Archive for the 'Bloops' Category

Baseball StatHead: May 4, 2011

Today's Stathead entries include links to The Hardball Times, SweetSpot, and Baseball Analytics, plus many reactions to Liriano's no-hitter.

Baseball StatHead: May 3, 2011

Today's Stathead entries feature research from Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, The Book, and a new edition of JQAS.

Keeping Score: The Most Important Skill for a Leadoff Hitter - NYTimes.com

Some basic sabermetric thoughts on leadoff hitters, with a little help from The Book.

In January 2004, Tangotiger posted this at his site:

http://www.tangotiger.net/archives/stud0268.shtml

It linked to a very cool mathematical method for determining the probability that any team was the "true" best team in a season. Unfortunately, though, webpages sometimes have a tendency to disappear over the course of 7 years. That's just what happened here -- the original link is now dead.

However, I contacted the creator of the methodology, Dr. Jesse Frey (Professor of Mathematical Science at Villanova), and he was gracious enough to re-upload the original study to his current site:

http://www19.homepage.villanova.edu/jesse.frey/BestTeam/forprimer.htm

Now sabermetricians can once again estimate the probability of any team truly being baseball's best. And for what it's worth, here are the current results from a very simplified version:

Mets Get Little Bang for Their Bucks - NYTimes.com

A brief review of the Mets' perpetually bad marginal dollars-to-marginal wins ratio.

Here's the details via Newswire -

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig expects the playoffs to expand from eight teams to 10 for the 2012 season.

Selig went public last fall with his support for expanded playoffs, and the matter is subject to collective bargaining with the players' association.

"I would say we're moving to expanding the playoffs, but there's a myriad of details to work out," Selig said Thursday in New York at his annual meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors. "Ten is a fair number."

Selig said scheduling is the major issue of discussion, including how many games the new wild-card round would be. The two wild-card teams in each league would meet, and the winners would advance to the following round against division winners.

"The more we've talked about it, I think we're moving inexorably to that," he said.

So, as a baseball fan, what are your thoughts on this change?

Help Determine a Player's Attractiveness Quotient

At B-R we are always trying to acquire new data to give you a fuller picture of the players and of team personnel. For example, a recent deal we signed with team equipment personnel will allow us to soon add shoe size, hat size, and glove and bat models for all current major league players (still working on the minor leagues).
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Before you take in the Opening Day action, here are some last-minute sabermetric predictions to chew on:

• Baseball Prospectus is still probably the industry standard, and here's what they see happening in 2011.
• The Replacement Level Yankees Weblog does these great Diamond Mind sims every year; here are the AL and NL editions for 2011.
• Finally, check out Patriot's less-mathematical (but still saber-tinged) picks at Walk Like A Sabermetrician.

I hope you're as excited about this season as I am!

Just in time for Opening Day, here's my head-to-head review of the two major baseball games on the console market this year, MLB 11: The Show and Major League Baseball 2k11.

Graphics: Ballpark-wise, I think 2K11 stands up very well to The Show, but overall I have to give the visual nod to MLB 11. Its player faces and body types are much more accurate-looking, the animations are smoother, and The Show has none of the occasional framerate hiccups you'll find in 2K11. I like how both games offer progressive lighting effects -- i.e., the shadows in the park change as the game goes on -- though I think MLB 11 pulls this off a bit better than 2K11. One positive about 2K11 is that its in-game colors are much more vibrant, while The Show generally features more muted visuals, but that doesn't make up for MLB 11's overall advantages. The Show wins the graphical category.

Presentation: In-game, 2K11 offers a slightly superior presentation with bells & whistles like the integration of Inside Edge scouting reports and a neat win probability graph in the pause menu. The Show is more traditional, trying to mimic an actual TV broadcast, so its presentation is solid but largely unspectacular, aside from a decent array of situational player cutscenes. On the front end, 2K Sports games typically have a counterintuitive menu system and MLB 2K11 is no different, using the same setup we've seen from the company's sports games for the past few years. MLB 11's frontend is much better, with simpler navigation and a cool dynamic ballpark feature that displays your favorite team's park in the background (or shuffles through all parks if you don't pick a favorite). So who wins on balance depends on whether you enjoy a flashy in-game presentation or not, and for the record I like 2K11 here.

Sound: I have to give 2K11 a big edge here. The in-game commentary by Gary Thorne, Steve Phillips, and John Kruk is impressive as always, replicating the chatter of a real baseball broadcast as well as any game I've ever played. All sports games will have some repetition in their commentary from time to time, but 2K11 mostly does a great job of having the 3 guys in the booth sound like they're having a real conversation about the game. The Show's crew of Matt Vasgersian, Dave Campbell, & Eric Karros, on the other hand, lacks any such enthusiasm or chemistry: sure, they get the job done, but you would never confuse their commentary with that of an actual game. Crowd-wise, The Show is a little better -- the fans have more awareness about the on-field action -- and in the menus, the music is typical sports game fare (though credit goes to both games for including older artists like the Edgar Winter group and Joan Jett). All in all, MLB 2K11 has a leg up in the sound department.

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The Greatest Pitcher You've Never Heard Of | ThePostGame

He won more than 350 games and tallied over 4,500 strikeouts in his career, but his legacy has largely been lost to time.