No, not your security blanket (although it can get chilliy in Mom's basement). This is a music thread and I hope you'll /cough/ rush /cough/ to add your comments...

What do you think is the best cover version of a song you ever heard? Live or recorded, the best performance of a previously recorded song other than by the original artist-composer.

Being a fan of Louis Armstrong... I'm going to give the nod to The Ramones cover of "What A Wonderful World". Honorable mentions later in the thread.

-75-

WAR, it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker. WAR, friend only to the... sabremetrician or at least the statistically inclined. As a follow-up to my wildly unpopular post of last week, here's another pass at ranking players of the "Retrosheet Era" (1955-2008), this time trying to quantify "dominance", for want of a better term.

The method to arrive at the table below:

1. For each season, determine the average WAR for all players and the Standard Deviation of WAR produced (using StDevP in Excel as it deals with a whole population rather than a sample).
2. For each player season, determine how many standard deviations above or below the mean each player was. (PlayerWAR - AvgWAR) / StDevP is the formula used. As an example, Joe Blow creates 5.5 WAR in a season where the average player produces .5 and the StDevP is 2.5 = a score of 2.0 for Joe.
   
3. Sum the score of standard deviations for each player.

To repeat: As always with WAR the dataset is limited to 1955 and later seasons. Some players obviously got jobbed by this. I have not refined it by restricting the dataset to only players debuting in 1955 or later.

99 players in the list which includes all players with a score of 24 or more. Please pardon me for not marking it up for who's eligible for the Hall of Fame and who is not. Lou Whitaker and Bobby Grich absolutely belong in the HOF by this method.

Orlando Cepeda and Brett Butler scored 23.8, again Johnnie LeMaster was the worst position player at -9.4 (same score as Kirk Rueter) and the ultimate destroyer of batting & fielding value was Greg Maddux (-18.5). If you want the score from any other player, speak up.

Comments on the methodology are also encouraged.

Continue reading this post »

WAR, there's got to be a better way... And indeed there is, at least when it comes to guestimating the chances of active players entering the Hall Of Fame. Or at least trying to get them into some sort of historical perspective. Historical WAR gives us tools to do that.

My method to arrive at the table below is fairly simple:

1. Sort all the players by year (combining stints for players who were traded), then by WAR in descending order.
2. Determine in a most Excel-ent fashion who were the top 5% in WAR for each given season.
3. Count the number of times each player's performance placed him in the top 5%.

Then I just present the data to you for your consideration and wait for your accolades and underpants.

As always with WAR the dataset is limited to 1955 and later seasons. Some players obviously got jobbed by this. I have not refined it by restricting the dataset to only players debuting in 1955 or later. It's a first draft...

Also please keep in mind that when seeking a cutoff point for the elite 5%, it is invariably just a matter of .1 WAR that includes or excludes a player from elite status. Some players may have numerous seasons where they were in or out by the skin of their teeth. I'm thinkin' on other ways to do that.

The cutoff of 5% is arbitrary. For recent seasons it typically yields a list of 35-40 players per season. Likewise the decision to cut off the report at 7 appearances in the top 5% is arbitrary. But that yields approximately 1.5 (or slightly higher with the pre-1955 debut players removed) players for consideration in each season in the dataset; being a "kinda small Hall" proponent I'm happy with that when it comes to evaluating non-pitchers.

Enjoy, and I look forward to your comments and suggestions on the methodology and the results.

Continue reading this post »

This will cure cancer and unite all mankind in brotherhood. Nah... But it would be kewl if we can pull it off...

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/name_ISS/index.html

Help us to name another important addition to the station - Node 3 and its cupola!
Vote using the poll on the right.

Voting will be open until March 20th, 2009.  NASA will announce the winning name in April 2009.

Choices are:

• Earthrise (lame hippie shit)
• Legacy (boring)
• Serenity (you know this is the right answer unless you suck)
• Venture (steaming pile of...)
• Write-In (no, you aren't that smart)

Everybody who posts here has picked a user name, and many have at one time or another had a blog or at least throught of starting one. So what names have you thought of using but didn't? Obviously if you post it, you risk somebody else using it, so maybe just stick with the ones that really aren't relevant anymore.

Who should go first? Me? Oh, okay...

Continue reading this post »

Testimony of Santiago and Bonds were similar

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=li-santiago021809

Benito Santiago and Barry Bonds gave similar testimony to a federal grand jury in 2003, yet only Bonds was charged with perjury. And Santiago was shown evidence against him before he testified, while Bonds was denied the same opportunity, sources said.

More than any other of the 30-odd athletes who testified before the grand jury in the long-running BALCO case, Santiago’s testimony suggests that the government engaged in selective prosecution by filing charges against Bonds...

Santiago, like several other ballplayers who testified, responded to prosecutor Jeff Nedrow’s questions by indicating Anderson didn’t identify the Clear or other drugs, such as testosterone, as steroids.

Continue reading this post »