THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Too bad they didn’t have a position like this back when I was unemployed.

Holy cow, Colin Wyers at BPro? I knew it was cold, but didn’t think hell had frozen over.

Here’s his article:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9873

For those who pay for it, feel free to comment on it.

No more Colin for THT - a sad day indeed.  I can hope, however, that he will bring with him to BPro the gift of fixing WARP, RARP, VORP and Lev.

Colin was the last one of us from StatSpeak (Pizza Cutter, Eric, Matt Swartz, Colin and myself) who had not written for BP...now I’m the only one not on the current staff.

I think Rally was at StatSpeak, no?

Mike Fast was as well, at one point. There are probably a few others I’m forgetting - the archive system there is uniformly miserable at this point and hard to get through.

But I think Brian is referring to all of us that were there at the same time. Rally and Mike predated us. (Turnover at StatSpeak was apparently something of an issue.)

I don’t think Rally ever was.  David Gassko and Mike Fast both were though.

Originally, Gassko was there, and I know Rally was there too when he was developing TotalZone (right, Rally? I didn’t imagine that, did I?). I have this vague memory of MGL commenting on a Rally article at StatSpeak.

Then I know Pizza was there with a few others—Matt Souders came and went, for instance.

Then Mike Fast and I joined at the same time. Mike left for THT, Pizza and I recruited Colin and Brian, then all hell broke loose.

The article Eric is thinking of:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070810165702/http://mvn.com/mlb-stats/2007/04/23/totalzone-a-new-defensive-measure/

StatSpeak originally was Ben Kabak (now of River Ave. Blues) and Robbie Bonfire (?).  Gassko seems to have joined shortly after.  After Gassko left, it was on hiatus for a while.  Matt Souders (SABR Matt), Rally and I came aboard in March 2007 to reignite it.  Rally did indeed do the early work on TotalZone there.

Mike Fast and Eric came aboard at roughly the same time, as did Michael Frain.  I still have no idea who Michael Frain is.  He lasted three articles.  When Mike Fast left, Brian and Colin came aboard, and eventually Matt Swartz and Dan Novick.  I’m forgetting a few from the end days.

That’s what I meant - a little over a year ago four people writing together at StatSpeak (Eric, Russell, Matt & Colin) are now together at BP, while I participated in their ‘Idol’ contest over the summer. Although last year Eric was doing double duty, having already started at BP

Hey guys.

**goes back to hiding in the corner**

So BPro is now Statspeak. Fine and good, but I din’t pay for Statspeak and I dont think I’m going to pay for that same content behind a pay wall. I dont think I’m alone in that.

And BPro has some 10,000 people who are perfectly willing to pay for it.

They seem to have a model that works.  They pay their writers some 100$ an article, and, I dunno, say 1500 articles a year?  That’s 150,000$ to their writers.

They collect 40$ a person, so say 400,000$ in revenue.  They pay the difference to their regular staffers, plus whatever overhead they have, and it seems to be a fair trade.

Hardball Times, Fangraphs, and B-R.com each has its own model.  Best thing to do is to support the site that operates the way you like.

LJ/14,

What I see is BPro realizing that they were becoming irrelevant, and throwing resources behind an effort to bring in some of the best saber talent around.  That many of the new hires were on statspeak is a testament to how special that place was for a while.  I think BPro should be commended for this move--to me, these guys (Tommy Bennett too) are a major draw.  They’re getting my subscription money again after the holidays are over.
-j

Dan, didn’t mean to exclude you. (Or did we? But no, really, we didn’t.)

And LJ, all I can tell you is this. Someone once told me that it’s really hard to make any money in baseball analysis, because so many people are willing to do it for free. And it’s very true, and I think all of us ex-StatSpeakers are evidence for that.

You are the only person that can decide what, for you, is the value of the baseball analysis us at BPro (and yeah, it is still kinda weird to say that) above and beyond what you find for free at other sites. As far as us “new hires” go - Pizza, Matt, Eric and I (I’m sure I’m missing someone here and I don’t mean to, so appologies in advance) all have a rather extensive public body of work that we can be evaluated on. I personally think it speaks very well of us individually as analysts, but of course I would. At least it’s out there for you to make your own choice.

Whether intended or not, BPro, at least to me, seems to be in it’s own corner.  FanGraphs, Beyond the Boxscore, THT and the other “heavy hitters” out there all seem to be interconnected and work and build off of eachothers ideas.  Hell, FanGraphs and THT have basically merged, in that they have a section under their own websites linking to the other and THT writers are going to have access to FanGraphs’ stats database as soon as the technical issues get worked out.

BPro just doesn’t seem to be in the mix.  It could be because of the paywall, or it could be a problem on our end (I’ve talked to lots of people at the other sites I mentioned, but I’ve never communicated with anyone from BPro).  I don’t know. 

All I do know is I’m really going to miss Colin at THT.  His piece on Matt Weiters, among others, was a beautiful example of confrontational journalism that we just don’t have a lot of.  And he was one of the only few guys I could think of with the resolve and resources to pull it off.

As an example of the “own corner”, if you do a search for “Tango” for 2009 articles at BPro, you will get back some 15 or 20 articles.  Half of them were written by BPro Idols.  The regulars have so little use for anything that’s not BPro.

And when I ask for a link, Rob Neyer gives it to me, Pinto gives it to me, Weisman gives it to me.  Poz gives it to me.  Paul DePodesta gives it to me.  BPro?  Are you kidding?  They’re too good for me apparently.  Michael Lewis returns my emails, Bill James returns them (and I’ve been pretty critical of his work at time), Pete Palmer returns them, and BPro doesn’t.  I give them a few (professional) bloody noses, and they take it all personal.

Hopefully, the StatSpeak guys won’t be Borg-ed.

Tango - I’ve been told it’s 20,000 subscribers.

Brian, interesting.  Would that be split more or less half/half with the regular/fantasy crowd?

No idea. It was a response to a casual “So about how many subscribers does BP have?” “Oh, around 20,000”

Well, I can only speak for myself here. But anyone - and I mean anyone - can feel free to e-mail me at:

pontifexexmachina at hotmail.com

And I don’t consider myself too good to reply.

I should note that not everyone at BPro doesn’t bother returning my emails.  Will almost always does, Eric always does, Clay usually does, William always does.  Lots of good people there. 

Colin: let’s see how the gang there does when I ask for a measly link to one of my projects.(*) You may think “Unfiltered” means you get to post whatever you want in the blog, but that section has keys, and your post is moderated.  If you were at THT and I ask you, you’d say “yeah, no problem”, and wouldn’t even think of asking Studes.  It will not be the same thing at BPro.  You are now part of a business, and your independence is limited.

(*) I always figured that I have given alot to the saber community, and when I ask for something benign, it’d be nice to get it.  “He never asks for a second favor when he’s been refused a first.”

Colin, who is running PECOTA these days?  Now that you’re part of BP, will you have a chance to fix whatever was broken last year?

Colin, can I presume you are a freelance writer, paid by article, like most of the other people there?

Here’s the problem BP has with me...I’ve started liking not giving them my money. And truthfully, there isn’t much they can provide that’s vital.

Until they start churning out some real research that pushes our understanding again, sabermetric commentary is just too plentiful from too many excellent sources to pay BP’s brand.

Here’s my two cents.

Whether in the BP Idol comp, or in my so far few articles (4 as of today), I have referred to other websites like FanGraphs, or The Book or Tom’s research.  In my article today, I have used wOBA as opposed to EqA or some other “BP-specific” stat.  Never has anyone (specifically CK) said or even hinted, “No, you can only use BP-specific stats” or “be sure to plug our own articles/contributors in your work.” So far in my experience they have been very open to citing/linking to others oustide the BP domain.

Like I said, my experience up to this point is limited to the BP comp and a few articles, and I’m not one of the more prolific, so take it for what it’s worth.

I will agree with Tim/28.

I have noticed that the newer writers frequently reference non-BP stats and sources, and some of the longer tenured writers have as well. Jay Jaffe has linked to articles of mine at FanGraphs a couple times.

But I’ll also agree with Terry/27. There was a lack of cutting edge research, and I expressed this in person to Jaffe, Carroll & CK. For a while Eric Seidman was pretty much all alone in doing stat work. Now that they also have Colin Wyers, Pizza Cutter, Matt Swartz, Tim Kniker and some others, I expect a reversal. As far as I know, CK & Goldstein have the most power to decide who’s on staff, so I assume it’s a conscience decision of theirs to re-establish themselves in stat analysis. They have from now until April or May to convince me to renew.

Brian/29:
Well, I’ll do my best to keep you on board…

All, you can either contact me through the e-mail links on the website, or the one that I’ve included here:  aortim at yahoo dot com and I’ll be happy to do my best to answer any questions, fulfill requests, etc.

I only have one request: when I run my Fan projects, link to them, without getting permission from someone. 

Neyer is a true model here.  Dude links to everything out there, like Tommy Bennett at BtB.

The bar is pretty high to be a subscription site on the basis of analytical articles.  THT and Baseball Analysts are putting out stuff for free that blows BP away.  On the fantasy side, PECOTA may have been worth paying for a few years ago, but I’m not sure that’s the case any more due to the improving quality and availability of the competition and the declining quality assurance on PECOTA (see Wieters, Matt).

I don’t know if this is the right thread for this, but MVN—the site that hosted StatSpeak—closed down this week or last, and all of the archives for StatSpeak are gone. Does Pizza or anybody else have a link to his explanation of OPA! from a few years ago?

Zach, contact me back-channel and I’ll answer whatever questions you have.  I’m at russell period A dot carleton at-sign-thingie gmail dot com

(yes, the letter A… it’s my middle initial)

The StatSpeak archives will eventually be posted… I’m just not sure when.

Not up to date, but you can get at some Stats Speak content (not including comments) through web.archive.org

http://web.archive.org/web/20080415180226/http://mvn.com/mlb-stats/

BPro’s revenue stream has multiple sources.

1. Premium subscriptions.

2. Advertising on the website.

3. Book sales (mainly the BPro annual).

4. ESPN sponsorship (most of which probably goes to the authors of insider articles, and some to PBro as an organization).

I would guess that BPro’s annual gross revenue is 1.5 to 2 times what Tango calculated from the subscriptions alone.

You have to figure that a lot of subs are at much less than the $40 that Tango assumed. If they really have 20,000 subscribers, then many are re-subscribers who pay $35 per year and many are fantasy subscribers who pay $20 per year.

Pizza, if you need a place to host your files, even temporarily, I can archive them on my site.

I like the roundtable discussion that BP has up today.  It reminds me a little of the world famous roundtable discussions at StatSpeak, of which I think I participated in one or maybe two.

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9981

But I couldn’t help but thinking with this one that if your pitcher is guaranteed to go 7 innings and give up exactly 4 runs every time out, why wouldn’t you fill the lineup behind him with a bunch of sluggers who can’t field?  If you don’t have to care about defense, even just once every fifth day, couldn’t you load your roster with good-hit, no-field players? 

Your bullpen probably doesn’t need to be as deep with robo-pitcher in the rotation as otherwise, so maybe you could get away with 11 pitchers and have a couple extra Jason Giambi types on the bench and maybe even an Alberto Callaspo or Esteban German who can pitch hit and play back-up infielder on non-robo-pitcher days.