No Pepper: Against the Fence
4/01The future of competitive balance, contracting around military service, and Troy Tulowitzki's opinion of zone rating systems.
No Pepper: Against the Fence
3/29Ichiro Suzuki is the most interesting player in baseball. I almost think other nominations for the spot are laughable, but try in the comments if you wish. In this clip, he pitches during a 1996 Japanese All-Star Game. His fastball tops out at about 90 miles per hour. Because 2900 words on ERA+ just aren't...
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3/25Imagine a black line tracing every Mariano Rivera pitch over the foot long distance before home plate. Imagine you are looking from the bird's-eye view and up is toward the mound. That's what mastery looks like, my friends. Do you remember Hee-Seop Choi? He was traded for Derrek Lee once. R.J. the Wunderkind provides this...
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3/23Phil Birnbaum has a good reminder of the difference between frequentist and Bayesian statistics. The central Bayesian insight is that you need information about the world as it exists "prior" to the test. For example, if we want to know how a Triple-A player with certain statistics will perform in the major leagues, we need...
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3/22I'm back from South by Southwest with links for all. At least now, in addition to waiting for opening day, I can await the release of the debut Sleigh Bells album. Is Joe Mauer's contract extension "good for baseball"? Walkoff Walk is tracking that cliche. Or is it a cliche? Drew Fairservice argues convincingly the...
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3/16Shawn Hoffman and his buddy Matt have created the most useful Chrome extension yet. Or, Shawn Hoffman have a hot dog with me. The tool allows you search nearly every baseball site in existence for a single player all at once. You can download it here. Baseball-reference is adding new splits, including one for how...
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3/15Minor league players aren't paid very well, as this hilarious video starring outfielder Fernando Perez reminds us. I live in Brooklyn, and I will now be looking out for Fernando Perez, realtor in Park Slope. Minor leaguers did, however, get a raise in their per diem recently. Satchel Price at BtB attempts to put a dollar value...
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3/11You're the Twins. You've lost one of your most valuable players. What do you do? The fact is, torn UCL doesn't automatically mean Tommy John surgery, though it is by far the most common result. There is always the possibility of rehab, the dubiously effective PRP. Even within Tommy John surgery, there are several variations...
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3/10What weight can be given to batted ball data? How much can we use it to refine our knowledge of pitcher skills? This question really implicates two related subquestions. First, how reliable is the underlying raw data? In other words, how accurate are scorers' codings of batted balls? Second, if we had perfect information about...
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3/09History nerds should especially love Wezen-Ball's history of the batting helmet. It's unexpectedly thorough and typically fascinating. Larry demonstrates the power of Google's search tools as well as anyone. If your goal is to improve umpiring, whom should you fire? J.C. Bradbury says firing supervisors and hiring retired umpires is not a solution at all....
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3/08Note: This is my regular links feature. Feel free to discuss the links in the comments. What does signal detection theory teach us about batting eye? In a series of articles at Sabometrics, Craig Glaser has attempted to provide an answer. One can get carried away linking to Joe Posnanski, but his Rule 5 draft...
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3/03Shirts, timelines, runs modeling, and Tim Lincecum.
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2/22Why mutual options in contracts aren't as pointless as they may seem.
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