THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, May 30, 2008

Linear Win Shares

We either love Pete Palmer’s Linear Weights, or we hate them.  Or maybe we know we should love them, but something just… you know, bothers us. 

What really bothers us is the single number issue.  If you are going to represent something as a single number, we want zero to mean something, since even a below average player should count for something.  So, here then, is a way to turn Linear Weights into two numbers.

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Barry Bonds, Bill James, and me

Boy this is fun.  Bill has been quite engaging on his website.  One of the topics on the forefront is Barry Bonds.  I’ll just quote you a bit of what Bill has said (within a fair use context, but I do my very best to keep it to a bare minimum), while quoting the entirety of my posts (which, of course, I don’t need anyone’s permission for).  Everything you see below in white is Bill.  The paragraphs preceded by “Tango:” means it’s me posting on Bill’s site.  Otherwise, it’s me posting here for the first time.

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Friday, May 09, 2008

Be Jolly stats users

This is a question solely for those readers who are subscribers to Bill James Online:

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Friday, April 18, 2008

How to calculate Loss Shares

Bill, Where can I find how to calculate loss shares?
Asked by: Anonymous
Answered: April 17, 2008

I haven’t written up an explanation for the method yet.

Here’s one way:

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Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Bill James talks to Freakonomics readers

Chat.  I don’t really have any highlights for you, so feel free to quote whatever you like in the comments.

To quote, do it like this:
{quote}
yada yada yada
{/quote}

Change the curly braces to square brackets.  So } becomes ] and { becomes [ .

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Baseball Abstract, 1983

When I was a kid in the summer of 1984, a friend lent me the Bill James’ Baseball Abstract, and I was hooked.  I’d go to the bookstore downtown every weekend in the spring, waiting for the latest edition.  1985.  1986. 1987. 1988.  Last year, I stumbled upong the 1982 edition in the library.  And yesterday, I got the 1983 edition via Amazon.  (Shouldn’t Bill James be turning all his old Abstracts into print-on-demand?  If ever there was a case for POD for old books, there it is.)

The good old days were then.  For those who don’t have a copy, I suggest reading the summary, and Lederer’s commentary here:

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Monday, July 10, 2006

Bill James, Sabermetrics, and The Science Channel

http://science.discovery.com/convergence/baseball/video/preview.html

Can’t get the sound at work, but seems worth watching prima facie.

(Hat tip: BTF)