NorthOf49

So what's going on with your blog, GD? It seemed like you were picking up steam a few month ago.

GD is a Dan Evans-approved analyst lol. His new blog: https://danolytics.wordpress.com/

The BP and Steamer/FIP people are in a Twitter holy war over what should be in WAR and what mainstream sabermetricians believe and Jared Cross just dropped xxFIP as a suggestion! Yay.

Case just came off the restricted list. Though he went on the DL in Lansing.

Saber Resource was going to depend on its up-to-date stats and graphics for traction (easier to publish new content when it's done automatically) and then the blog would be for the longer research pieces that I managed to squeeze out every couple weeks and was interested in writing. You do see successful infrequent blogs. This blog would be in better shape if it had other features to prop it up. Also, like NJH, I find the news/recap articles hard to write since they're mindless and don't help me develop in the long run. We ostensibly are trying to create a more analytical Blue Jays Plus, but are completely different fans from the ones at that site.

Well I would still be posting at least once a week if I could! I was considering starting a blog on Saber Resource too to complement its other features. We still get regular daily views so if GD or baubau were interested in sharing their thoughts to an audience, Breaking Blue is still probably a good place to do that. I could help them out with ideas and such. An immediate idea would be to update our Top 600 Dynasty Assets concept; I could definitely assist GD in putting the list together and cede the credit.

Gordie said that would be too risky so I told him to ask CrackerJack for a ticket. You'd need a way to make it look convincing. Anyway, it's kind of interesting that we're hiring a "Manager of Baseball Analytics." The department will be a director, a manager and me, plus some other people who do related stuff. I'll ask Joe tomorrow about what the plan is for the new position.

Maybe if you know someone who has them? I don't know if you can share. Guess it will just be me and HERPDERP hanging out then.

Are any of you guys going to the season ticket holders event tomorrow? I'll probably end up at it lol

They definitely do make some very questionable decisions. The growing criticism over their lack of direction is warranted. I tend to belief that most front offices are similarly competent and that it can take a long while to evaluate them, but there's also the idea of signature significance, where a single move that exhibits a transparently poor process can tell you most of what you need to know. They make some of those moves. So you buy into what some are saying about Padlo?

I do understand that perspective, sure. Dickerson is a talented hitter and we don't know exactly how talented he is yet. The Rockies should probably have just sat on him and traded CarGo (to the Angels or whatever for mostly salary relief). I also think though that McGee has big value and Parra could be a similar in 2016 to Dickerson.

Is the Rays-Rockies trade actually that bad? Steamer doesn't think Dickerson is an average regular. It's more of a role player for an elite reliever than a building block hitter for a luxury piece, as it's being perceived.

Okay. Well keep it up with learning R and SQL and maybe those long-form analyses will be easier to research. I was actually considering it this morning.

Some of these articles would take 20 minutes to write. Don't feel like you need to have absolutely nothing going on. Just take half of your board time and use it to write stuff. You tell me about Joe Blanton and Co. as options... write it up! 90 words on each pitcher.

So you guys aren't going to write anything? Even just a few paragraphs about depth pitchers who are available would be nice. Did the feedback from this happen?

This is messed up. GD, instead of wasting time on Facebook/the board, just write up 600 words now.

Baubau, have you thought about writing up one of these transactions? We need content!

Wouldn't KingKat be the Seth Rogen character? He's an actual librarian! Nah, I'm not going to be writing stuff this offseason. I wish I had written it earlier in the year.

I mostly want to write about the RA9 vs. ERA thing that I've been thinking about for a while. There is a void on the internet for a well-researched definitive piece on how using ERA as the base "real run prevention" stat affects certain types of pitchers more than others. I would come up with the theoretical expected ERA-RA9 difference for different qualities and types of pitcher and then use real past data to illustrate how the effect works. Everyone seems to agree now that using errors to evaluate defenders is fraught with issues yet nobody even realizes that ERA is heavily damaged by them too. The ERA-RA9 difference is invisible. I don't think really anyone knows off hand what an average RA9-ERA difference is for different qualities of pitcher. Yet any time you cite ERA, you're specifically attempting to reference the actual run prevention performance of a pitcher. Fangraphs being so slow to change their stats (probably due to their writers only being writers) is part of the issue since they're so central to the sabermetrics community. The RA9 thing would have fit into the concept of fixing baseball's base accounting that I was going to push with Saber Resource. Earned runs, hits and at bats are arbitrary concepts that should be wiped from slash lines. Everyone loves to hate on average these days because it's not on-base percentage, but I think the larger issue it's that reaching on error isn't included and the denominator excludes a whole bunch of stuff. Should be replaced with "contact reaches per PA." Then to get OBP you can just add walks and HBP to the numerator.

Would definitely be nice to get something up this week. Maybe I'll start writing under a pseudonym.

Sure, write something about David Price! Fangraphs won't do that from a Jays perspective. One thing to say about it is that teams do pay a premium for top-end pitching. For whatever reason, many teams are obsessed with having an "ace" and that may not be rational, especially in the regular season. Toronto's pitching staff is set up well.

Yes, the basic projection stuff and then a couple paragraphs explaining something like, 1) Happ hasn't just been good for 11 starts, he's pitched at the level of this contract throughout 2014-2015. His last 11 starts do provide upside, however because: 2) With pitchers, it's not unreasonable to bump expectations based on several good starts. There are real changes that Happ made in Pittsburgh (refined release point) and peripherals that stabilize quickly do point to improvement. You can include a sentence with FRIAS too if you'd like. It pegs his 2015 effort at 20.7% K%, 7.0% BB%, 2.9% HR% for a 3.95 FIP, which is basically average. It's up to you to decide how to arrange the future WARs and environment parameters!

Alright I ran FRIAS in R using the models from pre-2015. I sent the results to Nick and Jacob and can send them to others (along with the R file and input CSV) on request. As before, it's important to remember that FRIAS doesn't try to be a full projection system. It doesn't regress rates based on sample size. It just says "what DIPS talent level did the pitcher display in the season?" If FRIAS was being first created this offseason, it would be called HILL (Hurlers' Intuitive Latitudes Leveraged) in honour of Rich. Edit: A few of the TBF and IP numbers are messed up because of name differences. I can re-send if needed with the fixes.

I'll run FRIAS tomorrow Jacob, thanks for asking for it and reminding me. I was going to release FRIAS with the Saber Resource rollout but that can't happen now. I may continue to run SR as a private site though and will look into how much more time it would take to get the FRIAS and TIPS calculated properly.

Can someone write about Happ (GD maybe)? The fan and media reaction is terrible; they need someone to set them straight with facts. A good article would get great readership imo.