Chat Transcript 2/29

Thanks to everyone who spent a few minutes chatting this morning. Some really great questions (if a little Yankee heavy) and believe me, if other things weren't pressing I would have preferred to go on for most of the afternoon.

Chat 2/29

Just a quick note that I'll be chatting at Baseball Prospectus.com on Friday February 29th at 11 AM Mountain time. I've never chatted on "leap day" before so this should be fun :)

Seriously, if you have questions around my essays in Baseball Prospectus 2008 on baserunning and throwing arms or anything else that interests you, please submit them early as that always provides you with better answers.

Chat Transcript 1/25

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the chat today. Lots of questions on SFR and defense in general that were very interesting. You can find the transcript here and as always you can use this post for follow-ups.

Chat Tomorrow 1/25

Just a quick note that I'll be chatting at Baseball Prospectus tomorrow at 1:30PM Eastern time for 90 minutes or so. You can submit questions beforehand here. See you then.

Chat Transcript 12/21

As always, thanks to everyone who participated in today's chat. Feel free to email or comment here if you have a follow-up...

Chat 12/21

Also wanted to mention that I'll be chatting on Friday December 21st at BP and so if you're heading out of town but want to ask a question, you can do so early at this link.

Chat Transcript 10/12

Thanks to everyone who participated in the chat today. You can post any other questions here and I'll do my best.

Chatting and Probabilities

Just a quick reminder that I'll be chatting on Baseball Prospectus at 11am mountain time tomorrow morning. As always you can submit questions and topics to discuss ahead of time...

Also, my column this week on BP took another look at the atmosphereic effects on pitched balls using PITCHf/x as well as a short rant on probability versus predictions and models versus reality.

In the latter vein, I ran my simulator for the National League Championship series with the following results:

D'Backs win 54.6%, Rockies with 45.4%

D'Backs sweep 5.9%, Rockies sweep 5.0%

Series goes seven games 33% of the time with the D'Backs winning those contests 61% of the time

Series goes six games 31% of the time with the D'Backs winning those 60% of the time

The D'Backs do well in the simulator because of their excellent home winning percentage (.617) and the fact they have home field advantage while neither team did well on the road (.491 for the Rockies and .494 for the Snakes). But echoing today's column probabilities like this are not prediction and any model won't factor in all the variables that play into a result in the physical world. In this case the model is simple and takes into account only home and road record along with the series format. It could of course include pitching matchups, health, and head to head matchups, all of which would improve the model. That said, even with a reasonable model seemingly improbable events occur all the time and so don't be surprised if something "improbable" occurs and instead just enjoy the ride.

End of the Week

A busy week after being on vacation and so just a couple links:

Chat Transcript - here's the chat transcript from today. Thanks to all those who asked questions and sorry for cutting things a little short.

A Physicist Speaks - my column this week was an interview with Dr. Alan Nathan on the intersection of baseball and physics. I followed it up with an addendum on BP's Unfiltered blog.

Rocky Mountain SABR - our local SABR chapter has a new website and I made a small contribution following up on the bunting exploits of Willy Taveras. Hopefully it will become a community site for baseball fans on the Front Range and beyond.

More PITCHf/x - a wonderful summary of all the articles written on the system by Mike Fast.

Chat This Friday

I'll be chatting on the Baseball Prospectus site on Friday at 12:30 PM eastern, 10:30 AM mountain time. You can submit your questions ahead of time. Your thoughts on bunting, baserunning, PITCHf/x, the trade deadline and anything else you want to talk about are always welcome.

Chat Transcript 06/15

Here's the link to the transcript. Thanks to everyone who participated. Great questions as always.

Chat This Friday!

I'll be chatting on Baseball Prospectus on Friday morning/afternoon. Here are the transcripts from previous chats:

4/27/2007

3/16/2007

2/06/2007

11/21/2006

Chat Today!

Just a reminder that I'm chatting today on Baseball Prospectus - 1pm Eastern. You can also submit questions early.

Update: The transcript has been posted. Thanks again to everyone who participated.

Chat Transcript 03/16

The transcript from today's chat at BP is now available. Thanks everyone for participating.

Chat Transcript 02/06

The chat transcript from today can be found on the BP. Thanks to everyone who participated and all the great questions.

I was having some difficulty with the chat interface (special characters caused some posting problems) and so I had a couple of answers I wanted to get to but couldn't post. In any case here was one particular question I found interesting:

maxexpos (Montreal): Hey Dan, Could you rank this year's crop of Rookie...Managers? Thanks

Here is the entire answer....

Dan Fox: To recap, here are the five rookie managers for 2007 in no particular order.

Fredi Gonzalez – Marlins

Bud Black – Padres

Bob Geren – A's

Ron Washington – Rangers

Manny Acta – Nationals

All of these guys would seem to be players managers and certainly in the case of Geren, he better be since Ken Macha was fired for supposedly not being much of a communicator. There was a nice article in USA today on these guys and I especially liked this quote:

And Gonzalez, 42, has been reading statistical books by baseball historian Bill James to get a better understanding of slumps. "Sometimes, you have to make a knee-jerk reaction, switching the lineup because a guy is 0-for-12," Gonzalez says. "The great players have a 0-for-20 or a 1-for-35. So, we've got to live with it."

How can you not be rooting for Gonzalez after that?

Washington will certainly be the most interesting to watch since he's kind of a character and is the ultra-player's manager it would seem from the comments I've heard him make this offseason. Acta and Gonzalez will probably get very long leashes since both teams are still developing. Black is also interesting in that he's a pitcher and is the only one to have never never managed in the minor leagues.

Gonzalez, Washington, and Acta were all third base coaches recently and I've (with help from fellow SABR member Neal Williams) done a little work on seeing what effect those coaches have on overall advancement on hits (a derivative of EqHAR) in the period 2000-2006. Here are their number of opportunities (the number of opps that likely would have influence over), the number of runners who were thrown out, and the number of theoretical runs above what would have been expected given the quality and quantity of the opportunities and taking into account how the runners performed relative to other opportunities that the coach was not likely an influence on.

Name                 Opp     OA  EqHAR
Ron Washington      1730     45   10.6
Manny Acta          1032     17    8.1
Fredi Gonzalez      1249     25  -13.7

Acta comes out on top on a per opportunity basis and ranks 29th of the 75 coaches that were looked at during the period. That said, I also discovered that there is no correlation from year to year in terms of coaches (both when they stay on the same team and when they move) and so there is probably very little to learn from this other than Acta was more fortunate and Gonzalez was not.

Chat on February 6th

Just a quick reminder that I have a chat scheduled on 2/6 at 1pm Eastern. You can submit questions early and often...

Chat Transcript 11/21

Thanks to everyone who participated in the chat today. Feel free to add to the discussion here and I'll do my best to chime in.

Chat Tomorrow

Just a reminder that there is a chat scheduled with yours truly on BP tomorrow at 11AM Mountain Time/1 PM Eastern. It works better for me if you can get your questions in early. See you then.