NLCS Game 7: Predicting the Unpredictable
Tonight, Matt Cain and Kyle Lohse will face off in Game 7 of the NLCS. The winning team will host the Tigers on Wednesday in Game 1 of the World Series. That much, barring a rainout, we can be sure of.
But not much else. Baseball is a very unpredictable game. Great teams lose one-third of their games during the regular season and horrible teams win one-third of their games. This year, baseball’s best team lost 39.5% of their games and baseball’s worst team won 34%!
The old adage reminds us that “it’s what you do with the other 1/3 that counts.”
Yet in October, in a match-up of teams who finished the regular season within six games of each other, you can’t really play the long run percentages. Both teams are starting their best pitcher over the last six months. Both teams have won 3 of the last 6 meetings over the last eight days.
The best evidence you can cite if you’re making a prediction is that the Giants are at home and they are facing the Cardinals, who performed worse on the road this year. Other than that, this is a coin flip.
In the playoffs, it’s my view that every single game is a coin flip because all of the teams are roughly equivalent. Even most series are coin flips. You hope your pitchers execute and you pray the other guys’ don’t.
While that may be an oversimplification and you can definitely do things to maximize your chances of winning and minimize them (see Washington, Ron), mostly You Can’t Predict Baseball (@cantpredictball).
Whatever, let’s try anyway!
Why the Giants Will Win
Matt Cain is better than Kyle Lohse, even if it was pretty close in 2012. Plus, the Giants are at home and have won the last two games. Despite how odd this sounds as well, Bochy is probably a better skipper than Matheny and can run out a better army of relievers. The Cards may have a good offense, but AT&T Park is where offense goes to die (apologies to Safeco Field, you can’t even win this).
Why the Cardinals Will Win
Have you watched baseball in the last twelve months? The Cardinals always win elimination games and they do so in spectacular fashion. It’s practically the only thing we can really be sure of anymore.
The Gist
I think the Cardinals edge this one out. Let’s say 4-2 with an 8th inning 3-run homerun from someone weird, like I don’t know, Skip Schumaker. That just feels right. Feels very Cardinals.
So sit back, DVR the debate, and enjoy sudden death, winner take all baseball. There are only 5 to 8 games left in 2012, and I’m not quite ready for it to be over. Except for Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. I’m ready for them to be over.
Trade Grade: Heath Bell, Chris Young on the Move
Because today is the Day of No Baseball ©, anything remotely baseball related is getting prime space on SABR Toothed Tigers. That anything is a three way trade between the Diamondbacks, Marlines, and A’s.
Today, the Marlins sent RP Heath Bell to the Diamondbacks in a three team deal that shipped Diamondbacks’ OF Chris Young to Oakland and A’s minor league infielder Yordy Cabrera to Miami. Cliff Pennington is also coming to Arizona as part of the trade. Cash considerations were also involved.
While the monetary details are critical in evaluating this deal, let’s take a look at how each team came out of this assuming the Marlins ended up defraying some of the cost from Oakland.
Miami Marlins
Gave up: Heath Bell
Got: Yordy Cabrera
The Marlins signed Bell to a 3 year, $25 million deal last winter during their winter meetings binge that included a $9 million team option for 2015 that becomes automatic if Bell meets certain criteria. They seemed ready to cut him loose early on in the deal, and pulled the trigger today. Buyer’s remorse set in for Miami after a rough 2012 campaign that saw him post a 5.09 ERA in 63.2 innings with a BB/9 of 4.10. His FIP was certainly better than his ERA, but he still only posted a 0.4 WAR and seemed to be on bad terms with manager Ozzie Guillen.
The Marlins are running from a bad signing and are probably relieved to be doing so. Bell had two excellent seasons with the Padres in 2009-2010, but regressed significantly last season despite keep his save total above 40 for a third straight year. His strikeouts came down big time and his FIP and ERA both shot up. This seems to be a case of a team chasing saves, despite saves being a terrible indicator of how a reliever performed.
Yordy Cabrera doesn’t seem to be a big prospect, but does seem to have some tools that will translate on offense, including some decent pop from the right side. Most of what I’ve read seems to indicate he will have to move to a corner spot to have a shot in the big leagues.
Oakland A’s
Gave up: Yordy Cabrera, Cliff Pennington
Got: Chris Young
Cabrera won’t be missed in Oakland too much and Cliff Pennington is hardly a vital player to the A’s. Pennington had a strong 3.9 WAR in 2010 based heavily on his good defense at SS, but has never broken the 2 WAR mark in any other season. He lacks power and has been getting on base less than he used to, so Oakland can replace him pretty easily.
The addition of Young is interesting. He’s owed $8.5 million next season and has an $11 million option ($1.5 million buyout) for 2014. 2012 was Young’s sixth full season in the big leagues and he’s put together some pretty good campaigns. Both 2010 and 2011 saw him post 4.6 WAR and he managed to post a 2.8 WAR this season despite only playing 101 games. He’s never had a high average or OBP, but the defensive metrics love his glove and he does hit for power.
The other thing I like about Young in this deal is that his worst seasons seem to go hand in hand with a low Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). Generally speaking, BABIP can fluctuate for reasons that have nothing to do with talent (think opposing defense and luck), so Oakland might be making a smart bet that Young can bounce back in 2013.
What makes this more interesting for Oakland is that Josh Reddick and Yoenis Cespedes are definitely part of their 2013 OF along with Young, which opens up some of their other pieces for the trading block. We all know Billy Beane is pretty good at getting a lot back in trades, so this could give him an opportunity to make a profit on some players who played over their heads in 2012.
Arizona Diamondbacks:
Gave up: Chris Young
Got: Cliff Pennington, Heath Bell
The Diamondbacks may have grown frustrated with Young’s low average and OBP, and they could afford to with Kubel, Upton, and Parra as OF options for 2013. Parra’s glove is excellent, so he can make up a lot of Young’s value pretty easily.
The Diamondbacks added Pennington to complement their plan of controlling the leagues supply of contact hitter utility infielders (think James MacDonald, Willie Bloomquist, etc). I can’t say Pennington is a game changer for Arizona, but he doesn’t hurt to have around.
Bell is the wild card in this deal because we don’t know how much of his struggles the last two years are irreversible. He’s had a couple of strong seasons in his career, but he’s getting older, so it’s tough to say. If he bounces back, he’s a great add, if not, he’s next to useless. He walked more hitters, gave up more hits, and gave up more homeruns in 2012 than he did previously, so the Dbacks are betting on that being a fluke rather than a pattern. Chase Field is not a friendly place to get hit hard compared to Bell’s previous stops in San Diego and Miami.
Overall
This feels like a change of scenery deal that could benefit everyone. The Marlins got Cabrera back in a deal that allowed them to dump Bell. Basically, this was better for them than keeping Bell.
I think the A’s did great here. Adding Young without giving up anything too critical could help them with a boost from Young and the freedom to trade some of their currently overvalued assents.
The Diamondbacks will love this deal if Bell bounces back, otherwise, this was foolish. Young could easily provide a more useful return if they allow him to rebuild his value a little in 2013 before dealing him.
Most of all, I think the players are the big winners. Young and Bell were in situations where they were losing playing time and unhappy with the arrangement. They may not bounce back, but they will get their shot.
A Day Without Baseball: Trying to Look Forward
It’s important to remember that even on horrible days like today, life is still worth living. I am, of course, referring to the fact that there is no baseball today. None. The ALCS is over, and the NLCS is traveling from St. Louis to San Francisco.
I’m reminded today of what it’s like during the offseason when you can’t watch live baseball. You have to do household chores, pay attention to work, spend time with your family, or even (GASP!) go outside. The humanity.
There are a couple of days like today during the season too. The day after the All-Star Game is a black hole of sports, not just baseball. Usually the day after the regular season is empty barring a real one game playoff as well. Then we have these rare off days during the postseason when a series has wrapped up and another is traveling. Or when the World Series is traveling.
These few days sprinkled across the calendar prepare us for the dark Winter of No Baseball ©. I don’t like it. My wife diagnosed me with Offseasonal Affective Disorder last year. (Read that again, she’s really clever.)
So this site is going to help me through the offseason by allowing me a place to write about baseball even when I can’t watch it. Some of the things to look forward to are 2012 Awards, 2012 recaps, 2013 predictions/previews, leaderboards, stat introductions, fun lists, Free Agency coverage, and probably a lot more.
Since we have some time today, I thought I’d post my 2012 Preseason Predictions, so we’re all on the same page come early November when we revisit them.
Division Winners and Wild Cards:
AL: Rays, Tigers, Rangers, Angels (WC), Yankees (WC)
NL: Nationals, Reds, Diamondbacks, Phillies (WC), Cardinals (WS)
World Series: Rays over Nationals
AL MVP, Cy Young, ROY: Longoria, Verlander, Moore
NL MVP, Cy Young, ROY: Upton, Hamels, Mesoraco
As you can see, I hit on 3/5 of the AL teams and 3/5 of the NL teams and likely one award. Not great, but not bad. I’ll run a full piece on all of these once the series is over.
Writing this only took me about twenty minutes, so by that logic, I’ll be turning out nine to fifteen posts a day during the offseason. So, I might have to get a hobby for November through March. Suggestions welcome, but I really hate anything that isn’t baseball.
Goofy Leaderboards: Unidentified Pitches!
Since the Tigers clinched a World Series birth yesterday and NLCS Game 5 is still a few hours away, I thought I’d post a goofy 2012 leaderboard, for those of you who love random bits of information.
Today, let’s look at unidentified pitches. What are you talking about, you ask? Thanks to advanced camera and software in every ML park, every pitch’s location, speed, and type are charted and tracked. But sometimes, the system can’t pick up exactly what pitch we’re looking at, so it gives it a tag of XX as opposed to say, FB, SL, CB, CH, etc.
Who leads baseball in these crazy, weird pitches?
This list includes only pitchers who qualified for the ERA title because the system learns the pitchers, so if you only pitch a couple of innings, it has a tough time deciding what pitch you just threw.
Top Five Pitchers Who Throw Weird Pitches:
1. Rick Nolasco (Marlins): 1.2%
2. Aaron Harang (Dodgers): 1.2%
3. Mat Latos (Reds): 1.1%
4. Josh Johnson (Marlins): 1.1%
5. Mike Minor (Braves): 1.0%
That list probably doesn’t really excite you. Only about one percent of pitches weren’t identified for the most unidentified pitchers? That’s hardly interesting. You’re right, but the hitters!
The hitters are interesting!
Top Seven Hitters Who Face Weird Pitchers:
1. Prince Fielder (Tigers): 2.7%
2. Miguel Cabrera (Tigers): 2.5%
3. Carlos Beltran (Cardinals): 2.4%
4. David Wright (Mets): 2.3%
5. Albert Pujols (Angels): 2.1%
6. Josh Hamilton (Rangers): 2.0%
7. Ryan Braun (Brewers): 2.0%
Two things about this list are awesome. First, all of those hitters are top flight. In trying to come up with an anecdotal explanation for this, I have two. 1) Managers go to the bullpen more often with great hitters at the plate, so we’re just seeing these guys facing more pitchers who the system might know a little less well than a starter. 2) Pitchers are doing something different against great hitters that makes identifying the pitch marginally harder. Maybe there is an intentional walk effect?
The second cool thing is that the top two guys play for the same team! What?! This should be a pretty random thing if we’re talking about pitches the computer can’t recognize, but there are two Tigers at the top of the list. Before you say that it’s about the cameras at Comerica Park, no other Tigers are near the top and Austin Jackson is LAST at 0.0%!
Unfortunately, after further review, it is an intentional walk effect. Look up the IBB leaders and the list will look eerily similar. For both hitters and pitchers.
The lesson in this is that apparently a very expensive computer system can’t figure out what the hell is going on when a pitcher throws a 71mph fastball up and away when they normally fires 92-93mph. Maybe we shouldn’t be too worried about the singularity and computers taking over the world.
Or maybe we should, because they can’t figure out why you’d want to give someone a free base when the best player in the league only reaches base 40% of the time.
Tigers Have Fun, Punch Their Ticket to the Fall Classic
I’m thinking about two images tonight. One happened two months ago. One a few hours ago.
On August 3, Don Kelly stood in front of his locker trying to cheer up the melancholy reporters who had to ask him how he felt after getting designated for assignment to make room on the roster for the returning Andy Dirks.
You read that right, he was cheering them up. Everyone was sad to see Kelly go. He’s one of the nicest guys in baseball. But Kelly, while disappointed to be leaving Detroit for the minors, said, “Guys, this isn’t a funeral.”
You’re damn right it wasn’t. Not for Kelly, not for the Tigers. Two months later Kelly was driving in the winning run of a topsy turvy ALDS Game 2 and literally lifting Prince Fielder off the ground.
Don Kelly was having fun.
Earlier today, Miguel Cabrera launched a two run homerun into the left field seats at Comerica Park in the fourth inning to all but punch the Tigers’ ticket to the Fall Classic. TBS showed a replay from the perspective of the LF seats. That angle had a view of the Tigers’ bullpen.
Drew Smyly, the Tigers’ fifth starter until late July and reliever since, was jumping up and down with the most genuine smile on his face. The 23 year old lefty was so excited. He’s been dreaming his whole life about pitching in the World Series. He’s going to.
Drew Smyly was having fun.
There are a lot of little moments like that. Prince Fielder and Quintin Berry have both had a lot of fun in their first seasons with the club. Walkoff wins, near no-hitters.
This team, even when a lot of fans were worrying, was having a blast. I remember Avila’s walkoff during that first weekend set at Comerica. The unbridled joy.
So 6 years after I first tasted playoff baseball, the Tigers are going to the World Series. They came close last year, but fell short. I think a lot of players grew up from that near miss. It showed this year.
They played hard, but damn it, they had fun. Baseball is fun. And it’s about to get even better.
Four more wins.
Stat of the Week: Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP)
One of the things I want to try to do here at New English D is to introduce sabermetrics into the common vernacular of baseball fandom. I think the biggest reason for resistance to new stats and metrics is that they are not commonly understood. It’s not because people are too stupid, they just simply aren’t looking to spend a lot of time learning new things that don’t seem relevant.
Basically, most baseball fans don’t really understand why the basic statistics are misleading them about a player’s true value.
I’d like to start with one of the more prominent sabermetrics for pitchers, Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) which is essentially a stand in for Earned Run Average (ERA).
The problem with ERA is that so much of it is outside of a pitcher’s control. For example, if you have a terrible defense, your ERA is going to be higher than if you have an awesome defense, even if you make identical pitches for an entire season.
What FIP tries to do is factor defense out of the equation by presenting a formula that predicts what your ERA would be if you had league average defense and league average luck by looking at your strikeouts, walks, and homeruns allowed (things you can actually control as a pitcher). Generally speaking, the most contact hitters make against you, the more variation we could see.
The formula goes something like this and is based on long run averages in MLB history:
FIP = (13 x HR) + (3 x (BB+HBP)) + ((2 x K) / IP) + constant
What this formula does is give you a number that looks like ERA, but only responds to things inside a pitcher’s control and FIP is a better predictor of future performance than ERA. Generally speaking, it’s a great place to start your analysis. You want to dig deeper into batted ball data and other trends, but FIP starts you off with a number that is based solely on a what a pitcher can control.
For reference, an average FIP is 4.00 with an excellent one being 2.90 and a terrible one being 5.00. For a full explanation from the people who created it, see this.
To give you an idea, let’s take a look at the some ERA to FIP comparisons from the 2012 season. For a complete listing of FIP, head here.
MLB’s top five in FIP this year were Gio Gonzalez (2.82), Felix Hernandez (2.84), Clayton Kershaw (2.89), Justin Verlander (2.94), and David Price (3.05). That seems to jive with what you might think. Remember Gio and Kershaw get to face the pitcher, so their number is going to look a little better just like ERA.
So of the qualifying starts in 2012, whose ERA made them look better or worse than they are?
I’m picking a few examples to demonstrate FIP’s usefulness. Tigers’ sinkerball Rick Porcello seems an obvious candidate for an ERA inflated by bad defense, right? Very true. Porcello’s ERA is a robust 0.68 runs higher than his FIP. The Royals Luke Hochevar didn’t get much help either with an ERA a whopping 1.10 runs higher than his FIP.
How about guys whose ERA made them look better than they are? Jeremy Hellickson got a full 1.50 runs back from his defense per nine innings and extreme fly ball pitcher Jered Weaver, with the help of the crazy good Angels outfield, got 0.94 runs better in ERA than FIP.
Now four random examples might not convince, but I encourage you to take a look at the FIP leaders and start using that metric to learn a little bit more about how someone is pitching.
Two final thoughts. One don’t bother with RA Dickey because there are so few knuckleballer’s in history and the averages don’t control for how differently knuckleballs get hit.
Two, whose defense and luck has been the most average so as to keep their FIP in line with their ERA this year? That award goes to the Pirates’ James MacDonald who posted an ERA and FIP of 4.21, making him the only player to have both numbers equal.
Come back next week for another Stat of the Week and feel free to suggest some that you would like to learn about.
Tigers One Win from World Series: Fans Excited…and Surprised?
As I write this, the Tigers are one game away from their first World Series trip in six years and just their third in the last 43. With another superb outing from Justin Verlander last night, the Tigers have a 3-0 series lead on the struggling Yankees and send Max Scherzer to the hill tonight to try and punch their ticket to the Fall Classic.
But things haven’t always seemed so sunny in Detroit. For much of the summer, there was serious malaise hanging over Tigers fans everywhere. Maybe even downright panic? You couldn’t take to Twitter with the #tigers hashtag without seeing hundreds of people complaining about the team and preparing for next year.
Then a funny thing happened. The Tigers ended up here. Let’s see how that transpired.
The first thing to know is a cliché piled on top of an axiom. It’s a long season. Over a 162 game season, there is variation in how well a team plays that almost always balances out in the end. Basically, the Tigers played their “bad” baseball from late April to June and their good baseball from July to the present while the White Sox did the opposite. At the end of the season, the Tigers had been a better team, but for most of the season, it seemed like that wasn’t the case because of the order in which things happened.
That’s a pretty philosophical argument for the average sports fan, but it’s true. That being said, we should also consider our preseason expectations. Every single expert prediction put the Tigers atop the AL Central. All of them. That uniformity was based on a team that won the division by 15 games in 2011 and added Prince Fielder and a full season of Doug Fister to a team that only lost Victor Martinez. In addition, the White Sox shipped a couple of pieces out of town and appeared like they were headed for a rebuilding year (I picked the Sox to finish dead last).
All that makes us think this division should have been a runaway. Yet baseball happened. The White Sox played over their heads thanks to bounce back years from Adam Dunn and Alex Rios and a career year from AJ Pierzynski. Then there was Jake Peavy staying healthy and Chris Sale having a breakout year, while somehow avoiding Tommy John surgery despite a throwing motion that makes my elbow hurt just by watching.
I contend that we didn’t miss on the Tigers projection; we missed on the White Sox. On The Guy Show in March I predicted a Tigers division title with about 92 wins. They won the division with 88 wins. That’s 96% of the wins I thought they’d have. The most I heard anyone predict was ESPN’s Mark Simon, who said 98. I think it’s fair to say, the overall win total was only slightly below what we thought would happen. It was the White Sox we missed on, not the Tigers.
I think the other reason we saw so much fan angst in the D is because a lot of fans don’t watch much baseball other than Tigers games. People were often frustrated by things the team did, even though they were actually performing a lot better than most teams in baseball.
Let’s explore this a little further. Take a guess, where would you rank the Tigers pitching staff as a whole this season? Just base it on performance, not potential.
Using Fangraph’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR), the Tigers had the best pitching in baseball with 24.8 WAR. Here’s how the rest of the top five looks:
2. Rangers, 23.9 WAR
3. Rays, 23.2 WAR
4. Nationals 21.4 WAR
5. Reds 21.0 WAR
Now WAR is just shorthand for total contribution, so if you aren’t yet convinced, we can break it down a little further, but those WAR numbers line up with the eye test. The Tigers were 4th in strikeouts per 9 (K/9) with 8.29 and 6th in walks per 9 (BB/9) with 2.76. They were 4th in FIP and 5th in xFIP, and trailed only the Rays among AL teams. FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, so it factors out defense, which is out of the pitchers control. xFIP normalizes that number for ballpark factors and expected homerun rates (which tend to fluctuate widely). Basically, this paints a picture of the Tigers as one of the top teams in the league on the mound.
Switching to the batter’s box, the Tigers also stack up nicely. Sorting by wRC+, the Tigers come in 4th in baseball at 105. The top five looks like this:
1. Yankees 113
2. Angels 112
3. Cards 107
4. Tigers 105
5. Rangers 105
If you’re wondering, wRC+ is a metric that compares a team’s offensive output to the rest of the league in runs (100 is average) and controlling for park factors. If we look at wOBA, which is OPS on steroids, the Tigers come in 7th, but that doesn’t control for park factors, so teams like the Rockies are ahead of them. wOBA essentially breaks each action down to its actual run value, so unlike OBP, not every hit is the same and unlike SLG, a double is not twice as valuable as a single. For a complete explanation, see this.
If you’re still weary of some of these sabermetric tools, let’s look at a more conventional measure. The Tigers were 3rd in baseball in OBP and first in the league in OBP with men in scoring position. I bet you didn’t know that. Seems like they got on base and had timely hits.
The Tigers were a top pitching staff and a top offense in 2012. They only did one thing poorly, played defense.
By Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), only three teams had a worse UZR than the Tigers’ mark of -28.1 in 2012. In simple terms, that amounts to about three wins worse than average on defense. Another metric, DRS, puts them at -31, which is good for 6th worst. This passes the eye test as well, the Tigers played poor defense in 2012.
So with that recap of the pitching, offense, and defense of the 2012 Tigers, we get the image of a pretty good team. Yet not everyone felt great about them for most of the year. I think that’s because the White Sox over-performed and most fans aren’t really aware of how other teams play. They look at a team that is inconsistent and think, “Man, other teams aren’t like this.” Actually, they are.
The Tigers had a good season and they are built for success in October. The starting pitching is clicking and the Tigers’ key weakness, defense, is performing really well. Mostly because Jhonny Peralta decided to become an all-world shortstop last week.
Things look pretty good right now, even if they didn’t in June. The Tigers are one win from the Fall Classic and five from a championship. The 2011 club lost the ALCS 4-2 to the Rangers. The 2012 club has already guaranteed a better finish.
I wrote a column for The Eastern Echo in April saying, “THIS COULD BE THE YEAR,” and I’ve said it again and again on Twitter (@NeilWeinberg44). I believe it. This is a good team built to win in the postseason with elite starting pitching and a strong lineup with an elite core.
So I apologize if this post was rather long, but I thought it best for us to get caught up and answer the question of how we went from the ledge of a tall building to the brink of ecstasy.
Tune in tonight and put the champagne on ice. Five more wins.
The First Pitch
I have no illusions about what this is. I don’t expect someone to stumble around the internet onto this site, recognize my brilliance, and start paying me for my opinions on a topic that everyone has opinions about. That’s not what I’m after.
But I love baseball. I love the Detroit Tigers. I like writing, analyzing, and debating. For four years I wrote a weekly newspaper column for my college newspaper, The Eastern Echo, and spent two hours a week as the voice of reason on Eagleradio’s famed The Guy Show. Honestly, I miss it. I miss writing about something of my own choosing and I miss talking about baseball to someone other than my wife (Not because it isn’t wonderful, but because there are only so many times we can make fun of bullpen usage and Robinson Cano!).
I’m 22 and in the first year of a PhD program in Political Science at UNC Chapel Hill. About 700 miles from Comerica Park. I haven’t been to a game there since April after averaging more than 20 a year most years. There’s playoff baseball in Detroit without me for the first time since 1987. To be fair, I wasn’t even born then and they’ve only been twice since. So I guess this is my way of staying connected. Sure, MLB.TV blares Rod and Mario every night in my living room, but I can’t help but feel a little too far away when I see the white towels waving and “’Til I Collapse” playing as Verlander takes the hill on a cool October night.
So in the posts that follow, you’ll see a lot about the Tigers. They’re my baseball wife. But I’m a lover of all things baseball, so I’ll have a lot to say about the sport at large. I never made it higher than high school backup and I never worked in the industry, but I’m a fan and very devoted one. And an educated one.
This isn’t going to be a place for RBIs and pitcher Wins. While I’m not going to go over the top with new age-y stuff that will scare you, this is going to be a site heavily informed by sabermetrics. Hence the name, SABR-Toothed Tigers.
It’s not because I want to boil such a beautiful game down to a spreadsheet. Not at all. I’m just someone who always wants to know more. I want more information than batting average, homeruns, runs batted in, stolen bases, etc. There’s more going on. Fear not, I’m always going to keep it accessible. What good is a great new metric if most people don’t understand it? I’ll draw heavily from the great work done at Fangraphs.com because I think they do it best.
I hope you appreciate the contrast in the name. Sabermetrics are new school, but saber-toothed Tigers are old school. It can be a happy marriage if you’re willing to give it a chance.
So come back and see what this is all about and share it with people who love baseball. Not because I think I’m brilliant and you have to see my opinion. Come back because baseball is fun and I’m going to write about interesting things. If things go well, maybe I’ll “employ” some others who love the game and you won’t be stuck with just me.
I mentioned earlier that I’m getting a PhD in Political Science. My focus is the American Presidency, so let me close by connecting the two and summing up why I’m here.
One of my all-time favorite quotations belongs to Richard Nixon.
“I like the job I have now, but if I had my life to live over again, I’d like to have ended up a sports writer.”
Yeah, me too.
New English D 