staturday Stories - Athletics Nation
Staturday: Baserunning & CF Defense
The 2009 Bill James Handbook has a section that tries to rate the baserunning skills of major league ballplayers. I say “tries to rate” because even Mr. James acknowledges the crudeness of the analysis. What they do is look at how many times a runner on 1st base advances to 3rd base...
Staturday: Its not ranting if the facts back me up.
I am not a patient muppet. Nor am I renowned for my optimism. So the last time I wrote something that wasn’t, at best, a summary of the work of others I took a small leap of faith to include Rafael Furcal as one of the assets on the A’s 2009 roster. At the time, I didn’t think...
Staturday: Monday Free Agent Edition
Given the big news of the day … no, the team hasn’t signed a big free agent or come through with another blockbuster trade … the big news is that UZR, the gold standard in defensive stats, is now available for all at the fantastic fangraphs.com. I thought, with this new tool, it...
A Very Special Staturday: Fiscal sensibility and winning more games
Talent wins baseball games. Talent costs money. The A’s finished last season 10 games under .500 because of a lack of talent, not funding. They spent over $79 million on player salaries alone and then they spent another $3.9 million on bonuses for their 2007 draft class. That’s...
Staturday: Jack & Ichiro: Still Two of a Kind?
Back in March I commented on the similarity between the way Ichiro Suzuki and Jack Cust produce very, very dissimilar results. Ichiro has confounded PECOTA for years because he is a truly unique player. Jack Cust, with his limited MLB experience, had not had the chance to prove whether his own...
Staturday: Pitch, Blease: The Final Pitch
I present to you the fourth and final installment of Pitch, Blease. We have looked at the wide variety of pitches thrown in the majors as identified and described using PitchFX data. To this point, the key things we have learned are that having a good fastball is important – but having...
Staturday: Draft Edition
Some readers of this site may have noticed that there has been quite a lot of activity surrounding a recent event, the 2008 Major League Rule 4 Draft. Although it is not typically accompanied with the same fanfare of the NFL or NBA’s draft, these two days in early June have more of an impact...
Staturday: Pitch, Blease: A Multi-Volume Profile on Pitches and the Pitchers who Throw Them
Introduction So in the ever-expanding mass of information available to we baseball fans, one of the newer tools available is PitchFX data – data on the speed and break of pitches thrown – data which allows smart guys and gals to identify the pitches a pitcher throws. Rather than...
Staturday: Jack & Ichiro: Two of a Kind
Two of a kind, for your information, we're two of a kind Two of a kind, it's my observation, we're two of a kind Like peas in a pod And birds of a feather Alone or together, you'll find That we are two-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo of a kind <!--[if...
Staturday: Small sample size
Grab a snack and pull up a chair. This will be long. I think I've been called, indirectly at least, a small sample size Nazi. I don't have the patience to discuss with anybody who insists on using small sample sizes as the basis for their argument. It's dangerous, it's wrong, and you should...
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