THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Huzzah!

Neat!

I’m a B.P. subscriber (and have been, intermittently, for about three years now).  And, in my opinion, those old articles are the only ones that are worth anything!  My overall sense is that the old articles were (a) better researched, (b) more substantial in the ideas, and (c) better written and with more statistical insight.

Nowadays, the site has really devolved into just another pop baseball news site filled with declarative statements.  The worst sign of all?  They frequently do that STUPID thing taken from Peter Gammons that’s become so common at other sites where, rather than doing actual work, they “prove” their arguments by going, “One scout tells us....” (And, suspiciously, the scout always speaks with the same syntax as the writer and always seems to be making the EXACT same point as the writer.  I wonder why that is, eh?) This is the sort of highly dubious, subjective, and nebulous bullcrap that I went to B.P. to ESCAPE.

I believe that they greatly miss Sheehan and Silver and probably many others whose names I never really remembered. 

Conversely, Fangraphs has become the go-to source for piercing sabermetric insight.  Their forecasts, deep analysis of batted ball types, and Pitch F/X work has just caused them to blow way the hell past B.P.  For that matter, TheHardballTimes was also giving them a run for their money, and BaseballThinkFactory has much better daily stories and reader discussions. 

I only make these complaints because B.P. is the only one that really charges money - and $40 per year is a very substantial sum for many of us - and because I believe that they’ve made these changes DELIBERATELY.  (For instance, continuously bragging that there are more words and fewer stats in the BP annual.)

One other reason I make these complaints?  HORRIBLE customer service at B.P.  I paid $40 and can NEVER get simple questions answered.  This past off-season, I had several questions about TAv, BRR, and their Defense stat and other things.  I wrote short, concise, and clear e-mails to several people there looking to understand what the stats meant or how a calculation worked.  I almost never got replies.  (The only guy who replied to me was the guy who oversees their site’s depth charts.)

In short, with B.P.’s archives now available for free, I have no use for them anymore.  PECOTA has been obliterated by everbody and anybody who even crudely attempts to build a forecast system, their customer service blows, and they’ve deliberately dumped their primary value as a great sabermetric analysis depot. 

Those are just my opinions.