THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tango, thanks a bunch for the link to my site. I’m really hoping that it can, at some point, be of use to guys like you, as well as the newbies (kind of like myself).

If any of you guys have any advice on how to run it (warning: unfortunately I’m not very computer savvy at all), links to add, anything at all ... please let me know. I’m still going to go through and add a bunch of links this weekend and then continually update the thing as more relevant stuff is written.

As an aside, you guys here (along with BP, James, etc.) have really done wonders introducing me to this stuff and increasing my interest day by day. Thanks a lot.

One of the things I’ve always wanted to do is start a sabermetric wiki.  It would be easy to set up—the hard part would be editing and maintaining it.  But wouldn’t it be neat to have an online resource that does its best to reflect the latest thinking in sabermetric research, as well as links to relevant studies?

Yeah, you know.  Setting it up as a wiki would be much better!  Great idea.  You get maximum participation on it.  Maybe I can set that up, and have several moderators on it.

What are you guys talking about? The Book blog and THT are all anyone would ever need to read.

MB - you might want to put what you currently have in the Home section into some sort of “about” section.  In its place, I’d make the content of the homepage have the same links as on the right-hand side, with an explanation for each.

This is something that will probably help you out a bit with search engine rankings (note this is NOT my expert/professional subject area, but I know a bit about it).  Along the same lines, how familiar are you with HTML?  I’d suggest putting a little more detail in the header - keywords, description, etc.  Wordpress lets you fool around with this somewhere in the interface I believe.

Though most of your traffic will likely come from direct links, your site might be a good one for the complete newbie to stumble upon as an intro to this stuff.  As such, the better you rank in search engines, the more often your site will bubble to the top so they can find it

Mike, thanks a lot for the pointers. I really like the first one—in fact, I’m going to try do that when I get some time later tonight.

I’m not familiar with HTML or any of that stuff at all (at this point, at least). Wordpress does allow me to write whatever I want under the title without knowing any of that, so I can do that (if that’s what you mean).

Anyway, the site is, as you can probably tell, still very much a work in progress. Tips like this are greatly appreciated. I think my email should show up in my name now, but it’s if it doesn’t. Any of you guys can reach me there if you’d like to discuss anything further(or here’s fine if Tango doesn’t mind). Thanks, again.

Here is fine too.

Sorry.  I’m off the Net these days, working on the THT Season Preview.  But I actually did start a sabermetric wiki once, here:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

As you can see, there is nothing there.  And it might be resisted by some because it’s under the THT URL.  But, if folks are willing, I’d be happy to put some energy into this after the book is sent to the printer.

Charlie Pavitt’s online bibliography is here:

http://www.udel.edu/communication/bbref.htm

With instructions for use here:

http://www.udel.edu/communication/describe.txt

As for adding an index to my blog, good idea.  Gotta figure out how to do it, though.

As for the wiki, why don’t we use Wikipedia?  We could do a proof of concept by concentrating on updating the entry on clutch hitting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutch_hitting

If that goes well, we could start moving on other topics.

Charlie’s list needs to be webalized.  But, it’s a fanstastic resource for someone willing to do that work.

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And you don’t want to do anything in wikipedia.org

The wiki software can be installed on any server, and then you have complete control over it.  That’s what baseball-reference and baseballprimer do:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Main_Page

http://digamma.net/btfwiki/index.php/Main_Page

We can easily set one up on the THT or Tangotiger webservers.  Just need someone to be in charge of minding the store.

Agreed that you can set up a wiki anywhere.  But why shouldn’t you want to do anything in wikipedia.org?  Too much crap to weed out?

I can see several reasons.  One, it’s helpful to have a wiki dedicated to sabermetrics, both for the people behind the scenes and users.  Marketing-wise, basically.  Second, it would be good to have a separate administration team and protocols.  More control and better quality that way.

And third, as you say, I think there would less crap in a dedicated wiki.  Hopefully, having a dedicated wiki for sabermetrics would keep the barrage of inappropriate items down a bit.

I’m willing to be part of a team working on this.  If there’s enough support, I’m willing to take an administrative lead.  I’d be that jazzed about it.

Ok, the basic installation has been done here:
http://www.tangotiger.net/wiki/index.php

Whether this wiki is preferred over one at THT or vice versa, I don’t have any preference.  As long as we only have one.

If Studes is worried that there may be a conflict with THT, we can use this one.  Either way.

Whoever wants to be the main admin, let me know.

Awesome idea, guys. I’m already looking forward to learning (or relearning) a bunch of new things. It could certainly be invaluable, especially to the newer saber fans (and it might save you a lot of time explaining things : ). It will also be nice to have everything on the subject on one page, instead of going to various links all over the place. I suppose the regular wikipedia already has some of this, but I’m sure this one could get a lot more detailed.

Anyway, good luck with it.

MB, or anyone else, who wants to be the main guy or work on the main team, please speak up.  I’ll definitely be on the sidelines here.

I would like to volunteer to pitch in, but I do not want to be the main guy.

Thanks for the offer, Tango, but I’ll let somebody with more experience in sabermetrics (and with computer/internet stuff) take this one. Like Patriot, I’ll surely help out with anything if the main guys need it.

Ok, this wiki business seems pretty simple.

Here’s the main page:
http://tangotiger.net/wiki/index.php

If you want to create a new page, do something like this:
http://tangotiger.net/wiki/index.php?title=Ball_Tracking

So, you can go out and create whatever pages you want in this manner.  No registration required, unless of course people start getting silly about it, and then we’ll have to force registration. There’s probably some benefit to registering, like a log of your changes and whatnot. 

A useful list of categories can be gleaned from here:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/categorylinks/
or here:
http://tangotiger.net/archives/studies.html

You don’t have to be beholden to those.  Create whatever it is that interests you.  I don’t even think we need to bother with an administrator.

The only thing I ask is to use the word “fielding” over “defense” when relating to fielders.  Defense is pitching+fielding, just as offense is hitting+baserunning.

So.... go for it!

List of player blogs are on the LH side here:
http://rene144.playitusa.com/?cat=46

Sabermetrics
= performance analysis
+ scouting observations

Player blogs would fit into the second grouping.