It troubles me that the world is just one big rip-off of Ferro Lad.

We’ve all thought it. Heck, many of us have even said it. Watching the exploits of Eric Gregg, Phil Cuzzi, Jim Joyce, and so many others, it’s hard not to believe it at least once. “We want robot umpires!”

A new project by Dan Levy is working to explore just what might happen if baseball ever heeded that call. Rise of the Robot Umpires is a graphic-style novel set in the not-too-distant future where the commissioner finally ...

Forman: Valuemont.

Some of the common critiques of the Wins Above Replacement framework include: 1) Why do FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com have such different numbers, 2) How can we trust it when the numbers change, and 3) How can we trust it when I can’t calculate it?

For the first question, our announcement today of a consistent replacement level between FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com has done a considerable amount to bring our two methodologies into alignment at least on the ...

Pickover Calculus and Pizza? I can’t decide.

What prompted this post was not a calculus barb directed at sabermetrics, but one of the reactions to such a barb in a Baseball Think Factory thread: a flat out statement that “calculus has no place in baseball statistics”. On one hand, I really should just ignore this. The statement itself is so outlandish as to be difficult to respond to. It’s akin to saying that “cymbals have no place in music” or that “rice has no place in one’s diet”. ...

Anybody catch this…

And so, good news, he (Sean Forman) says that he intends to meet with Fangraphs folks and try to hammer out a consistent value for replacement level. He said they might try to get Tom Tango and others involved too. I think this would be great news for the statistic. It’s a fine thing for Fangraphs WAR and Baseball Reference WAR to be different. But it would be great if they could start in the same place.

PAYDIRT! As you know…I’ve has been trolling the site for a decade now with anything remotely related to the peds issue, Rob Neyer, Jack Morris, and the Tea Party!

Later in the show, Tom Verducci previewed next year’s ballot, which will include first-timers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas. What will happen, Verducci asked Ken Rosenthal, next time? Here’s Rosenthal’s response:

  I think those three get in, and Morris is going to be awfully close. And I will say this about Morris: I ...

Butch points out…“Even more HOF Gizmo-love!”

Steve Buckley joins Sports Tonight to discuss the 2013 candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame and asks if anyone should be inducted this year.

Baseballthinkfactory.org currently projects no player will garner the 75% of votes necessary for election into the Hall of Fame.

The last time no candidate won the necessary 75% was 1996, and Buckley says the HOF voters that he talks to says it’s likely it could happen again this year.

There are a number ...

Shiit…next thing you know Pitchfork will be clipping my Idiotic Top 75 Indi/Undi Song List.

The results of 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame voting will be announced on Wednesday, and this year represents a unique ballot. Steroid users, suspected steroid users, a cocaine user, a catcher, Jack Morris. Want a preview? Baseball Think Factory has compiled the votes from every writer that made their vote public (including two who aren’t voting at all), and the results are only shocking if you somehow ...

As Graham Womack notes…“I’ve kicked off voting for my annual project on the 50 best players not in the Hall of Fame. Big year for the project with so many newly eligible greats.”

As some of you may know, I do an annual project having people rank the 50 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame. It’s that time again.

I invite anyone who’s interested to take part (please free also to pass ballots along to anyone interested.) To vote, click on this link which will take you a Google Form ...

After taking a much needed hiatus from my work on the site’s redesign. I am back to work. In June, when I realized I would not be able to finish off the Beta in time for the All Star, I decided to take a break. I needed it. I was burnt out from all the work that I was doing. Additionally, with the summer at hand, I knew it would be a good idea to spend some time with my kids and family whose patience I was beginning to try. So, other than some bug fixing, I put the update on the back burner. ...

As I said yesterday…“The ONLY downside to Clubhouse Confidential is the nightly commercial for Intentional Talk.”

I’ll be appearing on Clubhouse Confidential on the MLB Network. We are taping this afternoon and I’m pretty sure it will be broadcast tonight. The show typically airs 5:30pm and 7:30pm ET and then probably 8 more times after that. We’ll be talking baseball-reference.com and some other stuff.

I’m looking forward to meeting their crew and I’ve been incredibly impressed with how they ...

What should happen? Well, among non-Bonds/Clements voters, Biggio should get around 85 percent. With the others, he’ll get less in what’s already a crowded ballot for people willing to support PED-rs. I’d guess he gets 65-70 percent of their vote. Maybe less.

Upshot: Biggio has a very good shot to get in. Assuming he gets 85 percent of the non-Bonds/Clemens guys (and he really should, given the clustering of Molitor/Winfield/Murray right at 85 percent), and assuming Bonds and Clemens get ...

Or as Rob Neyer just tweeted…“Good news! Still early January, and Don Malcolm’s already gotten in a gratuitous insult. With that out of the way…”

The thought of playing anywhere else probably also influenced Posada. Of all the ballparks in all the major leagues, the one he really didn’t want to walk out of (to rework that Casablanca reference just a bit…) was New Yankee Stadium. The revamped “House That Ruth George Built” proved to be exceptionally cozy for Jorge: in the three years he played ...

No jack for The Jack!

Morris will return to the ballot a 14th year, which is how long it took Bert Blyleven to get elected. After his election, Blyleven thanked and credited an investment manager named Rich Lederer for lobbying for him. Lederer used baseball blogging site, BaseballAnalysts.com, to pump up Blyleven. He also contacted writers with Hall of Fame votes and shared the numbers he crunched on Bert’s behalf.

I talked to Lederer today after Larkin got in and Morris didn’t.

BS: Were ...

Damn, zapped by Hall effect…can’t link to way cool interactive blob visualization thingee.

That’s just those who appear in the Top 144 eligible players. Here, I obviously use “eligible” as meaning “retired for five years”. Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson obviously are not eligible for the Hall of Fame.

I just can’t believe we have a Top 50 player who is struggling to get in the Hall of Fame.

One thing that makes me quite happy about this visual is how much more in sync the Hall of wWAR is ...

From the Daniel Dunglas Home of predictions…Chris Jaffe produces…

Based on the above criteria and my own semi-informed guesses, here are my predictions alongside last year’s performance to show the predicted change:

Name	      2012	2011
Barry Larkin	82	62
Jack Morris	65	54
Jeff Bagwell	54	42
Lee Smith	52	45
Tim Raines	52	38
Edgar Martinez	39	33
Alan Trammell	32	24
Larry Walker	27	20
Mark McGwire	24	20
Fred McGriff	24	18
Dale Murphy	19	13
Don Mattingly	18	14
Rafael Palmeiro	15	11
Bernie ...

Posted on behalf of Scott Fischthal and Neal Traven.

SABR invites all members to present their research findings to their colleagues attending SABR42 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Oral presentations are expected to last 20 minutes, followed by a five minute question-and-answer period.  Posters will be presented, with the author on-hand to discuss the work, during a poster session of 90 or so minutes, and will probably remain on display throughout the convention. Abstracts covering all aspects of ...

He thought he had the world by the tail - till it exploded in his face, with a ballot attached!

A couple of years ago we suggested to the folks at the Hall of Merit that they extend their efforts by following the strictures of actual history and select potential Hall of Fame inductees according to the original rules:

—Vote for 10 players;
—75% of the votes produces enshrinement;
—Eligibility rules as in existence for each year in question, with the exception of Gehrig (presumed inducted via ...

Uh-oh…don’t let Danny Peary see this.

45-Tie. Harold Baines, 28 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 5 yes, 26 no): Guys like Baines illustrated an interesting point for this year’s project, earning far more votes by and large than many of the 19th century greats on the ballot, but with a much lower percentage of their voters saying they belonged in the Hall of Fame. Certainly, I doubt too many people will cry foul about this over Baines, a very good designated hitter for much of his ...

Borderline Primates unite!

Regardless of how the Cubs and White Sox fare in the coming season, serious Chicago sports fans could finally get what they’ve been waiting for on Opening Day 2012.

That’s when they’ll be introduced to ChicagoSide, which may turn out to be the most game-changing addition to the sports media scene since the Score debuted on radio 20 years ago next month.

“We’re launching the best Chicago sports website the city’s ever seen,” said Jonathan Eig, 47, the ...

Weee…my “Please Sack Plesac” campaign seems to be working! (Congrats, Jay!)

It gives me great pleasure to announce that I’ll be debuting on MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential on Tuesday at 5:30 PM Eastern. For the uninitiated, Clubhouse Confidential is a cutting-edge attempt to put advanced statistics in the television spotlight, using them not only to analyze the day’s big news but to explore some of the perennial controversies which often pit statheads against the mainstream. The show ...

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.

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.

...

Please Pardon Our Noise, It Is the Sound of Freedom!

I started this Mariners Blog last season as a way to express and share my love for the game of Baseball. Sadly the Mariners have had two terrible seasons despite employing sabermetrics types in the front office,which has made this team tough to follow but my passion for the game seems to drive me on. I guess there is no known advanced metrics formula to measure committment to this game but I suppose I have a high WAR in that area and I have ...

You can’t spell ZiPS without…Dan!

How long ago did you come up with ZiPS?

Szymborski: The genesis of it was there’s a [person] who contributes to Baseball Think Factory named Chris Dial, and in the late ’90s, they were talking about how someone could make a projection system that’s very basic and get most of the way there, in a way kind of a primordial version of Marcel which is a tabulator.

Before 2002, I was thinking maybe I should try my hand at a projection system. At that time, ...