Advanced Baseball Statistics: A Blogroll
For my first post, I have decided to assemble a blogroll of websites dedicated to the study of sabermetrics, the advanced statistical analysis of the game of baseball. These links will serve not only as my personal resource of research as I attempt define, in my layman's terms, what sabermetrics actually is, but as a valuable asset for my readers to further develop their knowledge of the subject as well.
Baseball statistics have been widely available on the World Wide Web for years. For as far back as I can recall, I remember searching ESPN.com for Ray Lankford's current batting average, or Jim Edmonds' homerun totals, or how many strikeouts Matt Morris had that night against the Cubs.
Increasingly, with the simultaneous development of the internet and the field of sabermetrics, those particular statistics are becoming moot in the intellectual community. Books such as Michael Lewis' Moneyball, published in 2003, and Tom Tango's The Book, published in 2007, brought the area of baseball statistical study from the depths of academia into the public realm.
Most of the websites I chose to include in my blogroll reflect, in some sense, Lewis' and Tango's vision of an open-source, intellectual baseball community. These links, which can be found in the "Recommended Sites" section to the right, are either free databases of statistics, narrative analysis of statistics, or act as a primer for beginners looking to better understand statistics.
In the database category, we have Baseball Reference, which has historical baseball data (both traditional and advanced statistics) dating back to 1876. Then we have Texas Leaguers' Pitchfx database and Brooks Baseball, which are both repositories for pitchfx data (which we will discuss in later posts). Again, these are all available free of charge and provide an invaluable resource for those who seek a deeper understanding of baseball. An example of a pitchfx graph is shown to the right, which was taken from Texas Leaguers' Adam Wainwright page. It shows how much his pitches move from the catcher's perspective.
In the analysis category, we have many, many blogs. Among them, my personal preference is Fangraphs, which acts as both a database and a narrative blog. The writers on this blog are the "Who's Who" of the rest of the sabermetric community, with at least 15 authors from around the World Wide Web contributing to the site. These authors hail from similar sites such as The Hardball Times, Beyond the Boxscore, Lookout Landing, Sabermetric Research, The Baseball Analysts, and The Book Blog. All of these sites combine advanced sabermetric knowledge with well-written narrative in order to convey to the reader why Derek Jeter might be struggling or why Tim Lincecum will pitch stronger in the 2nd half of the year. Joe Posnanski, meanwhile, is a sports writer for Sports Illustrated and the Kansas City Star. His articles are more narrative than those of the blogs above, but they still have a statistical slant. He is, in my eyes, the best sports writer on the planet.
Big League Stew and Fanhuddle, both serve as primers into the baseball statistical world. We're all familiar with wins, RBIs, HRs, and ERA. These sites teach you what WPA, WAR, wOBA, and OPS mean. The purpose of these sites is to show newcomers to baseball academia WHY the advanced statistics are superior to traditional ones. We will touch on all of these subjects in later posts, as well.
Finally, I have two very general websites that should be bookmarked by all fans of baseball, statistically-inclined or not. MLBTradeRumors essentially aggregates all valid trade rumors into one site. In the dredges of the baseball off-season (read: now), this site is invaluable to those following the free agent and trade markets. With Cot's Contracts, you get the contract information of every player on the 40-man roster of a baseball team. You learn things like: Matt Holliday will make $17 million per year for the next 7 years for the Cardinals, but $2 million per year is deferred. Another great resource for those keeping up with the business of baseball.
February 9, 2010 10:10 PM
Hey Rui Xu,
I think this is a great first post; You have a clear idea of your area of focus and have organized your post particularly well. I could see that the sites you have chosen are of the utmost quality and like you, I have also picked Fangraphs as my favorite because of its visual appeal and organization of content (much like how my favorite business news site - BusinessWeek - is organized). Although I am not a baseball fan, I could appreciate the study of players and team statistics as a means of getting a better gauge of how one's favorite team or player is doing. As a huge fan of soccer, this is something I do quite often on Wikipedia (for lack of better resources). Besides that, I also enjoy reading analyses of players, teams and current events that surrounds them (like transfers). But there is always a problem of finding the best and most reliable sites to get your data from. With your post, I think you have made the lives of many baseball fans easier as they would not have to go through countless sites just to find up-to-date information on teams or players. Your segregation of the functions of the chosen sites (pure statistics and analysis of statistics) is also most appreciated as readers would not have to open every single site just to find which one of them specializes in, say, analysis of the Yankees.
One recommendation I have for your site would be adding one or two sites that gives a brief introduction of baseball. It might include things like the game's history, how it is played and rules. There could be readers who may not watch baseball that much, but would still like to get an understanding of who the top players and teams are. To be honest, I am one of those few. I do not watch football or baseball that much but I would still like to have an idea of who the top players and teams are. The sites you have chosen provide the most detailed statistics no doubt, but some readers (like me) might not understand the jargons used in the game of baseball. I believe you could dispel this problem by recommending a site or two that explains what terms like home runs mean, or what the role of each player in the team is. This would certainly help the few who, like me, do not know the game well but would still want to have enough knowledge of who the best players and teams are.
Besides that, I think this post is a great starting point for your research and I look forward to reading more of your studies in future. All the best!
February 9, 2010 10:11 PM
Hey Rui Xu,
I think this is a great first post; You have a clear idea of your area of focus and have organized your post particularly well. I could see that the sites you have chosen are of the utmost quality and like you, I have also picked Fangraphs as my favorite because of its visual appeal and organization of content (much like how my favorite business news site - BusinessWeek - is organized). Although I am not a baseball fan, I could appreciate the study of players and team statistics as a means of getting a better gauge of how one's favorite team or player is doing. As a huge fan of soccer, this is something I do quite often on Wikipedia (for lack of better resources). Besides that, I also enjoy reading analyses of players, teams and current events that surrounds them (like transfers). But there is always a problem of finding the best and most reliable sites to get your data from. With your post, I think you have made the lives of many baseball fans easier as they would not have to go through countless sites just to find up-to-date information on teams or players. Your segregation of the functions of the chosen sites (pure statistics and analysis of statistics) is also most appreciated as readers would not have to open every single site just to find which one of them specializes in, say, analysis of the Yankees.
One recommendation I have for your site would be adding one or two sites that gives a brief introduction of baseball. It might include things like the game's history, how it is played and rules. There could be readers who may not watch baseball that much, but would still like to get an understanding of who the top players and teams are. To be honest, I am one of those few. I do not watch football or baseball that much but I would still like to have an idea of who the top players and teams are. The sites you have chosen provide the most detailed statistics no doubt, but some readers (like me) might not understand the jargons used in the game of baseball. I believe you could dispel this problem by recommending a site or two that explains what terms like home runs mean, or what the role of each player in the team is. This would certainly help the few who, like me, do not know the game well but would still want to have enough knowledge of who the best players and teams are.
Besides that, I think this post is a great starting point for your research and I look forward to reading more of your studies in future. All the best!