Ask Rotoman

The Japan Times Online

Useful survey of which Americans and Koreans are playing (and managing and coaching) in NPB this year. Thanks Tim.

Jim Baker’s Column

I stopped my BP subscription a year or so ago, not because I didn’t enjoy the writing of many of the BP guys, and didn’t value their observations, but because it was all getting a little familiar. For free, I’d attend every day, but having to pay made it a little easy to stay away.

I’ve been surprised how few times I’ve felt like I was missing something since. I still read the newsletter and the beginnings of the stories, and I’m still awfully impressed by a lot of the work that goes on at BP, but I end up feeling like I’m already on their page, I don’t need to be hectored about this and that.

But the lede to this story is choice. Or as my friend Fleming Meeks has said, cherce. Jim Baker discovers an orphaned pool of BP stats about teams and their rate of being shut out. What I learned is that the 1981 Blue Jays were shut out 20 percent of the time.

These days that seems pretty much impossible, but things in baseball change. 1981 was the dawn of Rotisserie baseball and baseball’s age of statistics. I have no other point than at this moment I wish I could read the rest of Jim’s story.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One of his books is named after a war that started because of some soccer games, but this is not a sports story. He’s noted upon his death here simply because he is one of my favorite writers. The Soccer War is a good place to start, but The Emperor, Shah of Shahs and Imperium are all fantastic books, essential if you’re interested in the topics, well worth reading even if you don’t care.

Chase Utley: Marcher

Not only is he the top-rated second baseman in the game this year, but he’s also the only major leaguer marching against Global Warming. There seems to be some sort of contest going on, which Laurie David is winning handily, but a visit go Chase’s page is a vote for baseball fans against global warming. And they’ll be happy to tell you what more you can do while you’re there.

For one, drive less and turn out the lights when you’re not using them. Becoming more energy efficient means we’ll need fewer power plants, and rely less on oil from abroad (if you get what I mean).

SportingNews.com – Brendan Roberts

When Brendan says that the TSN rankings have Manny Ramirez at No. 25 I thought, that’s silly. But I looked in the just-arrived Fantasy Baseball Guide and discovered that in our mock draft Manny was taken No. 30. And looking at the names that went ahead of him that doesn’t seem too far off the mark. Manny is an injury risk, he is getting older, he’s probably going to end up in Boston again (though he clearly doesn’t want to be), and he’s coming off a mildly down season. But assuming he makes it through spring training without any obvious physical problems, and that he could end up going anywhere from 12th to 35th, he’s a great pick at the low end of that range. And he might even prove to be a good one at the top end. Does that make him a sleeper?

Michael Sokolove – New York Times

Those of use who love sports have been dealing with the issue of performance enhancing drugs at least since Jim Bouton wrote Ball Four (that would be 1970). This is important because the Dick Pound fueled hysteria over the past few years has actually done some good (there has been plenty of attention paid to figuring out how to implement testing regimens) and some bad (like even when certain athletes test as clean they’re tarred with the PED brush).

In this story (which I believe will be available to NY Times subscribers only come Tuesday or Wednesday) Michael Sokolove profiles Pound, explains why he is the way he is, explains why his quest is quixotic, and does a fair job of laying out the path to the future of sport.

Essentially, people with like chemistry will compete against one another. There will be levels based on chemical compositions and ratios, and if you’re a PED taker or a freak of nature, your actual chemistry is what will matter.

I’m confident to predict that when this comes true, the big money league will be the one in which the athletes run the fastests, jump the farthest, hit the ball hardest. Everything else will be minor league.

HitTracker :: Home run tracking and distance measurement

Greg Rybarczyk, an engineer with an interest in the flight of major league baseballs, has created a rather amazing trove of information about last year’s home runs, including his special formula for determining the actual (he calls it “true”) distance a ball would have flown if it didn’t land above grade in the seats or hit a light standard or the glass wall of a right field dining establishment.

This sort of information is very important when we look at other people trying to track the steroid era or the juiced ball era or what have you based on homer distances.

Greg includes his weather and altitude correctors so that other adjustments can be made.

I’m not really sure how much real value this is going to have in its present form, but I hear that he’s hoping to enter this information for all batted balls in 2007. While that will duplicate at least some of the information that Baseball Info Solutions is keeping, it’s hard to argue that we don’t want multiple sources for what is inevitably less-than-objective data.

We’ll leave it to the next generation to figure out how to get all the data keepers interested in sharing.

Dave Studeman — The Hardball Times

I always thought that Regression Analysis took its name from the fact that you start with the outputs and determine by regressing to see how important the inputs are, though I now have no idea whether that’s based on anything but my own magical thinking.

Dave Studeman’s story here is fascinating for the historical content (which has nothing to do with baseball, a little to do with statistics and much to do with other things) and because he does such clear work showing the dynamics of regression to the mean (which may well be the origin of the term) as they pertain to baseball.

At the end he references a story by Chone Smith about player projection which turns out to be an interesting rabbit hole in its own right, but that’s for another time.