BtB Sabermetric Writing Awards: Nominations for Best Primer or Review Article/Series
by JinAZ on Jan 6, 2010 11:00 AM EST
in Awards & Honors
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The original post describing this project can be found here.
Please use the comments of this post to nominate articles for the "Best Sabermetric Primer or Review Article" award. Here is the description for this category:
Articles that provide excellent introductions to, or summaries of, important fields of sabermetric research. When published online, these are often, but not always, broken up into series because of their necessary length.
Please take a moment and think about what you found to be the best summaries of important fields of research or thinking that were published in the last year. Nominate them below by replying, and please use the following format for clarity:
Title & Author: [in reply subject line]
Link: [self explanatory]
Comment: [one sentence description of why you think the article should be considered]
You may nominate more than one article (including your own stuff), but please try to be somewhat selective (i.e. don't post a link to three-dozen articles you thought were good...pick you favorite two or three). Also, please make a separate reply for each nomination.
Finally, please remember that all nominations must be "seconded" to advance to the next stage. Therefore, even if you can't think of an article to nominate off-hand, please look through the comments and see if there are recommendations that you would endorse. If so, just reply and write "seconded!" Discussion of a nomination's merits are also very welcome.
Thanks for taking the time to nominate an article!
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Michael Jong: Linear Weights: The Positive and Negative (Runs)
From Intro to Sabermetrics 101: http://fanhuddle.com/statistics/2009/11/13/linear-weights-positives-negatives/
This was as good an intro to linear weights, how their calculated, and their advantages and disadvantages as I read (or wrote) this year.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Come attend Intro to Sabermetrics 101!
Check me out at Beyond the Box Score as well.
Tom Tango, "The Mike Silve Chronicles"
Tango’s series of answers to Mike Silva on the various sabermetric principles of the day was a great read, particularly the one on FIP (http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/mike_silva_chronicles_part_4_fip/). Luckily, it just squeaked into the calendar year, getting published on Dec 29 and 30.
==
Check out Wezen-Ball.com
Seconded, big time.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Come attend Intro to Sabermetrics 101!
Check me out at Beyond the Box Score as well.
Alex Remington - Everything you always wanted to know about series
For advanced stats to become mainstream, the mainstream needs to embrace them and make them available.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
Seconded. First thing I thought of other than my own stuff.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Come attend Intro to Sabermetrics 101!
Check me out at Beyond the Box Score as well.
Thirded
It’s one of the ones I was going to nominate too. There’s one other I have in mind, but I’ll see if someone else does it first. :)
-j
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
Yes
Giant Dirtbags: John Bowker, Steve Hammond. MIA List: Todd Jennings, Brian Anderson
Jeremy Affeldt induces DP's
by Giant among Angels on Jan 6, 2010 11:32 PM EST up reply actions
Colin Wyers/Sky Kalkman - Batabases for Sabermetrician/Saberizing a Mac
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/databases-for-sabermetricians-part-one/
http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/tags/saberizing%20a%20mac
With this combo, there is no reason not to have local dataset.
There is more to Colin’s, but I am having problems finding the links from the old MVN site.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
Yeah, of only BPro wouldn't have claimed Colin before he got the second part of that re-published.
We can probably find it on archive.org.
Everything I know about SQL I learned from Colin.
-j
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
^"if only"
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
Actually, that's both parts of the original tutorial in one article.
The second part was supposed to be additional material – all of the original stuff is there. (There’s also a THT Live post that covers loading the Retrosheet data.) You can really blame Ben Jedlovic of BIS for the lack of a followup – he asked me (rhetorically, I’m sure) how you could have a persistent year-to-year line drive bias if you changed the scorers every season.
Well, we all know how that ended up.
Whoops
I guess I never actually read the THT piece because I spent so much time with the original statspeak pieces. :)
Glad to hear it’s all there. I also did see the retrosheet one, which we could add to the list.
-j
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
So are you not allowed to write for THT anymore?
Are you exclusive with BPro?
by vivaelpujols on Jan 7, 2010 12:49 PM EST up reply actions
I'm full-time BPro.
Realistically you’re going to see fewer articles from me in the near future because I have some other things going on (you’ll recall from the “State of the Prospectus” that we’re doing work on a new defensive metric – I’m doing a lot of the heavy lifting on that project).
That isn’t to say that I won’t be returning to SQL tutorials at some point. They’re fun and I like the response I get from readers on them.
On a tangent...
I think some of the best primers are written by people who don’t know anything bout what they’re writing about. Well, people who didn’t know anything ten minutes ago. If anyone goes about doing anything with SQL, write down what you did and share it. Or if you’re trying to figure out what the heck UZR is or how to compute park factors, take notes as you go, record good resources, and then share you line of thinking with us. That will also probably help you figure it out in the first place, too.
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So you're saying I should write some primers?
;)
See Data Differently.
beyondtheboxscore.com | Twitter: @ justinbopp
Yep, that's why I wrote my player value series.
Helped me figure all of that crap out.
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
I actually have a great idea for this.
We should have some novice interview with somebody with a thorough understanding and come up with an entire series. The novice asks a question, the vet attempts to answer it, the novice repeats in easier-to-digest terms.
Perhaps with a visual. ;)
See Data Differently.
beyondtheboxscore.com | Twitter: @ justinbopp
Agreed.
I like to think I did some decent primers this year, and it’s primarily because I had to dig up the information because I did not know it myself. It’s a great way to get into the topic as well.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Come attend Intro to Sabermetrics 101!
Check me out at Beyond the Box Score as well.
That's extremely unfair, Colin
Someone brought this comment to my attention, and I want to defend my reputation here. I shouldn’t have to do this, especially in a public forum.
Colin, our last email exchange was followed by three days where I had full-day meetings, then the holiday break. I wrote code to check your hypothesis on 2009 data, and I need to go back to expend it to the same multi-year sample you used. I also noticed there were also a few parks missing from the press box elevation file you sent me, which I need to handle one way or another. I literally have not had a free moment since then to finish what I had started. As much as I wanted to get back to you sooner, I cannot drop my work responsibilities to completely satisfy this minor curiosity we share, and I hope you can respect that. It’s not my job or obligation to take on things like this, but I like to explore these issues on my personal time when my other commitments allow.
I still intend to follow up, but I still have work priorities that trump personal favors and curiosities. If you were relying on my response prior to a certain deadline, I was unaware and apologize.
Ben JedlovEc
I think he was referring to his not following up on the sql tutorials
…because he got distracted by the press box elevation issue… The “blame BenJed” bit was, I think, simply because you raised the issue.
Maybe I’m wrong.
-j
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
Hell,
I thought he was giving him credit for raising a valid question.
See Data Differently.
beyondtheboxscore.com | Twitter: @ justinbopp
And if I misinterpreted Colin's above statement...
then disregard the above comment, and I apologize for my response. I guess you see how annoyed I am that I haven’t had time to finish up this little project…
Yeah...
…it was mostly a tounge-in-cheek remark, certainly not intended to offend like this. (And sorry for the misspelling.) Jinaz was correct about the spirit in which it was offered – I had planned to write a follow-up to the SQL article, but spent the week researching the park effects question instead. I can see how it would be misleading, though, if you saw the comment out of context and didn’t realize which article wasn’t followed up on.
So I’m sorry if that caused any offense, but it really wasn’t my intent. If you’re at SF again this year I owe you a beer or something. Look forward to your e-mail.
No hard feelings...
Yep, I didn’t really follow the context of the discussion. I knew you meant to follow up on the LD% article as well, so that’s what I read it as. Oops. That’s what I get for trying to jump in the middle of the comments section. My bad.
Definitely planning on being in SF again, if I don’t run into you before then somewhere. Ok, back to SQL and our original question…
Fangraphs (David Appelman) What is wRC+?
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/what-is-wrc/
Don’t really know where this belongs. Introduces the stat we’re all going to learn to love (I suspect most people reading this have already :))
http://www.capitolavenueclub.com/
My feeling is that it should be moved to a commentary
Though you could argue that it fits into novel research category if you lump it with the TangoTiger discussion that produced wRC+.
You could also stick it into the best online resource category. Though really, all of the w*** family of stats at fangraphs could probably be included there.
-j
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
By my count, there are four seconded nominations.
Michael Jong: Linear Weights: The Positive and Negative (Runs)
From Intro to Sabermetrics 101: http://fanhuddle.com/statistics/2009/11/13/linear-weights-positives-negatives/
Tom Tango, “The Mike Silve Chronicles”
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/mike_silva_chronicles_parts_1_through_10_placeholder/
Alex Remington – Everything you always wanted to know about series
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-WAR?urn=mlb,211211
Colin Wyers/Sky Kalkman – Batabases for Sabermetrician/Saberizing a Mac
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/databases-for-sabermetricians-part-one/
http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/tags/saberizing%20a%20mac
I have one more I’ll throw out here, but are there others you folks would like to see considered?
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
Nomination: Win Values series by Dave Cameron
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/win-values-explained-part-one
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/win-values-explained-part-two
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/explaining-win-values-part-three
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/win-values-explained-part-four
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/win-values-explained-part-five
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/win-values-explained-part-six
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/win-values-explained-part-seven
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/pitcher-win-values-explained-part-one
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/pitcher-win-values-explained-part-two
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/pitcher-win-values-explained-part-three
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/pitcher-win-values-explained-part-four
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/pitcher-win-values-explained-part-five
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/pitcher-win-values-explained-part-six
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/pitcher-win-values-explained-part-seven
Why: WAR went from little know to widely used this season, and I think Cameron’s easy to understand, current, yet detailed series are a big part of the reason why it became so quickly accepted.
He started this during the final days of December 2008 and continued it into Jan 2009, so I think it should count.
-j
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
Major seconded.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Come attend Intro to Sabermetrics 101!
Check me out at Beyond the Box Score as well.
Nomination: Evaluating Pitchers with FIP
http://www.3-dbaseball.net/2009/10/evaluating-pitchers-with-fip-part-i.html
http://www.3-dbaseball.net/2009/10/evaluating-pitchers-with-fip-part-ii.html
Why: Especially part 1. It’s the best breakdown of the inner workings of FIP I’ve ever seen, with good coaching on how to use it as well. “So BIP are still there, just hidden in the formula. Their value is used to determine the weights given to each other event.”
-j
I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds
Seconded.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Come attend Intro to Sabermetrics 101!
Check me out at Beyond the Box Score as well.
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