Wednesday Links

Here are a couple of things in case you missed them:

The 2007 Scouting Report by the Fans for the Fans - Tango is once again collecting data on fan perception of fielding prowess. It's always great to harness the wisdom of crowds.

Billy Wagner Breakdown - Ok, so he didn't really break down but Will Carroll's recent comments on his "dead arm" inspired me to sift through some PITCHf/x data for Wagner on BP Unfiltered.

Throwing Arms

Nice article this morning by John Walsh on outfield arms over at THT. For Rockies fans it should be nice to see both Willy Taveras and Brad Hawpe in the upper right hand quadrant of his scatter plot (note to John, keep the scatter plots coming as we really really like them). Hawpe's defense and particularly his throwing arm have been one of the better kept secrets in baseball the past several seasons.

This also ties in with a comment I heard Assistant GM for the Rockies Bill Geivett make on the Denver sports talk radio station yesterday. In talking about the Jason Jennings trade he first discussed Taveras' defense and especially his throwing arm as an asset in the large outfield spaces of Coors Field.

Here's a couple other links I forgot Yesterday:

Nate Silver on PECOTA

Rockies Top 10 Prospects

Quick Takes Post Thanksgiving

Two items of interest I ran into this evening while getting ready for the post-holiday week.

McGwire Reasoning - Interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on some of the opinions of members of the Baseball Writers Association of America on the upcoming ballot for the Hall of Fame. Essentially I agree with those who want to take a wait and see attitude with the steroids era in general and McGwire in particular. There's no rush and history will give us a better perspective. Aside from that I'm also in agreement with those who think that perhaps Mark McGwire does not possess Hall of Fame credentials and is more comparable to a Roger Maris albeit with inflated numbers as a result of playing in an inflated era. It would also look very strange for him to be inducted alongside Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken.

Defense, Defense - Nice article by Joe Hamrahi over at Baseball Digest Daily on defensive metrics complete with some comments by John Dewan on The Fielding Bible metrics which I like very much and which changed a bit this year. The Bill James Handbook 2007 has them in abbreviated form and Joe lists how those stack up against the Gold Glove voting with the largest error in the voters selecting Omar Vizquel over Adam Everett. It's unfortunate that there apparently won't be a fielding bible published this year and that the handbook contains scant information.