November 22, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. Most Recent Comments
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HR/FB Park Factors (3) Is peak at age 29? (7) On whiffing (4) Sportswriters don’t vote for Cy Young based on popular opinion; baseball universe explodes (14) 
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Thursday, January 24, 2008Rich and BusterRich Lederer and Buster Olney have been debating the Hall of Fame qualifications of Jim Rice in an open manner, swapping points back and forth in their blogs. You can read Rich's latest post, which includes a fair rendition of Olney's arguments, at his blog. Their willingness to continue their debate in the open air of the Internets is valuable for all of us. Now, I'm as sick of the endless Hall of Fame debates as anyone, but something in Olney's argument stopped me from working on the THT Season Preview for a couple of minutes to investigate something he implied: that Rice shouldn't be held accountable for his relatively low OBP because people didn't "know" that walks were so valuable when he played. This implies a number of things that bother me. One, that a player like Rice could dramatically change his batting approach based on sportswriters' expectations. Two (and more importantly), that the game was somehow "different" back in the 1970s and 1980s, and a different set of skills was required to be successful. I'm not sure Olney meant to imply either point, but I think they're both wrong. Yet I was curious as to his primary point: that teams and batters value walks more than they used to. If true, then might batters be walking more than in the past? That would seem to reinforce his point, wouldn't it? So I did a little digging... Click for more... Friday, January 18, 2008More outfield arms resultsAfter my recent article ranking outfield arms in 2007, I got several requests for a spreadsheet containing the results for all players, not just the full-time players that were mentioned in the article. A couple people asked for data going back a few years, as well. So, I've put together a file that you can download and play around with to your heart's content. Click for more... Tuesday, January 08, 2008My predictions vs. RealityYesterday, I published an article predicting what would happen in today's Cooperstown election. How'd I do? Well . . . I said Gossage would be the only one to go in, with Rice narrowly missing. Check and check. I should note, I originally had Rice getting 76%, but figured I'm going to root for my predictions to be true, and I don't want to root for Rice to get in. Since I figured he was on the borderline, I changed my prediction. Not at all scientific, then again I never threw in with those who thought sabermetrics was a science. I pegged this year's vote to have the fewest names per ballot in BBWAA's Cooperstown voting history. Yup, it did. Looking at the 15 specific players I guesstimated on: Exactly right: 1 (Parker) Off by 1%: 3 (Concepcion, Trammell, Morris) Off by 2%: 3 (Rice, Murphy, Baines) Off by 3%: 3 (Gossage, John, Mattingley) Off by 4%: 1 (Dawson) Off by 6%: 1 (Blyleven) Off by 8%: 2 (Smith, McGwire) Commically off: 1 (Raines) I did an absolutely horrible, inept, and ludicrously bad job on it. I used some tallies to guide me. But, I based it on what those tallies were saying 2 weeks before the vote came out. Repoz and Keith Law kept tallying, and their estimates dropped down, thus I screwed up. This isn't an excuse, because I should've handled it better, but merely an explanation. On the backloggers, I was of by an average of 3.1%. Altogether, I had two-thirds within 3%. I feel pretty good about it. THT Round table: Nick Swisher to the White SoxIn a belated round table entry, the THT staff weighs in on the Swisher deal. Click for more... Saturday, January 05, 20082008 Marcels on SiteWe've loaded 2008 projections for major league players onto our site, courtesy of Tangotiger and his pet monkey, Marcel. You can find the Marcel projections listed on each player page (look under Stats). Also, the Marcels have their own page for sorting. The batting totals are here and the pitching totals are here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||