Amazin' Avenue (Free subscription) | 5 hours ago
Each season, just as the World Series draws to a close the baseball annual season gets cranking, and each November 1st we get the new Bill James Handbook , an offseason tradition that stretches back for the better part of a decade now. This year, with the World Baseball Classic pushing back the start of the season -- and, as a result, the playoffs and World Series -- the 2010 Bill...
The Hardball Times (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Bill James has a couple of interesting articles up on his subscription site . The first one quickly chronicles the history and inexorable rise of the strikeout. To sum up: "Strikeout rates have increased in the majors in every decade since 1920, except for the 1970s." The strikeout has gained ground steadily for many, many years for two fundamental reasons: strikeouts are good...
True Blue LA (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
More photos » by Gus Ruelas - AP "Dude, we're so alike! Our career similarity score is 934, which is my seventh-best comparison and your tenth-best!" - Matt Kemp on discovering Similarity Scores (AP Photo/Gus Ruelas) Browse more photos » Before there were such things as CHONE, Pecota, and Bill James' annual projection for players, there was a charming little thing...
The Hardball Times (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
In the 2010 Hardball Times Baseball Annual, Bill James took a look at predicting whether a player will do better or worse in 2011. To read the article in its entirety, ACTA Sports (the publisher of the Annual) has made it available as a PDF here . The gist of the article is the idea of taking as many different indicators of performance as possible and fusing them into one list of hitters...
Another Cubs Blog (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
I’m off to bed soon so I’m going to wait to explain this until tomorrow. I just wanted to put this up. Bill James came up with a method to predict whether or not a player who had 400 or more PA’s in a season would be at least as good the following season. This was published in The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010. High scores are better, but all of these correspond...
Bluebird Banter (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
The nice people at ACTA Sports sent me a copy of the Bill James Handbook . Baseball books are my favorite thing in the world. Free ones are better yet. The main part of the book is the career register that gives career stats for every batter and pitcher that played last season. It also has fielding stats and the Fielding Bible voting. One of the interesting bit they have is a listing...
Gaslamp Ball (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
More photos » by Lenny Ignelzi - AP You want to know how Heath Bell lost so much body mass? It be called Wii Fit Plus. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi) Browse more photos » I've been sitting on the rest of these projections for the Padres because it's a pain in the ass to transcribe the PDF over to a table in HTML. Rather than do that, I'll just upload the set of projections from the Bill...
MLB Trade Rumors (Free subscription) | 2 hours ago
... For the sake of argument, if it came down to these seven hitters, which would you prefer? Using Bill James projections and the...
Fake Teams (Free subscription) | 2 hours ago
... increase his HR/FB%, Prince can approach 50 HRs for the 3rd time in four seasons. With that said, Bill James predicts Prince will go 44-124-.286-.393-.574-.967 in 2010. James see a slight regression in Prince's OBP, but I have a feeling he can continue to show a solid eye at the plate. Should Fielder continue to show an improved eye at the plate, Prince could exceed James...
Sliding Into Home (Free subscription) | yesterday
It's that time of year when 2010 projections are being released from various sources, so here are three sets along with some highlights for you to take a look at: - Baseball Projections has the 2010 CHONE hitter projections . Cano: .304/.341/.489, 19 HR, 83 RBI Tex: 34 HR, 112 RBI A-Rod: 34 HR, 106 RBI Jeter: .295/.367/.425 - Fangraphs has Bill James's 2010 projections on each players'...
with both hands (Free subscription) | 3 hours ago
John Fogerty's Blue Ridge Rangers Tour show at Chicago's Auditorium Theatre on Saturday November 21st brought together hundreds of middle aged gents and their wives, girl friends and significant others at feast and celebration of musical artistry void of posturing and narcissism. The only name worthy of the Single Name, it seems to me was James Brown; however, back in 1969 The Hardest Working...
Viva El Birdos (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
... areas of the club. still, i think it's worth looking at what we have. here is a table showing the bill james projections for the cards' bullpen in 2010. Name IP K/9 BB/9 K/BB FIP Kyle McClellan 66.0 7.09 3.68 1.93 3.82 Jason Motte 56.0 10.93 3.86 2.83 3.45 Ryan Franklin 61.0 4.87 2.80 1.74 4.75 Dennys Reyes 46.0 7.43 4.30 1.73 3.86 Blake Hawksworth 54.0 6.33 3.33 1.90 4.82 Trever...
Sliding Into Home (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
... list of the items check out this article on MLB.com . - Steve Lombardi takes a look at a recent Bill James article on Jorge Posada's chances at having as good a 2010 season as he did this year. The conclusion is that Posada is the least likely player in baseball to improve next year. - The folks over at Baseball Intellect tells us everything we need to know about Cuban defector Aroldis...
True Blue LA (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
More photos » by Matt Slocum - AP Andre Ethier and Manny Ramirez join fellow outfielder Matt Kemp as the only Dodgers projected by CHONE to have an OPS of .800 or above in 2010. Browse more photos » Last month we looked at the projections from the 2010 Bill James Handbook . Now, the second set of projections are in, from Sean Smith of the wonderful blog Anaheim Angels All...
VDARE.com: Blog Articles (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
In the 1970s and 1980s, Bill James put a lot of effort into predicting how well young players would do. In 1988, he summed up 15 things he’d learned, and three of them related to forecasting young players’ development: Minor league batting statistics will predict major league batting performance with essentially the same reliability as previous [...]
