Sal Baxamusa summarizes the MIT's Sloan School of Business Sports Analytics Conference. I get a mention:

Baseball Musings blogger David Pinto said that the effectiveness of the shift at neutralizing lefthanders suggested that more hitters should attempt to dunk or bunt the ball the other way. Rehman was not optimistic, saying that for players it was a buy-in and ego issue that may not be worth broaching. He made a good point: how do you convince a slugger to dunk the ball the other way rather than rip a 400-foot bomb to right?

My main point was the free base was worth a lot. In other words, why would a hitter trade a near 1.000 OBA just to be macho and pull the ball? I understood Rehman and Pupura's point that it's difficult to tell a hitter to go the other way. Successful baseball, however, is all about making adjustments, so the players should want to adjust to the shift.

It's like the argument about walking Barry Bonds. It's a bad idea to walk Barry Bonds; you're increasing his team's offense, not decreasing it. The same with hitting against the shift. It's a free time on base. It helps, it doesn't hurt, and it's even better than a walk, since anyone on first is going to end up on third since no one is there to cover the base.

You can find my posts on the conference starting here and working backward.

I was not able to blog while I was on the panel, but I thought it went well. Tim Pupura from minor league baseball (former GM of the Astros) and Shiraz Rehman of the Diamondbacks represented management. Christina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus and myself represented the outsiders. John Dewan of BIS moderated and it was a very lively discussion.

John Huizinga is now speaking on the hot hand in basketball. It's a good mathematical presentation with probabilities and p-values. Very interesting so far.

Update: One of the interesting things coming out of this is that John and his colleague created an NBA database based on chances, where a chance is essentially a continuous possession of the ball. Possessions can have multiple chances as balls go out of bounds or there are non-shooting fouls and offensive rebounds. It's a great way of modeling the game, where events occur within chances.

Update: Players are less likely to make a shot after making one. Also, they rush the next shot. The player is also more likely to take the team's next shot, especially a player who handles the ball. It's not defense that clamps down, it's the offense not taking as a good a shot.

Update: No evidence of hot hand, but NBA players play like they think there is.

The next panel I'm attending is title Globalization of Sports. Jonathan Kraft of the New England Patriots, Tim Romani of the ICON Venture Group, David Baxter of Adidas and John Huizinga of the U. of Chicago are on the panel, moderated by Mike Gorman of the Boston Celtics. I had a chance to speak with Huizinga last night at the Celtics game. He's Yao Ming's agent, and the story of how that came to be was quite interesting. John is not an agent but an economics professor, and one of Ming's cousins was a student at UC.

Update: Gorman starts with a quote from DAVOS that sports is one of the top ten global industries, and the only one that truly achieved global dominance.

Update: Kraft says the Patriots are the first team with a Chinese web site, and now has 20 fan clubs in the country.

Update: Romani notes that with teams having built so many new stadiums and arenas in the last 20 years, there's not much left to do in the US, so their group is looking to international venues to build.

Update: David Baxter notes that adidas sells more NFL jerseys around the world than any other sport.

Update: Huizinga notes the NBA got off to a bad start in China because the NBA didn't understand the world was different outside of the US. The NBA wanted to start a reading program. The Chinese found that insulting, and were also trying to encourage students to study less and exercise more.

Update: Is globalization just another term for westernization? The panelist think short term that might be true, but eventually the east will send ideas west. Gorman is asking very good questions. He's done his homework.

Update: Gorman asks what is the Black Swan in terms of globalization. It stumps the panel for a minute, but Kraft thinks a terrorist attack at a facility would change the landscape. Huizinga agrees but adds corruption as a second problem.

Update: A question comes from the audience on the ability to be a fan of any team anywhere. Romani notes that they start designing venues from the camera positions.

Update: Romani notes right now there is money available for infrastructure building from the government, but not for the actual construction of stadiums.

Update: Gorman asks are we really globalizing sports, or just creating minor leagues around the world? I hope someday players are willing to play anywhere, because the majors exists around the world.

The first panel of the day is starting, Evolution of the Fan Experience. Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets is moderating Mark Donovan of the Philadelphia Eagles, Jeff Van Gundy and Bill Simmons of ESPN, Sean O'Brien of EA Sports and Brian Burke of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Update: Brian Burke says he's in the entertainment business, not the hockey business. His claim is that over 30 years a team is going to be .500, so you can't market around winning. He wants stars and action, likes that his team hits and fights.

Update: Bill Simmons believes ticket prices are a problem. With better TV and interactivity, why pay the money when you can stay home and have just as good an experience.

Update: Van Gundy notices empty seats at NBA games. People who own tickets might not show up because they don't want to pay the extra $150 for parking, food and extras.

Update: Mark Donovan talks about points of contacts with fans. They welcome them when they arrive at the park, high five them when they're leaving. The Eagles try to serve their fans real time in the park. They want the fans to be story tellers about the team.

Update: Simmons is showing he doesn't understand basic supply and demand. He dosen't understand why tickets are so much.

Burke points out that a lot of season tickets are being split among people, so everyone can afford them.

Update: Burke makes the point that someone from ESPN shouldn't be lecturing about what people are charged. Good laugh from the crowd.

Update: Brian Burke brings in focus groups to find out what music the fans want to hear at the game. He doesn't understand why O-bla-di is so popular.

Update: Van Gundy wants the NBA to develop more rivalries. He thinks opponents are too friendly. They'll have an altercation in the game, then hug afterward. He's like to see more rabid fans, thinks they are too passive.

Update: Simmons and Burke agree that the NHL season should be shorter. Simmons to keep demand high (he learns quickly), Burke because the season is too taxing on the players.

Update: Teams are using text messages at the game to build databases.

Update: Donovan says he wants replays at the game to be better than what you see on TV.

Update: Burke has now dissed the Beatles and Opera.

Mike Fast explores DIPS at The Hardball Times. He includes a graph of the distribution of fly balls and line drives to the outfield and notes they peak at the three outfield positions:

Oddly enough, we see both fly balls and line drives peaking around the typical positions of the three outfielders and dipping in the gaps and along the lines. I can't think of any reason for balls in the air to preferentially group around those three vectors, so I assume that must be a scoring bias. Accurately marking the location of a ball fielded in the middle of a vast outfield expanse free of landmarks is a challenge, and the MLB stringer may tend to mark the fielding location closer toward the typical fielding position of whichever outfielder fielded the ball. I don't know whether BIS and STATS data suffer from a similar bias.

As I wrote him, I don't think it's a bias, I think it's real. I noticed the same pattern when I worked at STATS, Inc. STATS uses up to three reporter accounts to determine placement of the ball, so their data shouldn't be biased. In addition, the primary reporter is at the park, so he doesn't get fooled by TV angles. The only explanation I have is that those are good vectors for getting line drives by infielders, so to the extent a player can direct his hits, those are good places for the ball to go.

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I'll be covering the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference for the third year in a row on Saturday, March seventh. I've also been asked to participate in the Baseball Analytics Panel, with a group of true heavy hitters. This may be your only chance to see Mark Cuban and me in the same conference!

I'm reading Michael Lewis's latest column in the New York Times, and this paragraph fascinated me. He speaking with Daryl Morey, a former STATS, Inc. employee who went on to the MIT Sloan Business School and became GM of the Houston Rockets:

When I ask Morey if he can think of any basketball statistic that can't benefit a player at the expense of his team, he has to think hard. "Offensive rebounding," he says, then reverses himself. "But even that can be counterproductive to the team if your job is to get back on defense." It turns out there is no statistic that a basketball player accumulates that cannot be amassed selfishly. "We think about this deeply whenever we're talking about contractual incentives," he says. "We don't want to incent a guy to do things that hurt the team" -- and the amazing thing about basketball is how easy this is to do. "They all maximize what they think they're being paid for," he says. He laughs. "It's a tough environment for a player now because you have a lot of teams starting to think differently. They've got to rethink how they're getting paid."

There is such a stat in baseball, runs. For an individual to score a lot of runs, he needs to be skilled in a number of baseball abilities; getting on base, running and hitting for power. If a player wants to drive in 100 runs in a season, he can do that by delivering in about 80 plate appearances, and do little the rest of the time. A run scorer, needs to constantly set up teammates, and take advantage of stolen base opportunities, be able to score on long hits, or hit for power himself. Another reason runs scored is a bit of an underrated stat.

Lone Star Ball links to a story summing up the Michael Young situation in Texas. I love description of seamheads (emphasis added):

One side held that the Rangers owed Young more respect than to simply order him to move. The other said Young is a highly compensated employee who needs to simply do what he's told. That group was bolstered by the "seamheads" -- ardent fans of baseball statistics -- who judge things almost strictly by the numbers, and thus tend to disparage Young because of his lack of range at short, and ignore the intangibles he brings to the organization.

Maybe seamheads should take a course is quantifying things that aren't capable of being appraised at an actual or approximate value. Here's the syllabus:

1. Guessing.
2. Defending the guess with anecdotes.
3. Adding smugness.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Recently, Dave Studeman introduced the Drama Index (DI) to measure the importance of a game. He now combines that with Win Probability Added (WPA) to create a new stat, Postseason Probability Added, PPA. For every game, Studes multiplies together a player's WPA and his DI, then sums them over a season. Hitters and pitchers who contribute the most to their team winning (high game WPA) in dramatic games (high game DI) do very well over the season.

The point of this stat should not be to determine post-season awards, but to explain post-season voting. The PPA of Ryan Howard and Albert Pujols show why MVP voters had them so close, and why we liked Dernard Span so much.

It's interesting that the perception of the writers about Howard performing well in big games was correct. If it matters is another story. Dave isn't trying to sell this as a new way to judge who should be MVP. Stats like this are like RBI and wins; as much team stats and individual stats. If Howard hit well in games with a lower drama index, then there's likely a lot less drama down the stretch. If Albert Pujols plays on a better team in 2008, there might be more drama in his season. If a great players is on the roster of a great team, there's fewer chances for him to win games in dramatic fashion. These stats (WPA, PPA) explain perception more than they judge ability, in my opinion.

Give the post a read, however, because the results are quite interesting.

Cyril Morong graphs power at the eight defensive positions over time by league. The most interesting result is that power is much more important at shortstop in the AL than the NL, and while the NL concentrates power in the corner outfield positions, in the AL the three positions are converging.

Dave Cameron explains how they arrive at dollar values for Win Values.

The Lahman Database update for 2008 is now available.

Value Wins appear to be the new rage around the baseball blogosphere. Right now, they are just for batters, but it looks like the Yankees got a good deal on Teixeira, the Red Sox got an even better deal on Pedroia, and A-Rod earned his salary in 2008.

Studes looks at the drama of games to show why we believe late season games are more important than early season games. His Washington Nationals graph shows great evidence why no one was watching in 2008.

Congratulations to Barack Obama on his victory over John McCain. Congratulations, too, to Nate Silver, who called the election extremely well. It's another victory for sabermetrics, or at least the political equivalent.

After the 1990, STATS, Inc. published their annual Bill James Baseball Handbook. For the first time, that book contained Bill's projections for batters for the 1991 season. When Peter Gammons reviewed the book, one of the things he gleaned from the projections was that Bill James predicted that Jeff Bagwell was going to win the NL batting title.

James did not make that specific prediction in the book. Bagwell was traded to the Astros in September for Larry Anderson and it wasn't clear that Jeff was going to play, given the Astros had Ken Caminiti at third base. His BA projection, however, was the highest of any National League player, so Gammons was in a sense right.

Bill later told me that he felt his whole system was on the line that year. If Bagwell failed, no one would trust it again. The Astros move Bagwell to first base, however, and while he didn't win the batting title, he did hit .294 and win Rookie of the Year. James was vindicated, and the system survived.

Nate, I'm sure, faced the same kind of scrutiny with 538. He nailed the result. It's another victory for statistical analysis, and I hope this spreads to more areas of political decision making as well.

I haven't heard much positive or negative about the new interface to the Day by Day Database. Please let me know if you like it better or not.

I developed a new interface to the Day by Day Database. Please give it a try. My goal was to get you to your destination with fewer clicks and a shorter wait. Let me know if you find any bugs, typos, or if you have any ideas for improvements.

More evidence that good hitters don't protect the batters in front of them.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Dustin Pedroia beats out an infield hit to go 2 for 2 and raise his BA to .327. Joe Mauer is 0 for 3 so far to lower his BA to .328. Milton Bradley did not bat in the first for Texas.

The AL batting brings two more games into the interesting category on this last day of the season. Joe Mauer leads with a .330 BA (.32954), a five point lead over Dustin Pedroia and a six point lead over Milton Bradley. Mauer can't sit on his laurels today as the Twins are battling for an AL Central title. If Mauer goes 0 for 3 with a walk, he ends up at .328 (.32768, actually). A four for four day by Bradley brings him to .33012; three for four brings him to .32771, which would give him the title. Pedroia plays a double header (weather permitting). A six for eight day by Dustin puts him at .33029, which would beat a four for four day by Bradley.

Picking up two hits appears to be the keep for Mauer. Even a two for five day raises his average to .33020, and will make it very difficult for either of the players chasing him to catch the former batting champ. Bradley, however, is safe to lead the league in OBA.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

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The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Earlier in the season one of my SportingNews.com columns developed a formula for predicting team saves from a team's winning percentage and average margin of victory (AMV). The Angels' AMV rose since that article, but is still low at 2.85. Interestingly, the team with the lowest AVM is another contender for best record in the league, the Tampa Bay Rays. The two teams show the variation in the results of the formula. The prediction for the two teams is for 55 saves on the year (55.1 for LAnaheim, 55.0 for Tampa Bay). The Rays pace puts them at 53 saves for the season, the Angels 65. Both teams provided their closers with the chance at the record, but the Angels exceeding expectations, and the relative health of K-Rod brought the record home to Anaheim.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date. Hope everyone enjoys the last holiday of the summer with your friends and family. My thoughts go out to the people of the Gulf Coast who are suffering through hurricane Gustav today.

With the score tied in the bottom of the ninth against Florida on Saturday, a lead-off walk by Aaron Heilman led to a runner on third with one out after a sacrifice and a wild pitch. At that point, Heilman issued two intentional walks to load the bases, then walked Josh Willingham to force in the winning run. It was a wild inning for Heilman, to say the least.

Heilman issued the 10th walk off walk in the majors this season. I define a walk off walk (WoW) as a walk or hit by pitch in the bottom of an inning (9th inning or later) in which the score is tied and the batter is credited with an RBI. This may turn out to be the biggest WoW season of the decade:

Season	WoW
2000	10
2001	8
2002	9
2003	9
2004	11
2005	9
2006	5
2007	9
2008	10

Can pitchers issue two more in the final month of the season?

There's really no excuse for the WoW. Even if a pitcher throws the ball right down the middle of the plate, he still has a decent chance of getting an out. I'd rather give my defense a chance than take the risk of walking in the game winning run.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

View from the Bleachers reprints some research from Bill James Online looking at the results of long and short at bats in terms of pitches seen. Players hit for a higher average and more power in short at bats, but get on base more in long at bats.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Braves and Cardinals are playing in the sixth inning. Albert Pujols is 2 for 2 with a homer, Chipper Jones is 0 for 2, and Albert has passed Chipper in the batting race, .359 to .358. We'll see if that holds up by the end of the game.

Update: Pujols ends the game 2 for 2, Chipper 1 for 3 and the two are tied at .359. Chipper is at .359459...., while Albert is .35867, so Chipper is still leading by less than a point. The Cardinals win the game 6-3.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Alex Rodriguez doubles and scores in the top of the first to put the Yankees up 1-0. It's the 1576th run of his career, and he ranks 47th in Major League history. Alex has scored two more runs than he's driven in, 1574. That ranks 38th. This leads me to ask the question, is it easier to score runs than drive them in? Is that why RBI in general are given more glory than runs scored?

Part of the reason for the higher rank in RBI is that there are more runs to go around. While (obviously) every run is recorded, not every run is an RBI. I believe there's more going on here, however.

The ability to drive in runs depends on power, and power tends to fade with age. The ability to score runs depends on the ability to get on base, which tends to fade more slowly. Hitters with good strike zone judgement can stay in the majors longer as they compensate for fewer hits with more walks. They don't drive in as many runs, but they're still on base to score.

A-Rod is a little over 700 runs from both the run and RBI record. He could very well follow in the footsteps of Ruth and Aaron and set both.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Sixty Feet, Six Inches comes up with a new statistic for pitchers, mistakes per inning. In combination with K per inning, it seems to be a good measure of the success of pitchers.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date. Verizon called and said someone would be here between 8 AM and 5 PM to fix my DSL line. Isn't it amazing how a high tech company like that can predicted a visit with such accuracy? I'll believe it when I see it. The guy will show up and probably tell me it's another ten days before the service comes on line.

With luck, blogging will be back to normal today.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date as I start day five without Verizon DSL. Once again, the good people at Friendly's are supplying high-speed internet in exchange for breakfast.

Once again, Verizon fails to fix my DSL service. Thanks to the good people at Friendly's, however, the Day by Day Database is up to date and I ate a nice breakfast. At some point I'll have time to rant about my Verizon experience, but for now I need to use the little high speed time I can find to update the site.

The Day by Day Database is up to date. Thanks once again to the good people at Friendly's for supplying WiFi at their restaurants free while I await Verizon to fix their screw-up.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

My DSL is still down, so I'm back blogging from Friendly's.

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The Day by Day Database is up to date.

I'm away with my family on vacation this week, so blogging will be light.

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The Day by Day Database is up to date.

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The Day by Day Database is up to date through the All-Star break.

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The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Happy Independence Day to all my US readers! I hope you enjoy the day with family and friends.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Book Blog has Retrosheet's latest release. After two years of waiting, they are making available the 1999 season. This is great news. I'll be able to push the splits section of the Day by Day Database back to 1974. Also, they now have day by day batting and pitching lines going back to 1955, so we'll be able to extend that part of the database as well.

Now I just need to find the time.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

J.C. Bradbury takes a shot at VORP:

My point isn't that VORP is an awful or useless stat. To the contrary, there is clearly useful information contained in it. And those who prefer to hold discussions based on this metric should continue to do so. But there is no need for someone who does not speak to the language to learn the ins an outs of a new metric, as Sheinin suggests. I can talk about all its components without dropping the V-bomb. If you want to talk hitting, we can use OBP and SLG. Then you can bring in stolen bases and defense to capture other effects. For pitching, we can use strikeouts, walks, and homers. The big advantage of these is that I can have these conversations with people other than die-hard stat-heads. I can also explain the advantages of these metrics over traditional triple-crown stats, and that is a huge benefit.

I view VORP as an insider language, and by using it you can signal that you are insider. It's like speaking Klingon at a Star Trek convention. I can signal to others who speak the language that I am one of you. But, the danger of VORP is that once you bring it up the discussion goes down the wrong path as the uninitiated have reason to feel they are being told they are not as smart as the person making the argument. It's like constantly bringing up the fact that you only listen to NPR or watch the BBC news at dinner parties. The response is likely going to be the same, "well fuck you too, you pretentious asshole!"

I understand where Bradbury is coming from on this. I have the same problem with UNIX. If you talk to real programmers, UNIX is the be all and end all of operating systems. They are correct. UNIX, however, requires learning an inside language. The command names are cryptic, because when the OS was written, memory was so scarce that they couldn't afford to have commands longer than two or three letters. So when I work in UNIX, I have to have a book next to me so I can look up how to copy a file from one place to another. My Python scripts run just as well on Windows as on UNIX.

I find VORP useful, as I do runs created and win shares and lots of other metrics. Most of the time, however, I can look at a player's BA/OBA/Slugging line and get a pretty good picture of that hitter's abilities.

J.C. Bradbury takes a shot at VORP:

My point isn't that VORP is an awful or useless stat. To the contrary, there is clearly useful information contained in it. And those who prefer to hold discussions based on this metric should continue to do so. But there is no need for someone who does not speak to the language to learn the ins an outs of a new metric, as Sheinin suggests. I can talk about all its components without dropping the V-bomb. If you want to talk hitting, we can use OBP and SLG. Then you can bring in stolen bases and defense to capture other effects. For pitching, we can use strikeouts, walks, and homers. The big advantage of these is that I can have these conversations with people other than die-hard stat-heads. I can also explain the advantages of these metrics over traditional triple-crown stats, and that is a huge benefit.

I view VORP as an insider language, and by using it you can signal that you are insider. It's like speaking Klingon at a Star Trek convention. I can signal to others who speak the language that I am one of you. But, the danger of VORP is that once you bring it up the discussion goes down the wrong path as the uninitiated have reason to feel they are being told they are not as smart as the person making the argument. It's like constantly bringing up the fact that you only listen to NPR or watch the BBC news at dinner parties. The response is likely going to be the same, "well fuck you too, you pretentious asshole!"

I understand where Bradbury is coming from on this. I have the same problem with UNIX. If you talk to real programmers, UNIX is the be all and end all of operating systems. They are correct. UNIX, however, requires learning an inside language. The command names are cryptic, because when the OS was written, memory was so scarce that they couldn't afford to have commands longer than two or three letters. So when I work in UNIX, I have to have a book next to me so I can look up how to copy a file from one place to another. My Python scripts run just as well on Windows as on UNIX.

I find VORP useful, as I do runs created and win shares and lots of other metrics. Most of the time, however, I can look at a player's BA/OBA/Slugging line and get a pretty good picture of that hitter's abilities.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads, dads to be and grand dads who love baseball. I hope you team wins today!

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date. I'm extremely ill today so blogging will be very light.

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The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

When we publish pitching rates, we tend to put everything in terms of nine innings; K per 9, BB per 9, ERA, etc. Home runs per nine, however, seems to be a tough one to grasp, probably because home runs are rare events. For example, how much better is a pitcher who allowed 1.2 home runs per 9 as opposed to a pitcher who allowed 1.3 home runs per 9? My suggestion is that we measure home runs per 200 innings. That is, how many would this pitcher allow over a full season. The 1.2 per nine pitcher would allow 26.7 home runs over 200 innings, while the 1.3 per nine pitcher would allow 28.9. Out experience would tell us that 40 home runs per 200 innings was a lot, and 10 would be very good. I'm interested in people's opinions on this.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

On this Memorial Day I'd like to thank all our verterans for their service and remember all those who gave their lives for their country.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

In reponse to this post on Ian Kennedy, a commentator writes:

I wish David would write a piece (or link to it if he already has) defining what he thinks is luck. I think he is out to lunch on the concept. If a pitcher has a poor K/BB ratio yet he was effective - its luck!! There is no other explanation! This is a simplistic interpretation. Dave should consider other metrics before throwing luck around.

Actually, what I said was:

Kennedy walked four and struck out four. His walks and strikeouts have been close to even all year.

In other words, he show no improvement in a weak part of his game, a part that is totally under the control of the pitcher. The part of his game that improved Thursday night was the part that has to do with the interaction with hitters and fielders.

Now think of the outcomes in the three dimensions of pitcher, hitter and fielders as a cloud, a three dimensional structure that's tough to pin down. Kennedy's expected outcomes change with the fielders behind him and the batters he faces, as well as how well he is pitching that night. On some nights, he's in the great fielders, great pitching, lousy hitters part of the cloud. Some nights he's at the other, negative end, but he's still in the cloud. When he walks as many as he strikes out, I tend to believe that Kennedy's ability in the game was right in the middle of his cloud axis. So if he's the same pitcher he's been all year, then maybe the fielding axis came in at the extreme good end, or the opposition hitting axis came in at the extreme bad end. In other words, his good performance was due to things other than pitching ability, so the outcome for him was lucky.

What teams need to look for when they watch players develop is a move to a completely different cloud. Take Andrew Miller for example. In April, Andrew was pitching in a very similar cloud of outcomes as Kennedy, but in May, his walks and strikeouts indicate that he jumped to a cloud that in general has far better outcomes. (The worst outcomes in Miller's new cloud might be the best outcomes in his old cloud.) This however, is where it gets tough. Is it really a new cloud, or is it just a small sample of someone performing at the high end of their old cloud?

Part of that depends on the size of the cloud. Shawn Chacon, for example, show a lot of variance in performance over time. His cloud is large. Greg Maddux, in his prime, showed very little variance (he was always great). Maddux had a small cloud. So when Chacon puts together half a great season, you want to believe he's made a change for the better, but most likely he had a long run in a good part of his cloud. When Maddux had a bad game, it was shocking, because he seldom stepped out of a cloud with few bad outcomes.

So in this case, luck to me is a much different outcome without an obvious change in skills. Defining it exactly, as I hope the cloud metaphor demonstrates, is tough.

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A very happy mothers day to all the moms and mothers to be!

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I didn't get the Buck-McCarver broadcast on Saturday, but I wish I had so I could have heard this:

Joe remarked that Fukudome had gone 4-4 the day after the his cover issue hit the stand. After musing over Fukudome's ignorance of Cubs history and the variety of curses associated with them, he then asked Tim if he believed in curses or jinxes.

Now, it would be normal for Tim to play along with this silly idea. Tim however chose to rather bluntly shoot it down. "No," he said, "I don't believe in curses or jinxes or anything like that."

Buck then decided to bait McCarver by talking about how poorly McCarver had played after his two appearances on the cover of SI. McCarver responded again bluntly: "Can't a guy just play badly? What can't a guy just not play well? You don't need some curse or jinx to play poorly. Haven't we come far enough as a society not to believe in those things?"

Thanks, Tim for saying that so well. Hat tip to BBTF.

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This is really bucking the odds:

Consecutive losses for the Rockies despite leading in the eighth inning or later each game. It happened to only one other team in the past 100 years, the '78 Giants

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Mike Fast at The Hardball Times looks at how new tracking technologies might change the game of baseball. I must admit I haven't been keeping up with PITCHf/x as much as I should. My first thought is a probabilistic model of the strike zone. Given handedness of the batter and pitcher, the count, velocity, release point and coordinates of the pitch when crossing the plate boundary, (a line extending out from the front of the plate), what is the probability of:

• A strike call
• Contact on a swing
• Fair in play
• Type of ball in play
• A base hit

There are a lot more pitches than balls in play, so one should be able to develop a better model than PMR with the data for a season. Then you can see which pitchers and hitters perform above or below average on these types of pitches. This will keep us busy for years to come.

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I apologize for the lateness of the update. I spent the night suffering from an stomach ailment.

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According to PythagenMatt, the Royals are the best team in the AL.

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The Marlins defeat the Nationals 10-7 tonight and move a game ahead of Atlanta at the top of the NL East. They've been outscored 47 to 31, however, so don't expect that placement to last.

A nice probability quiz at The Numbers Guy. Here are two interesting ones:

4. In baseball, suppose the American League champion is better than the National League champion, such that it has a 55% probability of winning each game against the NL champ. Then the NL champ nonetheless will win a best-of-seven-games series four in 10 times. What is the smallest odd number, X, for which a World Series between these two league champs that is best-of-X will ensure that there's a 95% probability of a just result -- the superior AL champ winning?

5. Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind each of the other two, a cow. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, to reveal a cow. He then says to you, "Do you want to change your choice to door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice, assuming you prefer cars to cows?

I believe the answer to four is 383. I have a Python script that computes 95% confidence intervals, and the low end of 383 is 192. The low end of 381 is 190.

On question 5, the answer is to switch. I love asking this question. The answer is if you switch, you win the car 2/3 of the time. When you make the first choice, you'll be wrong 2/3 of the time. If you switch, you'll be right 2/3 of the time!

Cyril Morong does some significance testing on the number Bill James supplied on David Ortiz's clutch hitting. The only place Ortiz comes close to being significantly better in those situations is in extra-base hits:

Moving to XB%. He had a rate of 14.8% under normal circumstances while he a a 17.5% rate in the James clutch situations, for an 18% higher rate. The Z-score was 1.96 using the normal dropoff of about .013. So this is very close to being significant. His extrabase hit performance may truly be clutch.

If you think about it, that's what you really want in those situations, batters who can move runners a long distance with one hit. With a man on first, a single is nice, but an extra-base hit gives the runner a much higher probability of scoring.

Hat tip, BBTF.

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Joe Pawlikowski sends along this nugget:

The Angels do not give away ninth-inning leads. They have won 161 consecutive games when leading after eight innings. It's the longest active streak in the majors. The last ninth-inning loss came April 19, 2006, at Minnesota.

Since the start of the 2006 season, K-Rod has blown 10 saves. Either those were earlier in the game, or after the Angels took a lead in the top of the ninth (or in extra innings), or the Angels ended up winning the game anyway. I'd like to see the rest of the list in that time. I'm sure there aren't that many leads blown after eight innings.

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The Other Fifteen wants a truce over clutch hitting.

This isn't a cry for fusion, or balance, or peaceful coexistence. The world wouldn't be a better place if newspaper articles all read "Today the Cubs and Brewers recorded 27 outs apiece in a contest at Wrigley Field, which revealed almost nothing about the two teams due to the small sample size involved." Nor would the world be a better place if VORP started including Steely-Eyed Resolve as one of its components.

What I am asking for is a simple truce: believers in clutch, I as a student of sabermetrics will stop telling you that clutch doesn't exist, or is insignificant, or what have you, if you will stop insisting that its existence in any way, shape or form has an impact on impartial evaluations of player performance. Do we have a deal?

No deal. There are clutch hits, which fit the narrative of the game discussed in the post. All players get clutch hits; that does not make them clutch hitters. When David Ortiz hits a walk off home run, there is no doubt in my mind it was a clutch hit. When Luis Sojo wins a World Series game with a hit, there's no doubt it was a clutch hit. That doesn't make them clutch hitters.

The narrative that X delivered in the clutch is fine. The narrative that he often delivered in the clutch is fine. The narrative that X is clutch hitter based on five or six at bats doesn't work.

Hat tip, The Hardball Times.

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Freakonomics publishes a Q & A with Bill James, where fans sent in questions. I like this one about the Cubs:

Q: Why can't the Chicago Cubs get into the World Series? Is it the small park? Low salaries? The curse of the billy goat? Does sabermetrics provide any insights?

A: Talking about the origins of it -- the Cubs fell into a trench in history in the late 1930's, when almost all baseball teams built farm systems, but the Cubs for several years refused to do so. This put them behind the curve, crippled them for the 1950's, and really the organization did not fully overcome that until about 1980.
Since 1980 they have had several teams that could have wandered into a World Series, with better luck. They haven't had any one overpowering team -- like the 1984 Tigers, or the 1992 Blue Jays, or the 1998 Yankees -- that was so good that it demanded a seat at the Last Banquet of Fall. And, unless you have a team that good, you're at the mercy of the fates.

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On Baseball and the Reds doesn't like the term sabermetrics.

While I know this is probably a minority opinion, I really dislike--almost despise--the term "sabermetrics." Maybe it's just because I didn't grow up with Bill James. But that term has always sounded both pompous and half-baked to me--like we're trying to claim some kind of grand authority or officiality by coming up with an official-sounding name for what we do.

I think at least part of the backlash against "sabermetrics" has as much to do with that name as anything else. I've occasionally interacted with a local reporter in Cincinnati for some stat-inspired articles on the Reds over the past year, and one thing I've tried to stress (as have the other folks like me who have contributed to these articles) is to try to avoid calling us sabermetricians. I don't want to give people that as a reason for ignoring some of the ideas we advocate.

I'd much prefer it if everyone just called what we do what it is--baseball research. There's nothing really special about it...we're just searching for better understanding of how the game works.

I used to work for a company call Dragon Systems, Inc. The name came from the owner's hobby of collecting Chinese Dragons. You can see the logo here. The company built the best speech recognition software available, but other business people would constantly complain about the name and the logo. They'd tell us no one knows why you do by the name. They'd say the logo looks like you're a Chinese restaurant. They were probably right, but the owners kept the name and the logo and built a very successful business because they built a damn good product.

The upside of the name was that when you said, "I work for Dragon Systems," everyone had to ask what the company did. If I said, "I work for Voice Products of America," they'd say that's nice and move on. The same is true for sabermetricians. Baseball researcher, big deal. Sabermetrician, what's that about?

My good friend Jim Storer is married to a doctor at Yale Medical School. She was at a reception for new fellows, and the various new doctors are being introduced. The MC notes that one is a sabermetrician, and asks, "Does anyone know what that is?" Linda raises her hand and answers, "Sadly, yes." That great bit of comedy doesn't happen if he's a baseball researcher.

So Justin, if you don't like the term, don't use it. Be a baseball researcher. But don't deny others the fun of being a sabermetrician.

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Cosmic Log looks at the science of baseball statistics quotes me from the AAAS meeting I spoke at in February.

Baseball Notes looks at the production of each team lineup slot in 2007 and comes up with the best combined lineup in the majors. There are some surprises in there as well.

Rich Lederer at the Baseball Analysts looks at the relationship between strikeout and groundball rates among starting pitchers. Rich graphs the two rates against each other and groups pitchers by quadrant. What I think is interesting are the outliers on the high side of strikeouts and ground balls. If you take the five pitchers with the highest strikeout rates, you get a rotation of:

• Erik Bedard
• Scott Kazmir
• Johan Santana
• Jake Peavy
• A.J. Burnett

If you do the same for the five highest GB% pitchers:

• Derek Lowe
• Fausto Carmona
• Tim Hudson
• Brandon Webb
• Felix Hernandez

With the exception of Webb, the high K rotation is all aces, while the high ground ball rotation is mostly number two starters.

My latest column at SportingNews.com explores the relationship between spring training and regular season records.

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Joe Posnanski takes on the idea that the new stats are too complicated:

But here's why this whole "It's so confusing" argument amuses me so much: People will tell you that the new stats are too convoluted or manufactured ... and yet there are NO stats more convoluted and manufactured than the basic statistics that baseball has been built around for more than 100 years.

Some of this should be obvious. Batting average? It's ridiculous. Preposterous. Imagine that no one had ever come up with batting average before ... and then someone on a blog came up with with this idea:

Blogger: I have come up with a new statistic. It involves balls put in play. I call it batting average.
Establishment: Great! How's it work?
B: See, what we'll do is, we'll take the number of hits that the batter has and divide it by the number of at-bats that he has in order to determine how often he gets a hit.
E: That sounds like on-base percentage. What's the difference?
B: Well, it's all in what you call "at-bats" For one thing, we don't count walks.
E: What do you mean you don't count walks?
B: They don't count. We take plate appearances and subtract walks. They never happened.
E: How can a walk never happen?
B: It just doesn't.
E: Aren't walks good things? Like in Little League, we always say "Walk's as good as a hit."
B: I hate walks. They're gone. So let's say a guy comes to the plate 12 times, and he gets four hits and walks twice ...
E: Right ... that's a .500 on-base percentage.
B: Exactly, but if you just subtract the walks, you will see that he has a .400 batting average.
E: Um, OK.
B: But there are other things. If you hit a fly ball, and someone tags up and scores a run, that does not count as an at-bat.
E: Why not?
B: Because you are sacrificing yourself for the betterment of the team? I call it a sacrifice fly. Get it?
E: Well, what are you sacrificing if it doesn't even count against your stats?
B: You just are, OK?
E: What if you hit a ground ball and the runner scores.
B: How's that?
E: Let's say the infield's back and a guy hits a ground ball to get the run in. How do you score that?
B: No, that's not a sacrifice fly.
E Why not? Doesn't that accomplish the same thing?
B: It just isn't. Come on, pay attention. What's it called. Sacrifice FLY? Hello! He didn't hit a fly ball.
E: It just seems to me ...
B: Sacrifice bunts also do not count as at-bats. And when you get hit by a pitch ... doesn't count.
E You don't get any statistical notice for getting hit by a pitch?
B: Like it never happened.
E: I'm afraid to ask this: What happens if you reach on an error.
B: That's the beauty of this system. According to my new batting average, you're out.
E: But you're not really out.
B: I know. Isn't it great?
E: Why does this have to be so complicated?
B: It's batting average! It will take over the world!

I like to explain this be asking a person to define an at bat as what it is, rather than what it isn't. You can't do it. Joe takes on ERA as well. It's a typical great Posnanski post.

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The Baseball Crank publishes his latest age adjustments for Established Win Share Levels.

Fire Joe Morgan revels in being called a VORPY by John Heyman.

It's a historic day. For years, man has waited for just the right term to use when insulting other men who love baseball numbers just a little too much. (What are they, gay for numbers? Probably.) And now, just like the wait for Shrek 3, that wait is ogre.

Jon Heyman has called us VORPies.

Now we can do that scene from Spartacus (and In and Out) in which we all stand up and declare, "I'm a VORPY!"

I participated in an AAAS symposia today on New Techniques in the Evaluation and Prediction of Baseball Performance. Thanks to Ed Aboufadel of Grand Valley State University for the invitation. Shane Jensen presented his SAFE system, a more sophisticated version of the Probabilistic Model of Range (PMR). Steve Wang showed new ways of visualizing data, concentrating on managers. Both were very interesting, and Alan Schwarz kept us on our toes as the moderator.

I talked about the Probabilistic Model of Range, and you can view the slide show here. One nice thing at this conference was a press conference after the talk. I've never done one of those before, and I must say the science writers asked very good questions. This was an unusual topic for this meeting but it went over well.

Update: AP covered the talk.

Update: Some browsers can't run the slide show. It works with IE. For those who can't you can download the actual power point presentation.

Download PowerPoint 2007 version. Unfortunately, the charts I used aren't compatible with PowerPoint 2003.

Also, word that Jeter is at the bottom of the list of shortstops doesn't play well with Yankees fans.

Brian Bannister just became the favorite pitcher of sabermetricans.

MGL at The Book blog ups the ante on Tango Tiger's clutch project.

Here is the kicker. I am willing to donate a substantial sum of money to a charity chosen by one side of the debate - the "non-sabermetric" side of course, if they win. We would have to define "winning" - maybe best of 3, if we do 3 things, like clutch, batter/pitchers, and hot/cold. Or we can do each one separately.

If the sabermetric side wins, I will also donate money, but that will be to a charity of our choice and it will be less money.

I'm not sure how much, but it would be on the order of $10,000 for them and $5,000 for us. What the heck. Anything to make a point. If this flies, let none of my/our detractors/naysayers EVER say that I won't put my money where my mouth is! This should generate some good publicity and might encourage the media and perhaps some insiders to participate.

Mitchel is looking for members of the baseball media and baseball insiders to contribute to this project. If you're one of them, I hope you'll participate.

Over at The Book, win share aging curves.

Tom Tango puts forward a great idea for the 2008 season to examine the idea of clutch hitting. He's asking for your help in ironing out the details.

The latest version of Sean Lahman's baseball database is available for download. It covers the history of MLB through 2007.

Dan Fox finds a lot lacking in Bill James latest Sports Illustrated article on clutch hitting. Fox:

First and foremost, the article seems to promote the idea that after the now famous study titled "Do Clutch Hitters Exist?" published in the 1977 Baseball Research Journal by Dick Cramer, that little to no work has been done on the subject of clutch hitting and that what has been done has had an in-grained bias. Quite to the contrary, the topic has been the subject of almost continual debate with a variety of studies published over the years as documented on Cyril Morong's fine site. And more recently there have been several very good analyses done as I discussed in the introduction to my Schrodinger's Bat column of March 1, 2007.

This is not a typical James entry from the Baseball Abstracts. There no details of the method used or why the results are interesting. For example, he produces a table of David Ortiz in clutch situations since 2002 and notes the numbers are impressive.

That's the regular season; I understand he's had a couple of hits in postseason as well. It's a pretty good record; in fact, you kind of have to see more data to understand how good it is. We've started an award for the major leagues' clutch hitter of the year, based on the data, and David could pretty much win it any year. Only a handful of players a year drive in 30 runs in clutch situations. As to whether these data prove that David is a clutch hitter ... I ain't going there. This discussion has been messed up for 30 years because we got our shoulders way out in front of our shoelaces. From now on, I'm holding back.

My problem with the Oritz table is there's no reason to believe it's not random. In 394 at bats, Ortiz produced 127 hits. Over the six seasons covered, Ortiz hit .298. A .298 hitter has a 95% confidence interval of 100 to 135 hits. Ortiz hit 35 home runs in that number of at bats. His home run rate during those six years was .07236. The 95% confidence interval for home runs is 19-39. So he's at the high end of the range, but still in the range. He had a 1 in 8 shot at hitting that many home runs.

When James says, "kind of have to see more data to understand how good it is," I take it he means compared to other players. Until I see the other data, I remain unconvinced that clutch hitting is more than random noise.

Bill, in a way, makes my point for me:

The other question everybody asks now is "How do you determine what is a clutch at-bat?" I'll have to stiff you on that one for right now. I'll explain it generally and leave the details for some other time.

"Clutch" is a complicated concept, containing at least seven elements:

1. The score,


2. The runners on base,


3. The outs,


4. The inning,


5. The opposition,


6. The standings,


7. The calendar.

All these items whittle down the at bats to a very small number, and it is very difficult to find significance in small numbers of plate appearances. For now, I'll stick to my mantra that good hitters are the good clutch hitters.

Josh Kalk introduced his first version of a web based tool for viewing PITCHf/x data. Right now, it allows you to see in two dimensions where a pitch passed the batter. For example, here's Alex Rodriguez. Compare him to Alfonso Soriano. Soriano swings at a lot more pitches out of the strike zone. However, when Alex swings out of the zone, it's usually a swing and a miss, while Soriano often makes contact. Alex appears to look for a ball in the strike zone, and when he's fooled the result is a swinging strike. Soriano appears to do a better job of putting the bat on the ball, although the result is often a foul tip on what should be a ball. I hope Josh's next enhancement is a way to view a particular result. I'd like to explore, for example, what batters get the most called strikes outside the zone. Does lack of selectivity really expand the strike zone from the umpires view?

The new Pirates GM answers a question (emphasis added):

The Pirates upper management has widely ignored OBP (on base percentage) in the past. How important will OBP be in player evaluation under your leadership? -- Eric S., Pennsboro, W.Va

We are going to utilize several objective measures of player performance to evaluate and develop players. We'll rely on the more traditional objective evaluations: OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) , WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), Runs Created, ERC (Component ERA), GB/FB (ground ball to fly ball ratio), K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings), K/BB (strikeouts to walks ratio), BB%, etc., but we'll also look to rely on some of the more recent variations: VORP (value over replacement player), Relative Performance, EqAve (equivalent average), EqOBP (equivalent on base percentage), EqSLG (equivalent slugging percentage), BIP% (balls put into play percentage), wOBA (weighted on base average), Range Factor, PMR (probabilistic model of range) and Zone Rating.

That said, we will continue to stress the importance of our subjective evaluations. Succinctly stated, we believe that a combination of quality objective and subjective analysis will allow us to maximize our probability of success and to make the best possible decisions.

My reaction is the same as Fire Joe Morgan.

Tomorrow at 12:30 PM, I'll be one of the speakers at Connecticut SABR chapter meeting. It takes place at Quinnipiac in Hamden, in the College of Liberal Arts, Building #1. If you're in the area and want to stop in, I hope to see you there. I'm told I'm the fifth speaker of the afternoon.

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Squawking Baseball provides financial analysis of the market for players. They are trying to develop an open source financial database and are looking for your help. Stop by and see if you can contribute.

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In honor of Gene Orza and A-Rod joining the 130-130 club, here's the list of top runs+rbi in the majors this season:

Most Runs + RBI, 2007

Player	Runs Scored	Runs Batted In	Runs Plus RBI
Alex Rodriguez	130	138	268
Magglio Ordonez	105	123	228
Matt Holliday	94	110	204
Jimmy Rollins	122	81	203
David Ortiz	101	98	199
Bobby Abreu	105	94	199
Prince Fielder	94	104	198
Ryan Howard	78	113	191
David Wright	97	93	190
Carlos Pena	84	105	189
Vladimir Guerrero	79	110	189
Adam Dunn	93	96	189

Alex holds a bigger lead over the number two position than Ordonez holds over the number ten slot. Almost all these players do a good job of both getting on base and hitting for power. Part of it too, is being surrounded by good players. It's no surprise that Abreu is on the list as he benefits from Jeter in front of him and A-Rod behind him, just as Alex takes advantage of Abreu and Matsui.

The one person who stands out is Jimmy Rollins, the only leadoff type hitter in the top twenty. Batting first cuts down on Jimmy's RBI opportunities, but with his power and ability to steal he puts himself in scoring position quite often, as well as driving in runs when he has the opportunity.

Alex needs 32 more runs + RBI to break 300. Setting the AL single season record for home runs gives him at least twenty two more, so if he passes Maris he likely reaches 300 runs + RBI as well.

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Via Baseball Analysts, minors.baseball-reference.com is now on-line. One of the great things about the last few years is the emergence of up-to-date minor league stats online. Now, when someone is called to the majors, we can get a good idea of how they might perform by looking at complete career lines, and seeing how they handled progressing to tougher levels of play. Thanks to Sean Forman for the site!

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Dan Haren and Kelvim Escobar both came back to the pack today as each pitched poorly. The two started the day .05 earned runs apart. Haren gave up five runs in six innings to raise his ERA to 2.87. That gave Escobar a golden opportunity to take the lead, but he allowed five runs in 2 2/3 innings to inflate his ERA to 2.99. Both pitchers take losses, and now 0.40 earned runs separate 1st from 6th in the AL ERA race.

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Walk Like a Sabermetrician rants against OPS, and especially against slugging percentage:

Slugging Average is not a fundamental baseball measurement. SLG may be fairly intuitive, and it certainly is venerable, but it is not something that obviously is an important measurement to have on its own. After all, slugging average doesn't really measure power, because it includes singles. So then what does it measure? It is bases gained on hits by the batter per at bat. But what is the greater significance of bases gained by the batter per at bat?

It really has none. Certainly it is good for batters to gain bases on hits; but that, in and of itself, is not a meaningful measurement. You can even look at the game in such a way that the goal is to gain bases--but in that case, the goal is not for the batter to gain bases, it is for the team to gain bases. And a team doesn't gain one base for each single on average, nor four bases for each homer, nor do the ratios between one base for a single, two for a double, etc. hold when talking about the bases gained by the team.

The point is not that Slugging Average is meaningless or stupid; the point is that it just is. It is one way of attempting to quantify the value of hits other then counting them all equally as batting average does. It is a crude way of doing so, but it does have a fairly strong correlation with runs and it is a nice thing to know.

When I worked at ESPN, I sometimes had to explain the numbers to producers of shows and pieces. Television people are about pictures, and few really care about numbers. The explanation of slugging percentage that worked for me was not in terms of bases gained by the batter (slugging percentage is the average distance traveled around the bases by a batter per at bat) but in terms of base runners. Slugging average represents the ability of a batter to drive runners a distance. The higher the slugging average, the more likely the batter is to drive a runner around to score. That explanation seemed to get through to visual thinkers. That explanation also takes care of including singles, since singles often drive runners two bases, and if you collect a lot of singles (Wade Boggs had a good slugging percentage despite a lack of home runs), you tend to move runners a lot.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day database update is delayed due to technical difficulties.

For subscribers to Baseball Prospectus, my latest column is up on a new way to define a save.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.