Category Archives: Baseball

HOW I READ THE NEWS.

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Philip

HOW I READ THE NEWS. The front page of Yahoo news has been my home page for a long time in internet years. I really don’t like the latest revision, and that dislike highlights for me how different the way … Continue reading →

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SABERMETRICS AND SCRABBLE—VALUE OVER REPLACEMENT TILE.

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Philip

SABERMETRICS AND SCRABBLE—VALUE OVER REPLACEMENT TILE. I have posted several times on the new baseball statistics. One of them is Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). This wikipedia article describes the concept: “how much a hitter contributes offensively or how much … Continue reading →

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SHOULD THE VALUES OF SCRABBLE LETTERS BE CHANGED?

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Philip

SHOULD THE VALUES OF SCRABBLE LETTERS BE CHANGED? Stefan Fatsis has this article in Slate about proposals to change the values of the different letter tiles in Scrabble. One argument is that the English language has changed since Scrabble’s invention … Continue reading →

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SUNK COSTS—CHASE HEADLEY AND MARK SANCHEZ.

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Philip

SUNK COSTS—CHASE HEADLEY AND MARK SANCHEZ. In this post from a year ago on sunk costs, I cited an article by Baliga and Ely arguing that a determination that there are sunk costs that should be written off because of … Continue reading →

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FAKING TO THIRD BASE AND TRYING A PICKOFF AT FIRST WILL BE A BALK.

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Philip

FAKING TO THIRD BASE AND TRYING A PICKOFF AT FIRST WILL BE A BALK. Nick sent me the news that if the union consents, it will be a balk if, with runners on at first base and third base, the … Continue reading →

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THE HALL OF FAME VOTING.

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Philip

THE HALL OF FAME VOTING. I posted here just before the announcement of the results of this year’s voting for the baseball Hall of Fame. I noted there (link here) that one veteran sportswriter (Murray Chass) was so strongly opposed … Continue reading →

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BRANCH RICKEY, PIONEERING SABERMETRICIAN.

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Philip

BRANCH RICKEY, PIONEERING SABERMETRICIAN. Branch Rickey is best remembered for being instrumental in Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color line in baseball. This article by William Juliano recalls that Branch Rickey pioneered the use of statistics in baseball. Juliano links to … Continue reading →

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SABERMETRICS 50 YEARS AGO.

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Philip

SABERMETRICS FIFTY YEARS AGO. We had a lot of discussion, for example, here, about whether Miguel Cabrera or Mike Trout should be the American League Most Valuable Player for 2012 (Cabrera won). The debate turned on the application of Moneyball … Continue reading →

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HOW TO RIG STATISTICAL EXPERIMENTS.

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Philip

HOW TO RIG STATISTICAL EXPERIMENTS. Christopher Shea had an article in the December Atlantic about a psychologist who showed how psychologists can (and some do) rig the results of their experiments to make them publishable. Uri Simonsohn, with three colleagues, … Continue reading →

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SHOWING A KNUCKLEBALL KNUCKLING.

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Philip

SHOWING A BASEBALL KNUCKLING. Nick sent me this animated gif of R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball. (As I understand it, the gif (graphics interchange format) operates as a series of images.) Notice how this particular pitch starts out to Dickey’s right and … Continue reading →

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