THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Edit

Links to http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/

Friday Night Links
Published 4/10/2009 by Justin (noreply@blogger.com) at Basement Dwellers
... First, Tom Tango came up with a neat way of looking at the value of outstanding fielders that gets away from all these fuzzy math that tries to figure out whether a player should have gotten to a ball: ...

2009 MLB Preview: Divisions
Published 4/5/2009 by Vegas Watch (VegasWatch@gmail.com) at Vegas Watch
Totals Contest is still open until 8pm EST, but I'm seriously not accepting anything after that.  If I was better at this the following would've been six posts spread out over the course of last week, but that didn't happen, and now the season starts in a few hours, so here goes. Key: PECOTA: Projected wins in Nate Silver's system. CHONE: Projected wins in Sean Smith's system. Sim: Projected win total used in 20,000 simulations; weighted 66% PECOTA, 29% CHONE, 5% regression to 81. Because PECOTA and CHONE already take ...

Padres Pitching: Projecting Innings Pitched
Published 4/3/2009 by Daniel Gettinger at Friar Forecast
by Daniel Gettinger At The Book Blog, Tango has organized a project that uses the “wisdom of the crowds” approach to project playing timefor players across the league.  He lists the 40-man rosters provided on mlb.com, and asks fans to guess how many innings each player will play/pitch.  Oddly, Padres fans have “not been able to nominate enough innings for their pitchers,” and Tango is stumped.  With only 1197 innings projected for the entire staff, the Padres would be unable to finish an entire 162 game season (1458 ...

Optimizing the Astros line up by THE BOOK
Published 3/26/2009 by DyingQuail at The Crawfish Boxes
...  on how to best fit the Astros line up to Tango, Litchman, and Dolphin's seminal sabermetric inquiry to "The Book," but I figured I'd try my hand it.  I used PECOTA's weighted mean forecast because: ...

3.14159265358979...
Published 3/14/2009 by noreply@blogger.com (FrostKing) at Frost King Baseball
... Digest) Oriole Post Orioles Hangout Right Off Russell Roar From 34 The Loss Column The Wayward Oriole Weaver's Tantrum Baseball Analysts Baseball Musings Baseball Prospectus Baseball Reference Baseball Think Factory Beyond The Box Score Fan Graphs Joe Posnanski MLB Trade Rumors Sabernomics Shysterball StatCorner Statistically Speaking The Book The Hardball Times USSMariner I Never Stop Designing [image] Blog ...

Statistical shenanigans (part 1)
Published 3/2/2009 by John Beamer at The Hardball Times
... correlation are two very useful tools, no question. But one must be clear about their limitations before drawing meaningful insight from data. Today I want to share with you three lessons that I urge you to heed the next time you come across a study relying on correlation or regression. In part 2 we'll spend more time specifically on interpreting regression analyses this article focuses mostly on R and R squared metrics. (Note: Nothing I’m saying is this article is new. Others like MGL, Tango and ...

At Least Nick Sheridan Has People Skills
Published 2/13/2009 by colin at mgoblog
One of the most lamentable aspects of being a college football fan as far as I'm concerned has long been the lack of quality stat keeping, as well as analysis. Matt Hinton (currently Dr. Saturday) and Chris at Smart Football are great, and if CFB Stats didn't exist, this post wouldn't exist, but it ain't no Fangraphs and those fellas ain't quite Tom Tango, who literally wrote The Book on baseball. Not that it's a fair comparison. I bring Tango up because his stat wOBA inspired this post. wOBA (weighted On Base Average) is basically ...

Valuing Leadership
Published 2/9/2009 by Dave at U.S.S. Mariner
... Except, they don’t. They say they do, but they don’t. As Tango points out, the Cliff Floyd signing from last week is a perfect example of their actions belying their words. ...

Earning Peak?
Published 1/20/2009 by StatsGuru at baseballmusings.com
... This is powered by STATS, Inc. Good box scores, and good situational stats. Baseball Reference.com It's like having Total Baseball and the Big Mac online! Baseball Prospectus.com Wonderful commentary and analysis. Baseball Primer Baseball for the Thinking Fan. The Hardball Times Baseball. Insight. Daily. Takkle High School Sports Minor League Spilts Database Up-to-date minor league statistics, broken down by situation. Inside The Book A blog by the authors of The Book . Baseboogle A search engine for ...

Monday Mendozas
Published 1/5/2009 by Rob Neyer at ESPN Feed: neyer rob
... : I'm happy for all my friends who love the M's. I just hope Tango's new gig doesn't interfere much with his blogging . • With the holidays (finally, thankfully) over, we should see some business getting done this week, and ...

Mariners Smarten Up; Hire Tango to Crunch Numbers
Published 1/5/2009 by Phil Allard at Mike Silva's New York Baseball Digest
... for the Yankees, and now the venerable Tom Tango has been hired by The Seattle Mariners. Up until, say, yesterday, the Mariners were one of the most Pre-Cambrian of organizations. Hiring Tango suggests that they are really trying to turn the page and enter the 21st century. Mariner fans should be elated. You can check out Tango’s work on  Linear Weights, Run Expectancy, and Runs Created here. Tom Tango is also co-author of the influential tome: The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. btw–The Yanks’ saber guy, Mike ...

Ranking the first basemen - 2008
Published 12/31/2008 by Lee Panas (tiger337@comcast.net) at Tiger Tales: A Detroit Tigers Blog
... but they are the ones for which I currently have data for 2008. I will try to add others later as they become available. For each player in 2008, I converted each of the six measures to runs saved above average per 150 games. Last year, I covered in detail the algorithms for converting to runs saved. Rather than do that again this year, I will simply point you towards last year's articles which can be found in the Fielding Glossary . Many thanks go to Chris Dial , Tom Tango , Justin Inaz and others involved in developing these algorithms. I simply ...

Year End Thank You
Published 12/29/2008 by David Appelman at FanGraphs Baseball
... Tom Tango – The creator and inspiration behind many of the stats on FanGraphs including, but not limited to wOBA and everything Win Probability. His support of FanGraphs has been invaluable. ...

Saber-Friendly Blogging 101: Pitching RAR
Published 12/9/2008 by Sky Kalkman at Beyond the Box Score
... One basic statistic that estimates true-skill ERA is FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching).  It was created by Tom Tango and uses a basic arithmetic formula using K's, BB's, and HRs: (HR*13+(BB-IBB+HBP)*3-K*2) / IP + 3.20.  It works quite well and is available at both ...

World Serious Predictions
Published 10/22/2008 by Rich at Baseball Analysts
... down to Garza vs. Moyer, look for me in the cashier's line. Will Leitch, contributing editor at New York Magazine: 1. Rays 2. 7 games. 3. I think it comes down to David Price. He makes the Phillies’ bullpen advantage slightly less vast. I hope Ryan Howard doesn’t mind facing Price about, oh, six times in the late innings this series. Mitchel Lichtman, research analyst, author, and contributor to Inside the Book: 1. Rays 2. 6 games. 3. The Rays have around a 57% ...

Primer Dugout 10-1-08
Published 10/1/2008 at BBTF's Baseball Primer Newsblog
Baseball Primer Newsblog —The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Wednesday, October 01, 2008 Primer Dugout 10-1-08 You can’t quip October Wally Moses, Isolated Power Broker (GGC) Posted: October 01, 2008 at 08:18 AM | 0 comment(s) Related News: Dugout Reader Comments and Retorts Go to end of page Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy . Please report any ...

Best offense in baseball?
Published 8/18/2008 by Maddog (maddog@anothercubsblog.net) at Another Cubs Blog
... Anyone here who owns The Book probably remembers that very question.  A very quick summary:  9 average hitters would score 5.25 runs per game, 8 average hitters and 1 pitcher in the 9th spot would score 4.61 runs, pitcher batting 65% of the time and an average hitter batting 35% a team would score 4.83 runs per game.  So the pitcher batting (65% of the time, which is reality) costs the team 0.42 runs per game.  That’s 68 runs over 162 games.  American League teams are expected to score 68 more runs than a National ...

Mrs. Angels (63-53) @ Angels (72-43), 3:35pm **Game Chatter**
Published 8/9/2008 at Replacement Level Yankees Weblog
... · Detroit Tigers Weblog · DRaysBay · [image] · Earl Weaver Rules · Fast Balls · Friar Forecast · Joy of Sox · Julien's Baseball Blog · Knuckle Curve · Let's Go Tribe · [image] · [image] · Oriole Post · P is for Pirate · Purple Row · [image] · Saber-Scouting · San Francisco Giants Blog · Skyking 162 · Surviving Grady · Teepee Talk · [image] · The Other Fifteen · [image] · [image] · [image] · View From a ...

Double Plus Ungood
Published 8/5/2008 by Eric Simon at Amazin' Avenue
... recognizing his utter ineffectiveness against the platoon advantage. Aside from the relief appearances themselves, another thing to look at is the relative stress of those appearances. All appearances aren't created equal; I don't doubt that high pressure situations are more draining -- both physically and mentally -- than lower pressure spots. One easy way to compare relative duress is by using pLI, an indicator of mean leverage via the leverage index, an invention of Tom Tango. Thanks to the awesomeness of FanGraphs.com, we can easily compare the average ...

How do I become a Sabermetrician?
Published 7/1/2008 by Pizza Cutter at MVN RSS
...   I’ve seen several cases of someone posting one of those, being ignored, and then disappearing never to be heard from again.  I’m guessing that they were frustrated that no one saw their brilliance.  Don’t start with a junk stat and be frustrated.  There is good work to be done and you might be the one who can do it.  Read on. Spend a few months reading Sabermetric work.  There are plenty of good sites out there.  We all link to each other.  Read their stuff.  ...