As we look toward a weekend with yet more snow, here are some sabermetric links to keep you warm:
You Call that a Spray-Chart Split? | FanGraphs Baseball
The FanGraphs crew are having fun with splits, and this was a neat example of a very extreme pull hitter in Aaron Hill. Allen, of course, can't do a post without an awesome figure. :)
tRA Changed to tERA | FanGraphs Baseball
I understand why Graham originally designed tRA on the R/9 scale. But tERA is far more intuitive to most of us than tRA, so good on FanGraphs for making this change.
Analyzing the MLB draft using WAR | Hardball Times
A few weeks old, but I think this post probably hasn't gotten enough attention. Pedicini duplicates Wang's work, but gives us the values in WAR instead of $. This is good, because $ values fluctuate a lot, and we need to use a current $ to win conversion each season. This should last us longer.
Defensive Studs in the Hall: Did their Value in the Field Make Up for their Lack of Offense? | BaseballTwit
Great look at some of the defensive specialists in the Hall of Fame, as well as some who should be there.
Baseball Prospectus | Baseball Therapy: Profiling a Manager, Part 1
Pizza Cutter (no, I won't call him Russell, no matter what his mother says) is doing a nice series investigating behavioral tendencies in managers. Part 1 (linked) looks at stolen base attempts, but is specific to situation and player speed. Part 2 looks at reliever usage in close, late, but trailing situations. Part 3 looks at effects of managers on actual player performance. It's a great start to the series. Now I'm just waiting for him to go all multivariate on us and start generating orthogonal meta-variables describing managerial style. :)
Framing the Framing Debate - Lookout Landing
Nice Example piece of using pitchf/x to quantify the effect of catchers framing pitches. The disparity between the two catchers he evaluated wasn't massive (2 runs), but the methods seem promising. Hat Tip Tango.
Baseball Prospectus | Introducing SIERA
In part 4, Matt & Eric show that SIERA seems to perform as well or better than most other ERA estimators (including FIP, xFIP, and tRA--though not tRA*) at prediction of year+1 ERA. I have to say, I like what I see. Given how easy it is to calculate, I'm strongly considering using it for this season's iterations of the power rankings...