THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

THT Annual 2011

Buy the book on principle, and if that’s not good enough, then Studes gives you good reasons:

• Ben Jedlovec of Baseball Info Solutions and the folks at Sportvision are both going to talk about their latest data collection efforts. Ben will discuss the “hang time” of batted balls and the Sportvision folks will discuss the FIELDf/x system they implemented in San Francisco this year. Both articles will include some preliminary results and findings.
  
• Along those lines, Dave Cameron will discuss the state of fielding analysis in the sabermetric community and Brian Cartwright will take a new and (I hope) improved look at some the dimensions behind fielding analysis.
  
• Craig Wright, one of the very first sabermetricians to really study pitcher usage and pitch counts, has written a treatise on the subject that includes some history, his prior research and his current thinking.
  
• Vince Gennaro, who wrote Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball and consults with several major league teams about player contracts and team economics, talks about some of the recent highlights and lowlifes in free agent contracts.
  
• Sean Smith revisits the subject of whether catchers can impact pitcher ERA, while Nick Steiner is going to use PITCHf/x data and his own game observations to analyze the issue of catchers framing pitches.
  
• Chris Jaffe has figured out the best and worst benches of all time, and he’s going to tell you who they were.
  
• John Walsh will revisit, in more detail, the question of umpire bias at the plate by using PITCHf/x data in even more detail.
  
• Jeremy Greenhouse also will use PITCHf/x data to delve even further into the question pitcher “stuff” and “command.”
  
• Larry Granville of Wezen-ball will present the things he found out while watching every single home run hit this year on videotape. He also has a terrific piece on today’s fan experience.
  
• Jeff Sackmann will use historical Marcel projections to uncover some of the best unexpected results and underlying trends in baseball history.
  
• Craig Calcaterra will present his skewed version of this year’s happenings.
  
• Tom Tango has three things he’s always wanted to finish researching.
  
• I’m going to talk about this year’s batted balls and WPA results.
  
• John Dewan will discuss team defense.
  
• Greg Rybarczyk will have his own findings from this year’s Hit Tracker results. Brian Borawski will review the year’s baseball business.
  
• Rob Neyer will have something but I’m not really sure yet what it will be. (Love the suspense.)
  
• Brandon Isleib will once again contribute his astounding feats of baseball trivia.
  
• Tuck will have several new toons spread throughout the book.