THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I know Sig well.  I worked with him with the Cardinals and still correspond with him and see him occasionally.  He is a great and extremely nice and humble guy.  He basically came into baseball with only a cursory knowledge of sabermetrics and has come a long way.  It would be interesting to hear from him what he does for the Cardinals and how they operate these days (aside from LaRussa bashing his players in public and whining about bean balls).  As far as I know, he does a lot of work for the amateur draft.

I also know Jeff Ma real well. He is somewhat of a famous persona in another field, but I won’t reveal who that is, as I am not sure that it is public info. He is a very interesting guy and his web site actually includes some nice sabermetric research as well as a pretty good example of the “wisdom of (knowledgable) crowds.” In fact, he knows the author of that book pretty well.

I’ve also met Chris who is a very nice guy and a pretty knowledgable saber.  It would also be interesting to hear what he has to say about the Pads.

I’ve corresponded with Corey about STATS data.  Don’t know much about him otherwise, other than he has always been helpful.

I don’t know Mark at all. 

And of course Nate is Nate.  Maybe he can open up the Pecota black box a little for us at the conference.  He is a solid saber mind of course, who has contributed as much as anyone over the years.  When he pens an article, I read it.  I can’t say the same for many of the other BP writers.

I don’t know any of the other guys listed on the web site.

Sounds like it might be fairly interesting.

Jeff has several times admitted and is very forthcoming in BP chat his role in the MIT gambling thing, and that he was the central figure in a book about it.  Here’s one passage:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=307

PronKey (On the edge of senility): Hey Jeff, I think I saw Bringin Down THe House mentioned on the promo for this chat on PT. Is that the book by Ben Mezrich that you’re talking about? And if so, what was your involvement in all of that?

Jeff Ma: Yes it’s the book by Ben Mezrich and I was the main character of the book under the pseudonym Kevin Lewis

***

As for the symposium, I’d like to see a transcript for us home bodies in the northeast.

As well, MGL should invite himself.  Any time I post a UZR file, I get referrals from all over the baseball blogosphere.  It’s incredible really.  You’d have a captive audience.

Sig Mejdal used to publish injury data in the James Handbook a couple of years back.  Will Carroll has even started to begrudgingly reference him as another very good “medhead” who now works for the Cardinals and has his own injury database of some kind.

Sig was the stats guy who worked for Sam Walker in his book “Fantasyland”.  Pretty amazing, Walker hired two guys as a baseball research department to try and help his expert league fantasy team.

A very entertaining book.