THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Based on your recent “dealings” with BP, I figured you’d boycott the book or something.

Dan Fox wrote an article, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

Generally speaking, I don’t have any personal issue with BP; so I have no reason to boycott.  I deal with people honestly and fairly, even if it’s not reciprocated.  I don’t just stick around when there’s cheerleading sessions, and I don’t bend over.

I paid $12.21 for THT08 preview and $13.17 for BP2008 (free shipping). Both are worth what I paid for them.

The BP2008 is about what you’d expect given the evolution of BP and recent additions of the annual though after a less than exhaustive read, I think they must’ve given their proof reader a bit of a raise. Ignoring the usual complaints that we’re all familiar with, it’s a little annoying that some key player moves aren’t reflected in team write ups (i.e. Josh Hamilton was traded before XMAS and really Seattle’s writeup is rendered almost irrelevant since it doesn’t discuss how the Jones/Bedard deal changed the dynamics of the roster). That said, I like the inclusion of scouting information that is sprinkled in the player write ups though it’s often very superficial. I’d love to see descriptions of a pitcher’s repertoire,velocity and mechanics in the context of their projection. As usual the best part are the fungoes (two Dan Fox articles!). Overall, as a read it’s more titillation than a learning experience and frankly I’d use their website for their statistics. 

I’ve fallen in love with THT publications so I’m biased. I’m a fan of collecting blogger’s takes on their teams. Obviously the downside is that it’s a bit uneven and the production quality is sub par (a problem I didn’t have to deal with last year as they offered it as a pdf download which was cool).

I agree with the comments in #3 re: the THT preview--it is worth the price (for context, it costs less than two glossy magazine season previews), but some of the team chapters are a lot better than others.

I have the BP, but have not gotten around to reading it (I started with THT).  However, based on past editions, I have always thought that they should put a byline on the team chapters.

The BP book seems to be giving fewer research articles each year. Those are my favorite parts. The team writeups are sometimes interesting, as are the player comments, but that’s toilet reading. There are 2 articles by D Fox, on baserunning and OF arms, but they are just a retread of what he has been doing for a few years. IOW, the leader lists are worthwhile, but there’s nothing new in the explanation. The article by Davenport on pitchers working the count is interesting.

As far as the HBT preview, I bought it, and will continue to do so to help support them, but I was not impressed by the quality of the team analyses. I mean, they’re OK, but not much better than I can get from a preview magazine like Street and Smith’s Baseball (if it still exists). It seems like most are written, not by good HBT analysts like Gassko or Studes, but by guys with a blog on the team. Or maybe, the format is too restrictive. In BP, there is no format, and so the writer is free to choose whatever facet he thinks is most worthy or interesting, and examine it in detail. In the HBT preview, they have to answer set questions like “Who is due for a better season.”

Hey David (and the rest),

This is only our second year doing the Season Preview, and our first doing a full-blown book, so we’re willing to be flexible and make changes. So please, be very specific in your criticisms, and we’ll see what we can do to correct the things people didn’t like. With that said, David, I really like the format of the team essays, and that’s something we’re definitely going to stick with, but we’re willing to fiddle around with it, so if there’s anything you thought was specifically missing from the essays, that’s something we could maybe add in there next year.

Hey David,

I looked at the book again, and I want to retract my comment. It finally dawned on me that the book is just a ‘season preview’, and not some sort of analytic tome. And as such, it’s just fine. One specific thing I’ll mention is that there is often an annoying discrepancy between the projection and the blurb below. This is most true for fielding, with some guy rated a D fielder but described as good, etc.

And, the preset format sometimes leads to ‘filler’ answers, such as, for example, the Cubs comment on L Piniella. It’s obvious that the writer had nothing interesting to say, but had to do it anyway. So, he gives a comment about Lou being feisty, or whatever it was.

I got my books on Saturday, earlier than expected.  I started with THT quickly, then went to Gold Mine.  I’ll get to BP in a few days.

The THT cover is fantastic.  Great cover.  Looks better in hands than on the web.

I only read a couple of the team comments, and they are ok so far.  In terms of improvement, there are two that I’d recommend:
1. the “preset” categories I find limiting on the bloggers; the more interesting comments by the bloggers is when they talked alot in a category; so, my suggestion is you give the blogger ten or whatever categories, and he chooses 3 or 4 to talk about

2. the same applies for all these types of books: put all the stats for a team on one page; I don’t really get the reason to populate the player stats followed by comments; put the player stats on one page (sorted by either Fantasy dollars, or positions), and then the commentary on two pages, in “two-column” format.  Having all the text on a single-line of 8.5 inches makes for very hard reading, especially if you are trying to “scan” like I do.

I also read the Gassko “Favorite Toy”, admittedly inspired by the Frey article at Primer a few years back.  I will disagree about the “chances”.  If I’m reading it right, if a guy has a mean estimate of 2200 hits, like for Zimmerman, but it has a high uncertainty, it gives him a great chance at 3000 hits.  I don’t know what “heterodexticity” (or however it’s spelled) is, but if it has to do with the chance of being under 2200 is greater than over 2200, then I can’t believe the results.  The right-tail distribution should be very narrow, so I don’t think you can just apply the SD distribution.

Anyway, I’ll go back to the rest of the book in a few days.

***

As for the Gold Mine, all of the articles are from the website.  So, I already read all the articles on the site, so none of the articles in the book was new.  I’d have liked to know that.  The stats in the book look more like an ad for the site, since not all players get stats in the book.  Obviously, it wouldn’t be possible as the book would be an encyclopedia size.  There are a few blurbs out there in the book, a couple of good ones ("nuggets").  Someone contemplating spending 36$ for the website or 12$ for the book would be much better off with the website.  I think the book would have been better off publishing ALL of James’ articles that are on the site.  That’s the genius of James, his writing.  As for the stats, he could have taken each one he introduced and fleshed it out much more (and then pointed the reader to the website for the stats for all players).  The team-by-team breakdown simply did nothing for me.  I would say that anyone under 50 years old will far prefer the website to the book.

Anyway, there’s was one article there that basically was screaming out FIP!  Basically, James invented a poor version of FIP.  I think I talked about this a few months ago.  FIP is a better version than what he introduced.  Does James not read Hardball Times book?  FIP is all over there, isn’t it?

And like I said, it’s a shame that James simply did the Rivera article in light of what was done in The Book. 

And his shots about the Ortiz shift are simply inexplicable.  Elsewhere in the book, he shows the number of PA that everyone got shifted.  There’s some 60 or 70 for the leaders.  It looks like there were a few hundred shifts in all of MLB.  But still, why not present the data of what happened with and without the shifts, weighted by how often each player was shifted.  Contrast that with what Greg Rybarczyk did in the THT annual.  That was a fantastic piece of work.

And he makes no reference at all to PITCHf/x, the biggest revoluation in data collection.

I hope that James spends more time reading Hardball Times and this blog, as James definitely needs to be up-to-date on the goings on around the web world. 

***

As for the Polock joke, he actually kind of retreats from it, but he didn’t need to say it the way he did.  And, I highly doubt that James has any Polish friends (I mean people who immigrated from Poland).  All my wife’s family and friends are immigrants, and they detest the Polock term that was popularized by All In The Family.  They laugh at the show, but they don’t laugh at it outside the show.  Shame on James for resorting to ethnic jokes.  I’ll retract my statement after James makes similar comments with the words k-ke, n-gger, and w-p.  Don Rickles at least is an equal opportunity comedian.

Hey Tom,

Heteroskedasticity (awful word, I know) is when the standard error goes up as the predicted total goes up. IOW, the standard error for a guy with two projected hits is not the same as a guy with two thousand. But once we correct for that, I do assume a normal distribution around a player’s projected total, meaning that his chances of gathering 1,000 more hits than expected are the same as his odds of gathering 1,000 less. I agree that the results for young players look a little strange, but I’m not sure that makes them wrong (mainly because the overall numbers look very reasonable). I’ll probably have to write another article for the website looking into whether odds for young hitters are too high.

It’s easy enough to test: look for all guys like Zimmerman, and see if 20% of them reached 3000 hits.  My guess is that the answer will be: no.

Bill James has Brad Hawpe as Clutch Hitter of the Year, 2007.  A neutral clutch hitter in 2007, according to me (via Fangraphs). 

Here’s his Fangraphs PA by PA page (click LI):
http://www.fangraphs.com/statsp.aspx?playerid=1885&position=OF&season=&sort=

Nothing exciting about his high LI PAs.  Troy Tulowitzki on the other hand:
http://www.fangraphs.com/statsp.aspx?playerid=3531&position=SS&season=&sort=

Of the ten most high-pressure filled PA of his season: ONE out, 2 singles, 2 doubles, 1 triple, 1 homerun, 2 walks, 1 hit batter.

James also uses the pennant drive as part of the clutch, and Hawpe did well in the last few weeks (as opposed to Tulo who did unbelievable at the beginning of the year).  It all depends on how you define your parameters.  I treat it as game-by-game, without respect to standings.

The top clutch hitter in 2007 was probably Vlad.

We both agree on Pujols for 2006.

I have Ortiz for 2005.  I forgot who he had.  Wasn’t Ortiz (he had Ortiz for 2003, 2004).  Didn’t make much sense, since 2005 was his coming out party, and 2006 was the cementing of his legacy (though he couldn’t touch what Pujols did in 06).

For 2003 and 2004, it was pretty tight using the Fangraphs Clutch numbers.  I would prefer seeing “split” data, like Studes did at Hardball Times, and how Fangraphs will be doing it in 2008 with my Clutch project.  For 2005-2007, those three hitters probably had excellent split data, so it’s probably an easy call.  For 2003, 2004, it’s not the case, so we can’t use the “Clutchiness” value of Fangraphs as the proxy we want.

Anyway, I’d like to see the split data of LI of 2.0 or greater.  That’s roughly 10% of a player’s PA, and probably the amount we think of in terms of PA that are clutch.  At LI of 1.5 or higher, that’s almost 20%.  That could be a decent benchmark as well.

Ok, I read the articles in BP08, plus a couple of the team chapters.

Clay’s article was the one that warmed my heart.  The first half will be nothing new to readers here, as he basically does a linear weights by count.  The second half is basically a game theory aspect, and one that I have been working on privately and have yet to publish.  It’s excellent work, and is worth a read.

***

Dan Fox’s work is his usual good stuff.  There’s nothing new in it, rather it’s his baserunning and arms work expanded.  I would have liked it to get the Retrosheet treatment, but he does that on his blog anyway.  I think the book readers would have benefitted.  Maybe they gave him a page constraint, but I’d have given him the rope that Walsh had with THT last year when he did his arms work.

One thing about how Dan explained his baserunning runs is that he did it as a two step process: first he counts the run expectancy (RE, he calls it RX) above the minimal bases he’d have gotten from the hit, which is clearly wrong.  But, then he makes an adjustment to see how the average player did.  By doing it in a two-step process like this, he gets it right.  But, if he did the first-step based purely on the run expectancy of that base (not the change in run expectancy), and did the second step again against the average, he’d have ended up at the exact same spot.  I’m 99.999% sure the math works out the same way.  I’ll work it out tomorrow unless someone beats me to it.  Regardless, his explanation works, even if in the end it wasn’t necessary.

***

The team-by-team chapters have some good depth to them, and the player comments are hit and miss.  I focused on the teams I know for the moment.

I have a general bias against all team comments be it THT or BP or Elias or whoever.  The only one that has done it right is Bill James.  The recipe is fairly easy: make it timeless.  I simply won’t read the team articles of years ago of anyone else, except James.  That’s me though.

***

I emailed Clay the following:

On page ix, someone talks about “Pythagenport”.  Now, you’ve deprecated that method in favor of PythagenPat.  Is there a reason you are using the same name?  It would be like Bill James deprecating Runs Created, adopting BaseRuns, but calling it Runs Created.  The decent thing to do would be to use PythagenPat and move on.  Can you tell me why this is not happening?

Now, if Patriot and David Smyth tell me they don’t care at all, then I won’t either.  But, it bugs me that BP does this.  Bill James will open his book and give a guest article to Keith and Rany, open an article at length to talk about Voros and Paul Johnson.  BP?  Nope.  I’m super impressed with PythagenPat, and we should acknowledge it fairly to David and Patriot.

I know if Keith would have decided to use the Tango Distribution in favor of his (which he did) but rename it as his own (which he didn’t), I’d be super p-ssed.  It’s not a question of ego.  It’s about being honest.  Be upfront, and move on.

Btw, I’d rank the 4 annuals as:
THT08 - by far the best one

BP08 - good effort

THT08 preview - good, but not enough depth; oddly enough, the “Five Questions” approach they have online has the formula and depth I enjoy, and would fit perfectly for the book

GoldMine - the articles I cared about are online, and the stats are better exposed online; so if you are online, don’t bother with the book, and if you are not online, I’d put it on par with BP08

Apologies to the BP, THT and James editors.  Take these comments in my blog as constructive criticisms.  I want you guys to exceed as much as you can.

IIRC, it has been a couple of years since they updated their glossary to use Pythagenpat, and Pythagenpat was acknowledged in the Between the Numbers book, but I don’t believe they have ever mentioned a switch or acknowledged Pythagenpat in their annual book.  Maybe they never used it.

It is so damn hard to tell anymore with BP, because they never explain their formulas for anything in the annual, even formulas that are not proprietary.  I wonder if they are concerned that too much of their readership is “mainstream” and would be turned off by a relatively simple formula like EQR, Pythpat, or Peripheral ERA.

I think they owe an explanation, one way or another.  If they are using Pythpat, then they should acknowledge it or just call it a general “Pythagorean”.  If they are not using Pythpat, then of course I would be very interested to know why they have backtracked from using it.

Incidentally, I have no problem if anyone wants to use Pythagenpat and call it Pythagorean.  That’s the traditional name, it’s a better name (the tacking of “port” or “pat” on the end is silly, either way), and I have no problem with it being used.  Speaking for myself only, I still use the term Runs Created even though I use a linear weights formula (for players) or BsR (for teams). I think “runs created” is a much better name.  But I always make sure to explain that what I am calling RC is actually David Smyth’s BsR, or Palmer’s Batting Runs, etc.  I would hope that others would do likewise.

I agree that their lack of explanations is completely underwhelming. That’s why books have an Appendix. 

I agree that if they were to just stick to the common name “Pythagorean”, and then say “custom exponent using the David/Patriot method”, that’d be just as good, rather than having 3 different flavors of Pythag names.

I agree that we can agree on a general “runs created” term, if we describe the actual equation.  James however has various “tech” versions.  He can simply call it “tech-BsR1” version of Runs Created.  Having the name carried along like that, a clear versioning pointing to David Smyth would be appropriate.

Let me go through how Dan is doing his baserunning.

So that you can follow at home, I suggest you bring up these in separate windows (or print):
http://tangotiger.net/destmob2.html
http://tangotiger.net/RE9902.html

Note that Dan correctly goes one step further (looks at the OF location the single is hit, since one hit to LF will have a much different base advance than to RF), but we’re not interested in that aspect for this illustration.

Let’s look at runner on 1B, 1 out (RE=.573).  Runner gets to 2B (and batter to 1B), and RE=.971.  If he gets to 3B (and batter remains at 1B), RE=1.243.  If he’s thrown out (and presumably batter remains at 1B, which is unlikely, since the batter will end up at 2B about 40% of the time), RE=.251.

Aside: in reality, the batter will also try for 2B, and the runner taking off for 3B makes that possible.  The runner deserves some credit for that.  How much?  That’s easy: you use WOWY to figure that out.

Anyway, the RE above the “minimal base” (station-to-station) is 1.243-.971= +.272.  That’s what Dan did for his “first step”.  This is wrong, but I’ll continue.  If the runner is thrown out, the RE change is .251-.971= -.720

He does this for all the runners, and figures out the average for the league.  Let’s say the average runner in this situation is safe at 3B 25% of the time, and out 1% of the time.  So, 25% of +.272 and 1% of -.720 is +.061 runs.

A guy who NEVER tries for 3B would in step 1 get +0 runs and in step two be compared to .061, for a run value of -.061 runs.

There’s alot of subtracting and stuff going on.  Did we even need to compare to the “minimal base”?  What if we simply looked at the RE (rather than the change in RE)?  The RE of getting to 3B is 1.243 and getting thrown out is .251, as previously noted.  The average runner will get 25% of the former and 1% of the latter, plus 74% of “no attempt” (meaning RE = .971).  The weighted average RE is 1.032 runs.  That’s the average RE state for the average runner.  For the “no attempt” runner, it’s obviously .971 runs.  And .971 minus 1.032 is -.061 runs.

See? Same thing.  This is the method I’ve followed in Chapter 1 of The Book.

So, while Dan was eventually proved right, there’s no real benefit technically to looking at the “minimal base” approach.  It does have a good benefit in terms of explaining to the reader, so I can definitely see why he did it his way.

Try it a different way.  Let’s say that you give the runner the whole run value, not starting from 2B, but from assuming that he MUST reach 3B.  In this case, by reaching 3B, he gets +0 runs, by staying on 2B, he gets .971-1.243 = -.272 runs, and if he is thrown out, he gets .251-1.243 = -.992 runs.

The average runner gets 25% of zero, 1% of -.992 and 74% of -.272 for an average of -.211 runs.

A station-to-station runner (never tries for the extra base) gets 100% of -.272 runs.

And the difference of -.272 - (-.211) = -.061 runs.

See?  Same thing.  It’s all a matter of at what point you remove the average. 

I said that Dan was “wrong”, but that’s not the correct word.  It wasn’t required that Dan approach it as he did.  Whether you look at it from the minimal base approach, or the next-base approach (you are subtracting something too early unnecessarily), it’s all a different variation of using the absolute RE approach.

Furthermore, there are different impacts of what happens to the batter as well, based on what the runner does.  A WOWY approach will let you know whether it’s the batter that causes the runner to have extra chances to allow the batter to try for 2B, or not, etc.  It’s a tiny impact of the overall effect.

Good job by Dan overall, especially in having different rates based on where the batter hit the ball.

I would have liked to see this chart:
http://tangotiger.net/destmob2.html

For all the configurations that Dan used.  Or at least show us the “average gain” for the various configurations.  Perhaps that’s something best saved for online?  Maybe Dan will oblige us.

I should note that by using the minimal base approach, and him providing the average gain for the average runner, is that we know exactly how much the run value of the station-to-station baserunner is.  And that’s a very good benefit to have.

Clay, ever the gentleman, wrote back.  (Clay and Dan are pretty good at writing back in a timely fashion.  No one is as responsive at BP as Will Carroll is, though.  Might even be more responsive than I am.  We don’t subscribe to the “we get sooooo many emails, we read ‘em, but we can’t reply to ‘em” concept.  You take the time?  So will I.  My time isn’t any more valuable than yours.)

Anyway, I wrote to Clay from my Yahoo account, which is blocked here at work.  (My tangotiger.net account is reachable at all times.  I should have written to him from there.  My bad.) I’ll let you know his response tonight.

Hmmm… I’ll take that back.  With My Yahoo, I get a preview of the email, so I can tell you what he partially wrote:

Tom, I’d have to guess as to why, since I don’t know. I know that I don’t use the name anymore; to be honest, most of the time I just say “Pythag” and that’s it.  The most likely reasons would be a) habit and b) whoever ran it may not be aware that I’ve switched off. I don’t tend to be very striden… (rest of message not viewable at this time)

So, it seems that it’s an honest mistake.  However, I’ve mentioned it many times on my blog.  Somebody must have gotten the message.  Perhaps I can write my official “What BP needs to fix technically” so that we have one central point of information.

As far as the Smyth/Patriot Pythag method, I wish people would stop attaching my name to it. I released it to Patriot a long time ago when I realized that he had come up with it a few months before I did.

On the runs created thing, I think ‘runs created’ has such a strong identity as the James formula, that it shouldn’t be used in a generic sense to refer to a run estimator (whether BsR or otherwise).

And you could simply have “Basic Pythag” to refer to the one with the 2 exponent, and “Custom Pythag” to refer to the Patriot method, instead of the awkward ‘Pythagenpat’. I wouldn’t advocate a set term for the fixed 1.83 exponent version, since if you’re gonna do that, you might as well customize it…

Custom Pythag would seem to be better than the awkward name.

***

Here is the rest of Clay’s message:

I don’t tend to be very strident or vocal about anything, and to the extent that I haven’t come down on others using the old term the fault is mine.

I will send your e-mail to the editors, along with me saying “Tom’s absolutely right on this”, so that they can have it as a hopefully permanent style change to look out for in the future.

Gotta give it to the man…

As far as the Gold Mind, I got mine an hour ago. I was expecting to be pissed to have spent the money, given Tango’s observation, since I also subscribe to the BJOL site. But...so far, I’m OK with it, even though I’ve only read a few pages. The Acknowledgements page alone was entertaining writing. Flipping, there are blurbs of writing that, AFAIK, are not on the website, such as the first page I happened upon, discussing G Tenace and J Cust.

If you are a BJ fan (Bill James, I mean, not you-know-what ), go ahead and buy the book.

Right, the blurbs “nuggets” are not on the site.  He has a couple of really good ones.  If you strip out everything that is a copy of the website, you’ll be left with some 10 pages or so of new material.  Like buying a “Best of Aerosmith”, with one new track.  How much you love Aerosmith determines whether one track an album makes.

Further evidence of James being out of touch (which he seems rather proud of, for some reason):

In the article called “Herbie”, he comes up with what is essentially a quick DIPS formula. But he doesn’t mention FIP--he doesn’t even mention DIPS! The formula is:

Innings Pitched times 3, minus strikeouts
Divided by 3
Plus walks
Plus hit batsmen
Plus 4 times HR
Times 9
Divided by innings pitched

This is called H2. To convert to an ERA scale, you do:

(H2-5)*.424 = ERA

I plugged in some avg numbers, and got these values using the +1 method:

BB= .42
HR= 1.70
SO= -.14

A couple of us pointed that out to Bill in the comments section online. 

And, I went through his Herbie in-depth here (start at post 2):
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/bill_james_online/#2

Yeah, I missed that post, Tango.

The funny thing is, we KNOW that James knows about DIPS, because IIRC he had several pages about Voros and DIPS in his Win Shares book, right? Or maybe it was in the revised Historical Abstract?

So, he apparently doesn’t even realize that what he is doing is another DIPS-lite formula?

Like I said in an earlier post, I suspect that James is suffering from a cognitive/emotional problem where he doesn’t want to accept that he is no longer at the forefront of analysis, and one way to do that is to ignore that stuff, and claim that it’s because he is too busy or whatever.

David, based on our discussion in posts 20/21, what’s your assessment of the book?

I’m more excited with the website.  He writes enough that I think I can stick with it for quite a while.

If I pretend that the website doesn’t exist, then I’m enjoying the book because he does have some interesting stuff that I don’t see elsewhere, and he’s not trying to write some sort of complete tome on baseball analysis.

Of course, since the site contains 80% of the book, plus much more, I’d rather have the site for 3 bucks a month.

But, there’s something to be said for having books. I mean, right now, the HBT preview book, plus James’ book, are on a stand next to my toilet. Helps pass the time while dumping a load. And the BJ Handbook and BP annual are in my work bag, to pass the down time there…

Right, so you probably have the same experience that I have.  The book has the tactile feel you want, it has a bit of stuff not on the website, and the website is a much better deal.

It’s easy enough to test: look for all guys like Zimmerman, and see if 20% of them reached 3000 hits.  My guess is that the answer will be: no.

---

I’m probably going to do an article on this for THT this week, so I’m going to hold back the details for now, but I figured that I could share my overall conclusion, which is that you (and I as well, since I too wrote that the predictions for the young players looked high) are wrong. The predicted numbers might be a little higher than they should, but (a) the results are not statistically significant and (b) even taken at face value, the discount rate is not nearly as high as I would have guessed or as the Favorite Toy implies.

I just signed up for the online, and so far I’m underwhelmed.  The plus minus ratings only covers 2005 and 2006.  I could live with not having daily updated 2008 numbers (though since they are charging, that would be a good way to satisfy customers) but if they are going to be 2 years behind it’s not very useful.

Maybe the articles will win me over once I get a chance to read them.

Rally, thanks for letting me know that.  I was debating about signing up mainly to get access to the plus-minus rating, but if they’re only 2005-2006, that’s not worth it to me.  I think I even have the hardcopy of the Fielding Bible for one of those years.

The Fielding Bible has the 2003-2005 stats, so if you are subscribing just for those stats, all you are getting is one extra year.

I hope it’s just temporary and they will put 2007 up soon.  I can’t see any reason why not.

Rally,

What are you talking about? The 2007 data is there, too.

I’d swear the 2007 data was there.  I know that I reported a glitch when it was in beta, and then they fixed it.  But, I guess they found a problem subsequently.

You can click on FEEDBACK, and make your comment.  I have, and it’s Dewan and James that are the ones that reply back.  Maybe they’ll tell you when it’ll be back.  Dewan seems especially accomodating.

Maybe if enough people complain that they’d like some basic web necessities, they’ll get out of 1998 and move into 2008.

David, I was just there, and I looked at Ichiro and Wells in the fielding plus/minus section, and no 2007 data.  Can you provide a link to where you do see the data?

Weird. It’s not there for him. Manny’s 2007 data, however, is up.

Here’s the article:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/testing-my-career-projection-system/

Great, glad to learn something new!

I checked today and the 2007 fielding data is up. Even better, a note on the site says the will give us daily 08 updates starting in may.

Patriot’s review:

http://walksaber.blogspot.com/2008/05/review-of-bill-james-gold-mine-2008.html