Astros add ‘Baseball Prospectus’ alum Fast in drive for stats knowledge

Congrats, Mike! (and for bbc’s sake let’s hope he…“cleans up real nice, not fat neither”!

The Astros added to their statistical strength in the front office, hiring Mike Fast of Baseball Prospectus to serve in the baseball operations department.

Fast, one of the foremost experts on pitch trajectory (PITCHf/x) data, has also written on HITf/x data for BP. Some of his latest writings have been on hit-and-run success, quantifying how much control pitchers have over batted balls and an analysis of hot and cold zones for hitters.

“We’re definitely excited to have someone with his background and interests,” general manager Jeff Luhnow said. “It’s a lot of the same things that we’re interested in studying.”

Fast joins director of decision sciences Sig Mejdal in a front office that is increasingly statistically minded. His job title has not been determined yet.

College Football: Postseason Thread

Images of 2011: Victory Confetti

Creative Commons by Gregg Regula

Happy New Year, BBTF!

Images of 2011: Baltimore. Game 162. A series.

All images are Creative Commons by Keith Allison (who I used yesterday, but the guy is probably the best photographer on flickr who puts his stuff up under Creative Commons)

Images of 2011: Caption This! Ichiro and Jack Wilson

Caption this image:

Creative Commons by Keith Allison

Images of 2011: Opening Day at Cit Field

Creative Commons by Paul Hadsall

Images of 2011: Space Rocket over Spring Training

For the final days of 2011, a look at some of the best (creative commons licensed) photos on Flickr.

Today’s photo is of a rocket (not sure of what, probably a satellite) going through the sky during a early March night… and visible from the spring training stadium of the Washington Nationals. Talk about local color.

Creative Commons license, photo by tbridge.

[OT] Q4 NFL Thread

So as what not to annoy the people in the “no, no, the fact that we exploit our players and refuse to cut them in on the cash except for dirty booster money makes us amateur and pristine!” thread.

Baseball Think Factory Quizbowl Questions

BBTF is now a worthy topic for pop culture quizbowl. The entire tournament is here.

18. Answer the following related to various running jokes at the Baseball ThinkFactory website, for 10 points each:
[10] One recurring poster uses this name of the protagonist from Ring Lardner’s You Know Me Al. The poster imitates this character’s semi-literate style to comment on the baseball issues of the day.
[10] A hilarious running joke involved the phrase, “Sure, I’d listen if [blank] called,” a reference to an interview involving this former manager saying he would listen if for no apparent reason, the Red Sox contacted him. This recent Hall of Fame inductee won the 1982 World Series with St. Louis.
[10] Posters frequently mock Joe Morgan for suggesting that this man, not Michael Lewis, wrote the book Moneyball. This man is noted for his sabermetric friendly policies during his time as GM of the Oakland Athletics.

The link should call up a Word file. Look for Bonus #18 or search for the words in the excerpt. You’ll find the answers there.

BBTF Playoff Chats

Just a reminder that BTF’s IRC chat room is open for people who want to live chat during the playoffs.

Dan Werr’s directions after the break.

Games 162 Game Chatter

Let’s smash all the game 162 game chatters into one thread, shall we? There is a full slate of games, but as far as playoff races are concerned, these are the games that matter (although if you want to talk about any of the other games for any reason, feel free).

Red Sox (Lester) vs. Orioles (Simon) at 7:05 PM
Yankees (TBD- no, seriously, TBD) vs. Rays (Price) at 7:10 PM
Phillies (Blanton) vs. Braves (Hudson) at 7:10 PM
Cardinals (Carpenter) vs. Astros (Myers) at 8:05 PM

S.I.: Sheehan: The Moneyball revolution from someone who helped it happen

Given that, we were taken aback when Federal Express delivered a letter…

The revolution is over. Well, that one, anyway. The new ideas earned a place at the table on merit, by being good ideas that contribute to winning baseball games. While I’m no capital-S stathead, I was fortunate enough to work at Baseball Prospectus for a dozen years alongside some of the best in the field, from Clay Davenport and Gary Huckabay, through Rany Jazayerli and Keith Woolner, through Dan Fox and Nate Silver.

...All of this probably happens without Prospectus. The ideas were too important and there was too much money to be made for them not to become the way in which baseball teams were run. Nevertheless, Prospectus happened, and became the way in which many people within the industry were introduced to these ideas. Prospectus was, for a time, the center of the stathead world, publishing research that would set the discussion for years to come, that would change the way players were evaluated. Fielding Independent Pitching ERA shows up on the MLB Network. Felix Hernandez is honored with a Cy Young Award with 13 wins. Every team has a Peter Brand or three, collecting, parsing and presenting data, gaining credibility every time a defensive shift or pitch sequence or lineup change puts a W on the board.

Moneyball captures the tipping point in that revolution, when a team embraced something new because it had to, and won a lot of games because of it. I’m proud to have been a part of the history. The smoke has cleared and the guns have been laid down, and I’m excited to see what will come now that so much less energy is being spent drawing lines between two sides that both want the same thing: great baseball.

FanGraphs New York Meetup

Amity Hall? Wuh…you guys too good for John’s Pizza? (chomp…I’ll probably be heading over…chomp)

On Sunday, September 25th, we’ll blow the horn for FanGraphs East and announce happy hour drinks and our own private space for our particular brand of nerdery. Come to Amity Hall any time after one PM eastern, and we’ll be hanging out, talking baseball and enjoying happy hour prices. And there will be a ton of togetherness because really how much can you hate a Mets fan right now. Oh! Also, come downstairs. We’ve got the downstairs bar.

And this is who will be hanging out:

David Appelman, FanGraphs Dark Overlord, so dark
Mike Podhorzer, Serious about (fantasy) baseball, RotoGraphs
Eno Sarris, Fan of Graphs, Fan, Not and Roto
Amanda Rykoff, espnW contributor, beer lover and Yankees fan
James Kannengeiser, professional curmudgeon and Amazin Avenue writer
Chris McShane, Amazin Avenue backbone, ready to dance
Eric Simon, Amazin Avenue head honcho guy, generally nice dude
Mike Axisa, aka “Mike from RAB, FanGraphs & Trade Rumors,” you know, just Mike
Joe Pawlikowski, music lover, FanGraphs escapee and River Avenue Blueser

The Hurricane Irene Thread

There was the Swine Flu thread, so why not the Hurricane thread. Isn’t that right, New York Mets and the rest of the Northeast teams?

The New York Mets say they have postponed Saturday and Sunday’s games against the Atlanta Braves because of Hurricane Irene.

Both games will be rescheduled as a single-admission doubleheader on Sept. 8 beginning at 4:10 p.m.

Major League Baseball already had moved Sunday’s games at Philadelphia and Boston to Saturday to make them part of day-night doubleheaders. The Phillies play the Marlins and the Red Sox play the Athletics.

So to the primates on the Eastern coastal regions- stay safe.

Hughson: The Use Of Sabermetric Stats Makes Me Uncomfortable

“accuracy - not flakiness” Handles for sale! Get your red hot handles!

Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average (SIERA)

Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average estimates ERA through walk rate, strikeout rate and ground ball rate, eliminating the effects of park, defense and luck.  How is it calculated you ask?

SIERA = 6.145 – 16.986*(SO/PA) + 11.434*(BB/PA) – 1.858*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) + 7.653*((SO/PA)^2) +/– 6.664*(((GB-FB-PU)/PA)^2) + 10.130*(SO/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) – 5.195*(BB/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA)

The statistic is so convoluted that Baseball Prospectus removed SIERA from their toolbox of stats.  That’s good enough for me.

...Ideally, what I want from my statistics are black and white outcomes.  That’s what I love about OBP – either the player got on base or he didn’t.  There’s no sample size error, no assumption of universal causation, no convoluted formula.  Putting statistics into a greater context allows us to fully flesh out what a player brings to the table. I recognize that the gripes I present about the stats listed above may be perceived by some as minor.  As I said before, I realize that the stats I am uncomfortable with still have value, however, I want accuracy from my stats - not flakiness.  It is when these stats are perceived as the be-all and end all that makes me uncomfortable.