BP Announcements

Want to Work for the Houston Astros?

Astros looking for a summer intern

Our good friend Mike Fast has asked that we let everyone know that the Houston Astros are looking for a summer intern for the Decision Sciences group.

Duties and responsibilities of the job include:  

• Developing database-driven applications and reports, using tools such as Visual Studio, C#, SQL Server Reporting and Integration Services, and web technologies.
• Assisting the staff by performing occasional reporting, data mining, or other tasks that require advanced technical capability. 
• Developing and maintain documentation supporting the maintenance of technical systems.
• Partnering with Director to develop applications for mobile devices.

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Tater Trot Tracker

Trot Times for May 8 (or, The Josh Hamilton Show)

The tater trots for May 8 were dominated by Josh Hamilton's four home runs versus the Orioles in Baltimore.

The night was dominated by one ultra-rare occurrence that had only happened 15 times before: Cesar Izturis's home run for the Brewers, the 16th home run of his career. I suppose a few people were also talking about the four home runs Josh Hamilton put up against the Baltimore Orioles last night, too.

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BP Unfiltered

In Bunches

Hitting four home runs in a game doesn't mean you're hot.

Since 1900, 13 players before Josh Hamilton had hit four home runs in a game. In those 13 players' next starts, they combined to hit .260/.315/.480, with two home runs in 54 plate appearances.

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Inside The Park Blog

BP Park Event At Tropicana Field

Baseball Prospectus kicked off its 2012 ballpark event schedule at Tropicana Field.

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Tater Trot Tracker

Trot Times for May 7

The tater trots for May 6 & 7: fun home runs from Albert Pujols, Adam Jones, David Ortiz, Jordany Valdespin.

Boy, did I miss a bad day or two to skip the Tater Trot Tracker. Let's not waste any more time. Let's get to the (Sunday and Monday) trots!

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Future Shock Blog

Minor League Update: Games of May 7

A tip for when to predict call-ups and notes from around the minors.

Wil Myers, OF, Royals (Double-A Northwest Arkansas): 2-for-5, HR (10), R, RBI. 2 K.

Myers made yesterday's Ten Pack, but look it's another home run. That's three in three days and four in five and now he's hitting a whopping .339/.390/.705 in 28 games. This note isn't necessarily about Myers, it's about call-ups. Myers' hot start has led to plenty of questions on Twitter about the possibility of seeing him in Kansas City this year. On first glance, it makes sense. Hot hitter, upper levels, bad team, worth a look, and all that stuff. But before you start thinking about a call-up, always refer to a team's 40 man roster, as often that's the deciding factor. It's hardly universal, but 40-man moves require far more machinations than call-up from players on the 40-man. Just something to keep in mind when you are wondering if/when a player is hitting the big leagues. Always check the 40-man roster first for additional guidance.

Others Of Note:

• Dylan Bundy, RHP, Orioles (Low-A Delmarva):

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  Kevin Goldstein

  May 8, 2012 2:03 PM

  26 Comments

BP Announcements

Rest-of-Season PECOTA Now Available

Announcing the arrival of in-season projections, updated daily.

We are happy to announce that rest-of-season PECOTA projections are now available and will be updated daily going forward.

As a reminder, PECOTA projections are restricted to subscribers. We will not be updating all PECOTA products; right now, updated PECOTAs will be available from:

• The Player Forecast Manager,
• The Depth Charts, and
• ​The summary stats on the top of PECOTA cards for players in the DCs.

The methodology is fundamentally the same as it was last year:

We are not rerunning the entire PECOTA process on a daily basis. First off, that would simply be impractical; by the time we got done the next day’s stats would already be waiting for us. Secondly, it would be the wrong tool for the job. Much of the computational horsepower behind PECOTA is spent figuring out how a player will change with age. The effects of age between now and late August are minimal enough to be ignored, and the aging process used to figure a player’s aging between seasons would be very ill-suited to help us capture them anyway.

Instead, we are taking a player’s season-to-date numbers and, in effect, “regressing” them toward the pre-season PECOTA forecast. The weighting is determined by two things: (1) a player’s playing time so far this season and (2) the reliability of a player’s preseason forecast. The more a player plays this season, the more the rest-of-season forecast can move, but at the same time, the forecast for a rookie is more likely to move than that of an established veteran.

We are also doing in-season translation of minor-league stats this season, and those minor-league translations are being incorporated into the rest-of-season projections (albeit with less emphasis than on the major-league stats).

In addition to updating the forecasts with season-to-date stats, we are now baselining the forecasts against the 2012 season to date, so the projections across the board may have moved some as well to reflect the difference between the 2011 offensive environment and the 2012 offensive environment. This will be part of the daily update, so the PFM data will be baselined against current seasonal averages from this point forth.

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BP Fantasy Podcast

iTunes Feed is Ready!

XMhell, err, XML is done and ready to go!

Right-click here to copy the XML feed, then go into iTunes and find the Advanced menu. Click it, then click "subscribe to podcast" and past the copied XML feed into the open window and click OK.  If you'd rather navigate straight to the iTunes store and subscribe that way, you can do that here. Both episodes 1 and 2 are in the feed so you can subscribe and pull them down. We are recording again this Thursday night and have quite the group of emails to read along with news to react to and a bonus interview with Tampa Bay color analyst Brian Anderson on the Rays pitching staff.

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