THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wow, that’s about 3,000 hits a day ... congratulations!

Although I don’t have any frame of reference, that sounds like a lot of freakin hits. What exactly does that mean anyway?  There must be a lot of folk who read but don’t post, which is fine (and understandable since the threads tend to be technical).

BTW, most of the credit goes to Tango for starting this blog and keeping it going.  I don’t know how he does all the stuff he does and still manages to raise a family (his wife must be pretty wonderful ).

Also, I am uncomfortable with any sort of “congratulations.” I don’t do anything for props, let alone this!  I do this because I like it and want to - purely selfish reasons.  I generally can’t stand when people bask in their accomplishments and accolades.

And let’s not kid ourseves.  We are not feeding the hungry here.  We are feeding our own meaningless obsessions.

I’ve got a good daytime job, which makes it easier to do what I do as long as I can maintain my alias.

It’s not really that much hits.  As Phil points out, that’s 3000 times a page is requested from our server each day.  We have about 1000 unique visitors each day.  So, on average, you get 1000 people to come here today, they’ll putz around for a few pages, and go somewhere else.  In a month, we probably have 10,000 to 20,000 unique people, so probably something like 100,000 unique people have visited this blog in the last year.

The Hardball Times and Baseball Prospectus are, I dunno, 20x to 50x that.  And baseball-reference is 100x that.

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Oh, and I agree about the “patting on the back” thing.  I didn’t really post that to celebrate it as an accomplishment toward us.  It’s really a reflection of the community out there.  There’s about 30-50 or so regular posters (at least once or twice a month) on this blog, but far more who are passive.  It’s just interesting to me.

Long time reader, first time poster.  This is about the only thing I feel qualified to post about.  I did math contests in middle school but was an English major in college so about anything above basic statistics and college algebra (if that) is over my head but I can understand the concepts behind the analysis even if I cannot perform the analysis myself. 

I really like this blog because it tries to put a concrete explanation on something that I know I know when I watch a game (like platoon splits, managerial decisions and such) but cannot prove.  I was a history minor in college so I like to go back to some of the historical data you guys dig up and see that, yeah bunting with your number 2 hitter there was a bonehead play or sending this tired pitcher out there to face this middle of the lineup for a third time in a one run game is a bad idea.  Even when the results turn out positively in a particular situation, it was still a mistake.

I will now condescend back into anonymity.

FYI: Seven months later, and another million page requests.

FYI: Four months since post 5, and another million page requests.  That puts us at 3 million page hits.  That’s quite a progression.

We also have over a thousand threads since we started almost two years ago, which is about 10 threads a week.

Just FYI again.  In a few days, we’ll be at 5 million page hits.  That’s about 6.5 months after we got 3 million page hits.

So, our current rate is about 1 million hits per 3 months.

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Also, nearly 1500 threads in about 130 weeks, or 12 threads a week.  I always thought I would do a recap of the threads, but, it becomes increasingly unlikely every day.  Maybe whenever I retire…

Just for my personal recordkeeping: it’s been 10 weeks since my last post, and we got another million hits to 6 million.

Just for my personal recordkeeping: it’s been another 10 weeks since my last post, and we got another million hits to 7 million.

Just for my personal recordkeeping: it’s been another 10 weeks since my last post, and we’re less than a day away from another million hits to 8 million.

By some time in June, we’ll be at 2000 threads, or about 2.5 threads a day since post 7.

Recordkeeping post.

9 weeks since my last post, and another million hits to 9 million.

Recordkeeping:

7 weeks since my last post, and another million hits to 10 million.

Recordkeeping: a bit over 7 weeks since my last post, and another million to 11.

Recordkeeping: 7 weeks since last post, and another million to 12.

Recordkeeping: 6 weeks since last post, and another million to 13.

Recordkeeping: 40 days since last post, and another million to 14.

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I don’t know where all you guys are coming from, but thanks for being here.

Jun 06 - Jun 07: +1 million
Jun 07 - Jun 08: +2 million
Jun 08 - Jun 09: +5 million
Jun 09 - Jun 10: +7 million (forecasted)

I suspect that like me, people come here once and never leave, because there is always good and provocative content and interesting and constructive discussions going on.  It’s rare I log on here and there isn’t something new or some well-known saberist contributing a fresh viewpoint.  Not a lot of places on the internet can say that.  Thanks!

Recordkeeping: 39 days since last post, and another million to 15.

Is there any way we can get this progression in chart form from you, Tango?

Recordkeeping: 34 days since last post, and another million to 16.

Jun 06 - Jun 09: +8 million
Jun 09 - Jun 10: +8 million

Today or tomorrow my own blog will reach 200,000 visits ... in three and a half years. 

You get almost exactly 100 times as many page hits as I do: I got about 80,000 in the past year.

Recordkeeping: 21 days since last post, and another million to 17.

Not sure where all of you suddenly came from.

Recordkeeping: Sometime tomorrow we’re going to hit another million to 18.  That’s going to make it 20 days. 

I presume we must be getting spammed to get these hits.  I don’t see how we can be getting 50,000 hits a day.

Recordkeeping: Sometime tomorrow we’re going to hit another million to 19.  That’s going to make it 27 days.

Recordkeeping: Sometime tomorrow we’re going to hit another million to 20.  That’s going to make it 29 days.

Recordkeeping: Sometime tomorrow we’re going to hit another million to 21.  That’s going to make it 24 days.

Tango, out of curiosity, are you using the hits that is listed in the expression engine control panel or are you using something else like sitemeter or google analytics?  I only ask because the EE control panel total doesn’t filter out bots (as well as spam) that crawl your site several times per day searching for new material to index.

I’m using EE.  I’m pretty sure the bots are hitting me.  However, I’m more interested in the relative change.  If bots have decided to step up their hits on me, then, yes, there’s bias.  Otherwise, if we expect bots to hit me at the same rate as legitimate users, then that cancels out.

Recordkeeping: Sometime tomorrow we’re going to hit another million to 22.  That’s going to make it 25 days.

Recordkeeping: 22MM -> 23MM in 29 days.

Recordkeeping: 23MM -> 24MM in 26 days.

Recordkeeping: 24MM -> 25MM in 23 days.

Sometime tomorrow:
Recordkeeping: 25MM -> 26MM in 22 days.

Sometime yesterday:
Recordkeeping: 26MM -> 27MM in 25 days.

Sometime tomorrow:
Recordkeeping: 27MM -> 28MM in 22 days.

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Jun 2006 - March 2010: 14MM
March 2010 - March 2011: 14MM

Sometime today:
Recordkeeping: 28MM -> 30MM in 41 days.

(I guessed I missed the 29MM mark.)

Sometime today:
Recordkeeping: 30MM -> 34MM in 106 days (average of 26.5 days per million).

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Things have been pretty flat over the last 15 months, so I think we’ve reached everyone we can!  Average is 26 days per million hits.

Thanks everyone for coming here…

Recordkeeping: 34MM -> 40MM in 104 days (average of 17.3 days per million).

I thought things have flattened, but now they’ve picked up recently.  Either that, or the spammers are finding this site easier to hit.