THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I have been a SABR member for about 10 years now, and I think it’s safe to say that the value one gets out of SABR is proportional to how much one is interested in baseball history, and often, minutiae of baseball history.

I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that stathead types (I would use “sabermetric” here, but since SABR is the topic, it might confuse things) are more tech-savvy than the historical types (a generalization of course).  So the major hub disseminating research among statheads is the internet and has been the internet for years (going back to the rsbb days).  Historical types were much slower to establish a web presence, and thus SABR publications are a much more viable outlet.

When I first joined, the statistical pieces in the “Baseball Research Journal” were pretty uniformly awful--"Here’s a new way to rate players based on ranks in BA, HR, RBI, R, and SB! “, “Here’s a new bases/something stat”, Mike Hoban--enough said.  Thankfully they’ve gotten much better about weeding those out, but even so, of the stat pieces that are printed, many have already appeared in BTN, which is freely available on the net.  And BTN itself has seen a decline in article volume, as many of the people who would be predisposed to publish stuff there are doing it on the internet.

The chief benefits of SABR membership are 1) the publications and 2) the regional chapters and the convention.  For me, 2) is worthless, as I’m not the social type and would much rather discuss baseball on the net than talk to people in person.  But for people of a different personality type, that can be a very rewarding aspect--a kind of meetup for baseball nuts.

SABR is trying to boost its online presence, but I’m not sure they’re going to succeed.  SABR-L is still great if you have a question about historical minutiae, but its relevance has been hurt by message boards.  The SABR encyclopedia is redundant--you can’t download the info from it, it doesn’t have as much data as B-R/Retrosheet, and it’s not as well-designed as those sites are.  I think the only unique info available is the Home Run Log and which scout signed the player.  Had they beaten B-R and co. to the punch, it might have been something. 

If anyone gets the impression that I’m down on SABR, I’m not.  I think it is worth my money and I am proud to be a member.  But I certainly can understand why others would not come to the same conclusion, and I certainly don’t think that anyone should feel any sort of smugness about being a member.

What a fantastically impartial post from someone who could have been predisposed to give it a biased-slant.

Only hundreds subscribe to the Baseball Reference Play Index? Wow.  I can’t imagine trying to be a serious baseball writer without having access to that tool.  Every single sportswriter in the country should have one, plus everyone who writes regularly at a site/blog that gets any kind of traffic. 

The Play Index is amazing.

The SABR encyclopedia for major league players is inferior to B-Ref, but they have come a long way with a minor league encyclopedia.  It’s not complete, and not user-friendly, but if you want minor league stats before 1979 (like Baseball Cube has, there is no other source.)

I actually don’t know what Sean’s PI base is.  I think he said it was a few hundred in an online interview somewhere.  But, that was a little while after the launch.

I follow this blog (and many others of people that regularly post in here). I love the NHL. I am a PI subscriber at bb-ref. I have purchased last years THT Annual.

I second Dave’s comment - I cannot imagine baseball life without the Play Index.  Maybe the traffic seems so low because only bloggers and some newspaper writers use it?  And, I mean, it isn’t as if there 10,000 serious stat-heads blogging these days.

I can’t see some random fan paying $25/yr to know who had the most Caught Stealings between 1962 and 1965 amongst players with 1123 Plate Appearances, you know?  But, regardless, the PI is invaluable.

I made it a goal for 2009 as well to sponsor random players on B-R.  I’m thinking Jon Nunnally and Dave Nilsson to start.  If Nilsson is taken, I will move on to Dave Coggin.

The chief benefits of SABR membership are 1) the publications and 2) the regional chapters and the convention.

I think Patriot hit it on the head here. I think it’s also worth noting that not all the regional chapters are the same. I’m a part of the Rocky Mountain chapter (mostly Denver area; also home to Dan Fox before he went to Pittsburgh). We have a very unique situation where a number of members are actually a part of the Rockies organization. Thus, we’ve been afforded a number of opportunities to get inside some of the minds in baseball ops. I don’t know much about the other chapters, so maybe someone else can speak to them.

I’m an officer with SABR, so I’m biased. SABR is a non-profit organization with close to 7,000 members. We’d like to think we might be doing something right, to attract so many members, particularly when there’s a membership fee to pay.

Each member receives several publications through the course of the year, but - to me - the real benefits are in the area of baseball research and in joining with others of kindred spirit.

I’ve written over 20 baseball books now, and for every one of them, I have used the online SABR Directory, which lists the interests of each member. When I wanted to find out about a particular 1904 spring training game the Boston Americans played in Macon, I used the directory to find our members in Macon and asked one if he’d mind looking up the game in the local library. Bingo! Thanks!

As another poster pointed out, in addition to the SABR Online Encyclopedia, there is also the SABR Minor League Database which, at last count, presents the historical data on 171,728 ballplayers on 30,653 teams in 4913 leagues. To me, that’s astonishing and it’s been incredibly helpful when researching the backgrounds of players before they reached the major leagues (for those who ultimately did).

One goal of SABR is to offer the “gold standard” of baseball statistics. Toward that end, the Society had entered into an agreement with Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette to be able to maintain and offer the data Pete has collected over many, many years. SABR has recently entered into a long-term agreement with Baseball-Reference.com so that B-R.com will be able to access this information.

SABR researchers also work in non-statistical realms. The BioProject, headed by Mark Armour, has initiated somewhere around 1,000 player biographies, many of which are available on the SABR website, and has itself inspired close to a dozen books on given teams either already published or in various stages of production.

Some people get a good feeling out of supporting others who are doing good work. Many members of SABR don’t actually use these features, or don’t use all of them, but I am sure that they - like myself - feel good knowing that their membership encourages this kind of research and dissemination.

People give money to charitable and other not-for-profit organizations. One of the ones I support is the Society for American Baseball Research.

Good job guys.  Feel free to make your case for anything else.

Sean’s PI

For me, I was a subscriber to Sean’s PI, but then he was nice enough to comp me the following year, in exchange for giving him my WE/LI charts.  I certainly recommend it to any stat-based researcher, and I agree that if you are a professional (like a sportswriter), you’d be crazy (or technologically illiterate) not to have PI.  Sean’s interface is so nice, it should certainly tear down virtually any barrier the tech-illiterate would have.

The short of it is: if you are a reader on this site, and you dabble in stats just a bit, the PI is for you.  I think he even offers a monthly 4$ price point.  Indeed, he offers it for free, if you don’t mind just getting back very limited information.  Enough for you to kick the tires.

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Bill James Online

I am a subscriber to BJO, and that was more for “past services”.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m really the target audience there.  Kinda weird.  Bill does good stuff, but he doesn’t interact in his articles.  The data portion is simply un-navigable.  They are carrying my LI numbers (and in the Handbook too), and they do have Dewan’s +/-.  I am probably going to let my subscription lapse, and just buy the Goldmine.  It’s a tough call as to who the target audience is. 

What I do recommend is to give it a whirl: they let you subscribe for 3 months at a time for 9$.  That’s a fair price point, considering you get access to all the archives.  Indeed, I would strongly encourage doing the 9$ subscription just so that you can devour everything on the site, and then you can decide if the site does it for you.

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Baseball Prospectus

I subscribed one year only.  I buy their annual every other year.  I’m in the “they had me, then they lost me” camp.  There is simply too much talent that has walked away there in such a short amount of time.  And the talent that has walked away are the ones that were my kind of writers/analysts.  I’m also not a fantasy player, and I get the feeling that the site is driven by fantasy players as the audience.  The best part of the site is the stats section, and that is free. 

They also offer monthly subscription rates, so you can also give it a whirl to see if it’s for you.  Again, I would say to definitely do it, so that you can devour their archives.  I actually had a blog thread recently where I gave the links to all the Fox and Silver articles.  So, the more I type, the more I say that you should do this one first.

Consumer Reports

It’s the “there when you need it” subscription for me.  I used to have the dual magazine subscription, but I stopped that once I saw the convenience of online.  I stop by there once every few weeks, plus whenever there’s some purchase I’m considering (camera, printer, whatever).  If you go to bizrate and the various reviews sites and like to check the amazon reviews, etc, then you are the audience for CR.

The Book (obvious conflict of interest)

If you are regular reader here, then I encourage you to read it somehow.  You can read the book in its entirety from Amazon’s “look inside” feature, with a bit of luck.  Otherwise, buy it. MGL used to offer a money-back guarantee.  I’m not sure he still does, but I think he does.  I don’t think he’s ever had to pay off.

Sales are still going well, surprisingly. It’s always in the top 10 in stats books, even though it’s been out for nearly 3 years.  It’s a tough read, and it will be impossible to read it through one sitting.  I don’t think you should even read more than one chapter in one sitting.  The sac bunt chapter itself requires at least two sittings.

My two cents:

B-ref PI:  Absolutely essential for me.  I signed up for what Sean told me was at the time one of the few organizational subscriptions he’s sold (I provided this so my Hit Tracker volunteers would have access) - 5 people at a time can be on the org. subscription, which is $100 per year.  Worth it, for me, beyond any doubt.

SABR:  I am a member, but haven’t interacted with the rest of SABR much.  I consider the subscription fee a good trade for the many publications they send all through the year.  I am also fine with supporting the research that members do, even though a lot of it is deep historical stuff that doesn’t really blow my hair back.

Bill James Online.  Haven’t subscribed yet, haven’t tried to check it out yet.  Maybe I will, but I’m near saturation on the other baseball stuff I do already…

Baseball Prospectus:  Got the Annual one year, got a free trial once, read a ton of stuff when they unlocked it for a week a while back, occasionally read the unfiltered section.  Generally good stuff, but to second Tango, I think a lot is aimed at fantasy players, and I don’t play fantasy baseball.  I also tended to read Silver and Fox articles more frequently than other authors.

The Book.  Own it, read it cover to cover when I got it, occasionally open it now to pick at a chapter or two.  Great stuff.  When is “The New Book” coming out?  There’s plenty more to analyze and explain, get with it

MLB.com Subscriber since I found out it existed.  Enthusiastic near-fanboy for MLB due to the ability to watch nearly every play in MLB within a minute of deciding I want to.  “Baseball’s Best” is great, too.  Willing to forgive nearly any missteps (Silverlight?  Downloaded games you can’t view?  Infuriating tiny controls for video streams?) because of the overall accomplishment.

MLB Extra Innings and DirecTV Strike Zone Channel:  The absolute best.  Not only can I dig up home run video in HD for the obscure games that BBTN won’t recap, but when watching live, the SZC switches you from game to game, seamlessly, jumps to highlights whenever something good happens elsewhere, and is all in HD, with no commercials.  I’d tunnel through a mountain to establish a line of sight for my dish before I’d give this up.

Just a comment on why people join professional associations. Lots of academics belong to more than one association. Most of those associations offer (a) a journal, (b) an annual convention. Analogous to SABR.

For some years now, if you’re affiliated with a university that has a good library, you’ve been able to get instant online access to thousands of professional journals without being a member of the sponsoring association. 

So why join the association?

Answer:  for the meetings. You often still have to pay a registration fee (maybe less than nonmembers, or maybe nonmembers can’t attend at all).  When some professional associations at first hesitated to make their (recent) journal issues available online—thinking that this would discourage people from paying dues—they learned that in fact this isn’t the case.

Perhaps the opposite was true:  if you can “sell your journal” (by getting libraries to buy access to online versions of it, perhaps through some kind of publishing consortium), then you may sell the value of your association—people will come to present papers, get feedback, meet other experts and up-and-comers, have fun.

Following this logic, only if you’re interested in the meet-ups are you likely to join SABR.

I joined SABR for the meetings.  If it weren’t for the annual meeting, I probably wouldn’t bother (though I do enjoy some of their publications).

I generally buy into all of the sites mentioned here, though I don’t use them all consistently.  It’s mostly done to support “the cause.” But, with the economy the way it is, I’ll probably have to pull back.  Haven’t decided yet what I’ll give up.

One other paysite I want to mention is Craig Wright’s online subscription, the Diamond Appraised.  He has two subscriptions ($20 each per year): a historic one and a current season one.  I find they’re both excellent, and I enjoy reading Craig’s perspective on things.  He’s a very good writer.  Those will be among the last subscriptions I cancel.

Here’s the URL:

http://diamondappraised.com/

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/sabr/discussion/market_survey/

There needs to be an online only SABR membership.

That’s so obviously smart, one wonders why it doesn’t exist.

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and if people like Tango and Cameron (and others) feel as though there isn’t any value in what SABR has to offer, then I see that as more SABR’s failure to encourage their efforts, and those of other dedicated researchers who for one reason or another aren’t members of the organization.

So I would like to turn this around a little bit, and put the question this way:

What can/should SABR do to encourage the non-SABR research community? How can SABR foster and faciliate up-and-coming researchers, regardless of whether or not they are SABR members?

I think that if SABR looks for that kind of feedback and acts on it, the membership question will take care of itself.

That was Mike Emeigh.  Very good.  Rather than the onus being on me and non-members asking us “why not?”, the onus should be on the seller who is saying “this is the reason”.

I remember being told once that I should join because it’s only 50$ and I’d be a cheapskate not to join.  !!!