SB Nation User Blog: philkid3

I was almost there for this.

philkid3 — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:09:21 -0000

Wieters Day FanShot Round Up

philkid3 — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:08:41 -0000

While you were chatting, I looked over some of the best FanShots from the last week and put them here for you. Good times!

via www.ianolandwaydesign.com

Eric Seidman at FanGraphs put together an article on when certain rate stats become statistically significant. You have an idea of swing rate at 50 PA, but it takes 500 more than that to get a significant look at isolated power. Sky gave a few more examples from a Hardball Times article in the comments section. Pretty good look, and there's a break down of the methodology included.

Jay Jaffee says that for all the Rangers' defensive improvements, the pitching still deserves credit. Because of ERA and Quality Starts. And then I canceled by Baseball Prospectus subscription. (For now.)

Slate.com looks at the book Death at the Ballpark: A Comprehensive Study of Game-Related Fatalities, revealing the national pastime to be a bit more lethal than you may realize.

Probably an old meme, but the All-Star Game may just be a celebration of all things Brewer.

Over at Purple Row, they take a look at Todd Helton's early success. Spoiler Alert: he's doing it with a very rare lack of patience.

MLB.com has a nifty video of the top prospects from the upcoming draft. And in other draft-related news, there's a really nifty Q&A session at The Baseball Analysts with Baseball America's Jim Callis.

Purple Row looked at the historical spending value of the Rockies franchise.

And, finally, something really cool: Google Earth 3D tours of baseball stadiums!

And one more note. Sky announced that Sports Media Challenge named Beyond the Boxscore the #10 MLB blog on the web. He highlighted that it achieved this spot in part due to a great community, and I completely agree with that. And the FanShots area is where a lot of our community interaction goes down. I say this a lot, but I really want to continue to encourage everyone to keep posting all the cool baseball stories they come across, all the nifty statistical analysis they find, and all the links to their own work they want to share. And, most of all, keep commenting and sharing ideas and feed back. It's my job to keep that section up to the standards of the 10th best baseball blog (or hopefully better) out there, but (especially when work is keeping me busier than usual) I'm not a community, just one person. For those of you who contribute, thank you, and for those of you who want to, please do.

Alright, everyone enjoy the Orioles game!

Rich Lederer Q&A with Jim Callis

philkid3 — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:47:27 -0000

Rich Lederer Q&A with Jim Callis

Rich Lederer at The Baseball Analysts talks to Jim Callis from Baseball America about the upcoming draft. Callis talks about the underrating of the talent in this pool, what it will take to sign Strasburg, some of the better names out there and the names that will be getting more unique contracts.

A lot of juicy name dropping in there, and I think it's especially good for people who aren't too familiar with the draft. Have at!

Today is the first day of the rest of baseball's life.

philkid3 — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:28:57 -0000

Today is the first day of the rest of baseball's life.

FG Love for Chris Carpenter

philkid3 — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:06:40 -0000

FG Love for Chris Carpenter

Eric Seidman looks at how dominant Chris Carpenter has been in his four starts this season, comparing him to Zack Greinke. I mostly link to it because this made my jaw drop:

In four starts, Carpenter has added more wins to the Cardinals than their entire bullpen. If you’re skeptical, the combo of Motte, Franklin, Thompson, Miller, Reyes, Kinney and Boggs (as a reliever) has combined for 0.5 wins above replacement. This speaks more to the ineptitude of their bullpen but serves to show that a good starter in just four starts can be twice as effective, if not more, than a reliever available all season.

Yup.

Dave Cameron Responds to Paul DePodesta

philkid3 — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:02:05 -0000

Dave Cameron Responds to Paul DePodesta

DePo put out an explanation of the Jody Gerut trade on his blog, though it doesn't do a very good job of convincing me.

Over at FanGraphs, Cameron takes on the individual reasons DePo offers up FJM-style, and also doesn't find them to be too convincing. The only reason he seems to buy in to at all is making room on the roster, but it's still not enough to make it anything more than a seemingly insane trade.

The Rangers' seven-game winning streak comes to a crashing halt via a one-hit shutout and a...

philkid3 — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:24:30 -0000

The Rangers' seven-game winning streak comes to a crashing halt via a one-hit shutout and a three-game sweep by the Tigers. Still, they're 13-6 this month, and for all the talk about their upgraded defense masking a pitching staff whose performance hasn't improved radically, the staff has put up a 3.30 ERA with 11 quality starts this month. Of course, striking out a hair under five per nine during that span doesn't bode terribly well for a repeat.

Baseball Prospectus Hit List

Seriously. This kind of logic from Baseball Prospectus! My head hurts.

Hey Look! A FanShots Round Up

philkid3 — Sun, 24 May 2009 02:24:11 -0000

You remember these, right?

To those of you not in the know who look forward to the reviews of recent FanShots on the front page, I'd like to apologize for being pretty busy lately. But I'm not so busy tonight, so here we go!

via d.yimg.com

For anyone who's forgotten, you can go in to My Dashboard to put more FanShots on your front page if they're moving too quickly for you. You can also click the FanShots link at the top of the page to open up an entire page of all the neat stuff you can find down there.

The BP Idol entries are out there and ready to be voted on. I'm among those pulling for Jeff from Cotts Contracts. I just use his stuff too much not to.

Did you know that Jack Kerouac may have been the first fantasy baseball player? Pretty interesting. And kind of weird.

TusconRoyal shared his new favorite t-shirt with us.

Steve Phillips thinks Carlos Beltran is not as good as Torii Hunter, Curtis Granderson or Nate McLouth. Becuase he's not a winning player. Cool.

This is what happens when my life is being consumed by a whip-cracking mouse: I miss the things I love about the interwebs. I even missed the fact that Derek Holland got his first start until just now (is this what parents feel like working away while their kids grow up?). And I missed FanGraphs somehow becoming more awesome by adding pitch type linear weights. I just don't know anymore. I've said a couple times something to the effect of "FanGraphs is now as great as could possibly be." I'm going to stop saying that so I'll stop being wrong.

Not exactly baseball related, but BigBlueShoe of Stampede Blue took on Indianapolis Star writer Bob Kravitz on the radio over the credibility of blogs in the media market place. This sort of stuff makes me smile.

Joe Posnanski helps put another nail in the coffin of the stupid "he'll be the last person to ever win 300 games!" hyperbole.

Minute Maid Park is ridiculous. And by "ridiculous" I mean in the fun way that makes baseball's individual parks entertaining.

Dan took a look at the concept of stealing home, and suggests that teams steal at far too much better a rate (60%) compared to the break-even point (35%) to not be attempting the strategy often. I tend to agree, but remember Bill James suggesting not stealing home is more a safety concern than one of risk. Anyone have anything to add?

As usual, much of the greatness in these FanShots comes from the discussion. Click on the links, have a look, and keep the juices flowing!

Basically, the way it works is that the average single is worth ~0.5 runs. That’s the additional r...

philkid3 — Tue, 19 May 2009 03:49:46 -0000

Basically, the way it works is that the average single is worth ~0.5 runs. That’s the additional runs scored you’d expect to get in an average inning that has a single vs. that same inning before the single. So, if you have a guy with excellent range in the outfield who prevents that single, you prevent that 0.5 runs. But in addition to preventing the single, you also caused an out! That extra out reduces the number of runs scored in an inning by, on average, 0.3 runs, because it prevents other players from coming up to hit as Krall describes above…

Justin of Basement Dwellers interviews Nick Krall of the Cincinnati front office.

For some reason, BD won't open for me, so I just ripped the quote from Tango's blog. If someone could add more, that would be sweet.

FG: Confirmation Biases and Cliff Lee

philkid3 — Tue, 19 May 2009 03:28:04 -0000

FG: Confirmation Biases and Cliff Lee

Eric Seidman talks about folks assuming a Cliff Lee will regress to being a sub-par player again, and jumping on a bad first couple starts as being confirmation of bias.

I've seen a lot of people sticking to their guns on this.

Lee's line at this point: 8 GS, 54 IP, 3.00 ERA, 3.17 FIP, 7.0 K/9, 2.2 BB/9

That's good for a 1.7 WAR. He's still good.