THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Looks like a great clearinghouse for sabermetric basketball (APBMetrics) stats and discussions as well as some traditional ones.

Some of the sites are quite confusing but that may be partly because I am not that familiar with hoops, plus I am an idiot when it comes to the WWW.

When people have blogs, all I ask is a few things:  They put the name of the author of each entry in ENGLISH, unless they don’t want to reveal their name in which case a pseudonym other than “swish” (or something like that) would be helpful, and they put a date on each entry.  And they have easy access to past entries.  Also, that it be organized in topics, like this one is, OR day by day, with one or multiple entries per day.

And one more thing.  All blogs should have a “bio” for anyone who posts (not the replies of course) so everyone knows who the heck they are reading and whether they should care about what they have to say.  A general explantion of the blog would be nice also.  And of course everything in a non-cluttered easy-to-navigate site.  That is all I ask.  If your blog or web page is littered with ads or if it has ANY popup ads or ads that cover other things that have to be either opened or closed before I read some of the content of the site, I will NOT go to your site again, not that anyone should care what I do, unless a significant portion of their potential readership shares the same sentiment.

Sounds like you want them to duplicate our blog!

Hmm, I think I meet most of the qualifications. Author name, date, topics, day by day… No bio or general explanation though. I’ll try to add those in the future. I just started the blog part of the site.

As for the basketball stat links page, it’s geared more towards those who already have some familiarity with basketball stats, though I tried to organize things in a somewhat sensible way.

If you do have questions about some of the sites linked to or basketball stat issues generally I could try to answer them.

Eli, thanks for the recent e-mail.  I am out of town so I can’t respond from that e-mail address (it is not web-based).  I don’t like to send out e-mails from one of my web-based accounts because then people start responding to those accounts which I never check even when I ask them not to hit the “reply” key (understandable).

Anyway, I went back to the blog site.  A few coments from someone not familiar with setting up blogs.  It does not “look” like a blog.  It looks like a regular web page for what that is worth.  I don’t know whether you sign up with a “blog” company and they all have the same template or you set up your own blog page from scratch.  I think it is the former and if it is not, I would certainly use the former if it were me.  Why re-invent the wheel when it already works just fine, and probably better than most people can invent on their own.

Tango, this blog is some kind of template, right?  Obviously you can change some of the features, but the layout was already pre-determined before you started it?

Now, getting back to yours (Eli), the main problem is that all of your “subjects” or “categories” should be available on the same page. You have the categories at the lower right but it is not at all clear that they even exist.  I linked to Tngo’s above link to your blog.  It brought me to “raw stats” but I had no idea there were other categories.  When it says “posted by so-and-so” in “raw stats” that only confused me until I realized that there are different “categories.” The blog should have a home page with relevant information and then if you like (which I am not crazy about) you can link to the various categories if want.  Someone could (easily) click on “The Blog” link at the top, get taken to whichever category it takes you to (I still don’t know since there is no title at he top of the page, which there should be, BTW) and NEVER know that there are any other categories!

And yes, there should be an “about me” or “about us” explaining the blog and some info on the authors.  As I said, that is important on a number of different levels, not the least of which is that I want to know who it is I am reading.

And what is “CAP” as in “CAP links.” I have the feeling that it is obvious but that I am drawing a blank on it.  If it is not so obvious, you should change it.  There is no reason to put unnecessary jargon on a main part of your site that only a person familiar with the material would know. If it is that obvious, then forget I just said that!

BTW, do you know of any other sites or places that have true PBP hoops data in file form?  The only site I know of is - O.K. now I can’t find it, but he has PBP stats in large file format for the last 2 seasons plus the current one.  I am looking for prior to the last 2 seasons.  Your “PBP data” links on your site are not really PBP and if they are I don’t think they are easily downloadable for a whole season.  If they are, please let me know.  For PBP, I mean, who is on the court at all times and what happens at what time (so-and-so turns over ball at 3:19 in 1st quarter, etc.).

Thanks and good luck with the site and blog!

Thanks for the suggestions. I think you’re misunderstanding the setup in some ways (clicking on Tango’s link took you to a single post, not a category page, and the “Blog” link at the top takes you to the whole blog with all the posts, not a specific category), but I appreciate the feedback and I will make some of the changes you suggest.

“Cap” is Salary Cap. Those are links to sites relating to the NBA salary cap, Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), free agency, financial info, etc. In the sidebar I list it as “CBA & Salary Cap Links.” I agree that Cap Links isn’t intuitive to novices, maybe Salary Cap Links would be better.

For play by plays, you’re probably thinking of BasketballValue.com. That’s the only site that has them in downloadable form. I’m not sure what you mean when you say the PBP links in the “Play-by-Play” section aren’t really PBPs - those are what NBA play by plays look like. Maybe you didn’t navigate all the way to them - the links go to schedule pages, and you then have to pick a game, click on the boxscore, then click on the play-by-play. There’s no direct way to get to all of them, you have to go game by game. What you want is the last link in the PBP link section to BasketballValue’s downloads page.

(I hope this comment doesn’t appear twice - it didn’t show up the first time I posted it.)

O.K., thanks. I did misunderstand the categories thing and the “blog” link at the top.  As I said, I am an idiot when it comes to the web. As I also said, great work!  I am starting to get into some hoops research, so I am going to keep you as a source!  “Salary links” or “salaries and contracts” would be better I think.  I don’t see how the links are specfically related to the cap, but rather to salary and contracts in general.

http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2007/12/04/evaluating-player-ratings-year-to-year-correlations/

Interesting correlations near the end.  It seems that just because you can correlate some amalgamation of stats doesn’t make that amalgamation a better indicator of talent.  So, while Wins Produced’s amalgamation comes out with the best of the three, it is still behind a less intelligent design.

I’d be interested to hear some sabermetricians’ opinions on my latest post:

http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2007/12/17/does-good-pitching-beat-good-hitting-in-basketball/

It uses a method from Bill James’ 1986 Baseball Abstract to measure whether the offense (hitter) or defense (pitcher) has more control over different aspects of the game. I don’t follow sabermetrics close enough to know whether improvements have been made to that method or what criticisms it has faced.