a batallion of citizen scouts filing reports from games they saw. It just didn't happen. I think the main reason is that people saw no benefit to themselves for doing so. I'm not sure how to change that fact. With theHILL I think the information is just a little too esoteric for most people. Retrosheet is a great organization, but it's information is too specialized for all but a fractional percent of baseball fans.
For other sites, I would recommend concentrating on whatever service you provide. A link encouraging user input should be on nearly every page on the site. Users have great ideas and if they feel their feedback is valued they can give you some great ideas and point out problems you might not have seen before.
For statistics, I think making the information as unfettered as possible is the only way to go. If you don't do that somebody will come along and try to make it more useful.
Books I would recommend include: Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen (his site useit.com is very helpful), Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing by Philip Greenspun, and the Cluetrain Manifesto. There are a lot of others that I've used, but these are the three best. Clickz.com has some good info as well.
Yahoo! Sports: MLB - Ten Arizona players agree to defer salary
Wow! This is big news in my opinion. I've never heard of a team asking for such wholesale concessions on salaries. The D'Backs must be in pretty dire straits to approach something like this. It is a bit touching (I guess) that the players went for this, but it also points out that the Rattlers may not be the best run team in the league.
Wow! This is big news in my opinion. I've never heard of a team asking for such wholesale concessions on salaries. The D'Backs must be in pretty dire straits to approach something like this. It is a bit touching (I guess) that the players went for this, but it also points out that the Rattlers may not be the best run team in the league.
Compare Two Players at Baseball-Reference.com
I've been playing around with this new tool for a bit to see what I can come up with. I had an interesting hit here. Roberto Clemente and Kirby Puckett. Their numbers track quite well, and if you want to see something eerie check out their 162 Game Avg. Lines. .318/.360/.477 to .317/.359/.475. I'd say that is within tolerances.
I've been playing around with this new tool for a bit to see what I can come up with. I had an interesting hit here. Roberto Clemente and Kirby Puckett. Their numbers track quite well, and if you want to see something eerie check out their 162 Game Avg. Lines. .318/.360/.477 to .317/.359/.475. I'd say that is within tolerances.
Compare Nomar and Donnie Baseball at Baseball-Reference.com
I've got the product similarity implemented that I describe below under tout wars. I use the same similarity algorithm that I've been using for the last few years for Iowa Farm Report. Note that it adjust everyone to a 600 PA season and then compares them from that baseline. There is a penalty as well for differences in at bats. I'll have to write it up better if I utilize it on this site or elsewhere.
Anyways, I ran it on Nomar's four full seasons and removed the positional adjustment and guess who came up as Nomar's best comp? That's right, Mattingly. If you match up their age 23-26 seasons they map really well. You just have to hope that Nomar's career doesn't flame out quite like Mattingly's did. Dimaggio and Mize are in his top ten as well.
With defense, Ron Santo is Nomar's #1. And the top ten are:
Santo
Ernie Banks,
Joe Gordon
Cal Ripken
Travis Jackson
Tony Lazzeri
Don Mattingly
Chipper Jones
Edgardo Alfonso
Derek Jeter
Right now, I'm only looking at the ages where Nomar had 200+ plate appearances, so if a player debuted at age 24, they had a pretty big penalty for the first year. If the player debuted prior to age 23 as Jeter did, then there isn't any penalty added and we still only compare Nomar's age 23-26 to Jeter's age 23-26. Jeter's age 22 is disregarded in generating these values. Is this the most illuminative way to do things? I don't know.
I've got the product similarity implemented that I describe below under tout wars. I use the same similarity algorithm that I've been using for the last few years for Iowa Farm Report. Note that it adjust everyone to a 600 PA season and then compares them from that baseline. There is a penalty as well for differences in at bats. I'll have to write it up better if I utilize it on this site or elsewhere.
Anyways, I ran it on Nomar's four full seasons and removed the positional adjustment and guess who came up as Nomar's best comp? That's right, Mattingly. If you match up their age 23-26 seasons they map really well. You just have to hope that Nomar's career doesn't flame out quite like Mattingly's did. Dimaggio and Mize are in his top ten as well.
With defense, Ron Santo is Nomar's #1. And the top ten are:
Santo
Ernie Banks,
Joe Gordon
Cal Ripken
Travis Jackson
Tony Lazzeri
Don Mattingly
Chipper Jones
Edgardo Alfonso
Derek Jeter
Right now, I'm only looking at the ages where Nomar had 200+ plate appearances, so if a player debuted at age 24, they had a pretty big penalty for the first year. If the player debuted prior to age 23 as Jeter did, then there isn't any penalty added and we still only compare Nomar's age 23-26 to Jeter's age 23-26. Jeter's age 22 is disregarded in generating these values. Is this the most illuminative way to do things? I don't know.
Thursday, February 22
TOUT WARS: Battle of the Experts
I couldn't find a good page for Mat Olkin, but here is one with some stuff he's done.
The reason I incude this is that we had an e-mail exchange. Mat suggested that we do a similarity score where we compare player's season by season and then come up with an overall score, so for instance, two players could have the same career values, but arrive at them the exact opposite way. One peaks early and one late. With current sim scores, these guys would have the same value.
I thought of a sneaky way to do it differently. Part of the problem with adding the year-by-year scores and dividing by the number of years is that players with matches of 1000, 700, 1000, 700, 1000, 700 are the same as 850, 850, 850, 850, 850, 850.
They are similar, but I would say the second match is a better one. Just my opinion. A way to differentiate between these is to divide each score by 1000, so it is between 0 and 1. Then multiply them. The first group would be .343 and the second would be .377. Now if players are the same for 20 years or 8 we would like the same value, so we then take the Nth root of the result and multiply by 1000. .343^(1/6) * 1000 = 837 and the other group comes out to 850 (how about that). The only question comes in how to handle guys where their careers don't align at the beginning, say Vlad Guerrero and Bobby Abreu. Abreu debuted at age 22 and Vlad age 20.
My thinking is that 500 will be the minimum score between two seasons, so we'll just give those seasons a score of 500, or we could just use the seasons that match up I guess. I think I like the former better.
I might try and code this up and see what happens for some well known players. It may be that the scores are so far off that nothing of interest happens. We'll see.
I couldn't find a good page for Mat Olkin, but here is one with some stuff he's done.
The reason I incude this is that we had an e-mail exchange. Mat suggested that we do a similarity score where we compare player's season by season and then come up with an overall score, so for instance, two players could have the same career values, but arrive at them the exact opposite way. One peaks early and one late. With current sim scores, these guys would have the same value.
I thought of a sneaky way to do it differently. Part of the problem with adding the year-by-year scores and dividing by the number of years is that players with matches of 1000, 700, 1000, 700, 1000, 700 are the same as 850, 850, 850, 850, 850, 850.
They are similar, but I would say the second match is a better one. Just my opinion. A way to differentiate between these is to divide each score by 1000, so it is between 0 and 1. Then multiply them. The first group would be .343 and the second would be .377. Now if players are the same for 20 years or 8 we would like the same value, so we then take the Nth root of the result and multiply by 1000. .343^(1/6) * 1000 = 837 and the other group comes out to 850 (how about that). The only question comes in how to handle guys where their careers don't align at the beginning, say Vlad Guerrero and Bobby Abreu. Abreu debuted at age 22 and Vlad age 20.
My thinking is that 500 will be the minimum score between two seasons, so we'll just give those seasons a score of 500, or we could just use the seasons that match up I guess. I think I like the former better.
I might try and code this up and see what happens for some well known players. It may be that the scores are so far off that nothing of interest happens. We'll see.
FOXSports.com
It doesn't feel like baseball weather here in Philly as we got about 5" of snow today.
Juan Gone is injured already. He is a very good player (probably too severely penalized by the sabermetric community), but he's become a bit fragile. This, however, is a freak thing.
I also wanted to say that foxsports.com's new design is 20x better than their old site. I may start visiting there more often. ESPN.com is so damn cluttered that I can hardly find anything there. Check out how nice the baseball front page looks.
It doesn't feel like baseball weather here in Philly as we got about 5" of snow today.
Juan Gone is injured already. He is a very good player (probably too severely penalized by the sabermetric community), but he's become a bit fragile. This, however, is a freak thing.
I also wanted to say that foxsports.com's new design is 20x better than their old site. I may start visiting there more often. ESPN.com is so damn cluttered that I can hardly find anything there. Check out how nice the baseball front page looks.
Wednesday, February 21
Yahoo! Sports: MLB - Look who's in camp -- El Sid and Deion show up
Sid Fernandez always seemed to me to have left the game before his time, so I'll be pulling for him. I doubt he'll make it too long in training camp, but it would be a great story if he made the team. There are always guys like this, Jim Palmer, Dave Stieb, Steve Trout, etc., who want to come back, but never make it very far. Of course, Stieb pitched pretty well in the minor if I remember correctly.
The Steve Rain fiasco is just dumb. Chris Kahrl won't be pleased. I realize that he has a job to do and being an NRI he shouldn't flaunt the rules, but this is a bit asinine on the Royals part. Fine the guy if you have to, but releasing him before even puts on his jersey just tells me that you are petty, not disciplined.
If you are worried about him showing up on time, lie to him and tell him to be there at 8:00 not 10:00. That is what we have to to to get my wife's extended family anywhere on time.
Also, what I said above about pulling for El Sid does not apply to Deion Sanders.
Sid Fernandez always seemed to me to have left the game before his time, so I'll be pulling for him. I doubt he'll make it too long in training camp, but it would be a great story if he made the team. There are always guys like this, Jim Palmer, Dave Stieb, Steve Trout, etc., who want to come back, but never make it very far. Of course, Stieb pitched pretty well in the minor if I remember correctly.
The Steve Rain fiasco is just dumb. Chris Kahrl won't be pleased. I realize that he has a job to do and being an NRI he shouldn't flaunt the rules, but this is a bit asinine on the Royals part. Fine the guy if you have to, but releasing him before even puts on his jersey just tells me that you are petty, not disciplined.
If you are worried about him showing up on time, lie to him and tell him to be there at 8:00 not 10:00. That is what we have to to to get my wife's extended family anywhere on time.
Also, what I said above about pulling for El Sid does not apply to Deion Sanders.
Sheff's Surprise
This view of Sheffield's situation is far different from this view.
Saint or sinner? Certainly, somewhere in between.
This view of Sheffield's situation is far different from this view.
Saint or sinner? Certainly, somewhere in between.
Bob Buhl Statistics - Baseball-Reference
Bob Buhl died last Friday. He was a pitcher during the 50's and 60's with the Braves and later with the Cubs. He was a pretty good one at that. He won 166 games and posted a 3.55 ERA to a league average 3.66.
I'm almost thirty years old, so I wasn't even born when he pitched, but the similarity scores equate him with some pitchers we now consider good or very good but not great: Dave Stieb, Rick Sutcliffe, Dave Stewart, Bob Forsch and Rick Rhoden.
Buhl was awful at the plate with a .089/.129/.091 career line. He had 70 hitless at bats in 1962 and many other seasons with a sub .100 batting average.
Bob Buhl died last Friday. He was a pitcher during the 50's and 60's with the Braves and later with the Cubs. He was a pretty good one at that. He won 166 games and posted a 3.55 ERA to a league average 3.66.
I'm almost thirty years old, so I wasn't even born when he pitched, but the similarity scores equate him with some pitchers we now consider good or very good but not great: Dave Stieb, Rick Sutcliffe, Dave Stewart, Bob Forsch and Rick Rhoden.
Buhl was awful at the plate with a .089/.129/.091 career line. He had 70 hitless at bats in 1962 and many other seasons with a sub .100 batting average.
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