January 2009

  • Bill James Dept.

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    Little anecdote on Red Sox VP Bill James ...

    In 1992, Dave Fleming had a "splash" rookie year for the M’s, going 17-10, 3.39.  The reason that Fleming has always stuck in my mind was because of the memorable instinctiveness of a Bill James "ruling" on Fleming.

    The Seattle cyber-sphere did a retro on Fleming recently, and looked about the landscape for a root cause of The Fleming Flameout,.  Mostly, it blamed Bill Plummer (and other coaches) for Read more

  • Long Live the WBC

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    Team Japan hasn't yet announced its roster, that I know of.  Expected to play for Team Japan are Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima, who have expressed their strong interest in competing.

    Some baseball fans love the WBC, but more hate it.  Too much impact on MLB(TM).  We read one argument on the 'net that says the WBC is a 'bad, bad idea' and a 'sham' cooked up by Bud Se Read more

  • Don't Underestimate the GM's

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    In October 2004, Ben Murphy & Jared Weiss wrote an excellent article on BP's website — titled something like "Predicting Future Salaries."

    http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=3547

    Murphy & Weiss used Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) and some regression math to try to predict future salary growth, estimate Beltran's yearly salary, etc etc.

    They came up with these two graphs:

    Read more