I initially created Baseball Graphs to develop new and better ways of presenting baseball statistics. The 2003 season was my first full-season attempt, and it turned out pretty well. I now spend a lot of my time creating and formatting the baseball stats at The Hardball Times.
Along the way, I've also picked up the writing bug. I spend most of my energy writing for THT, but sometimes I like to write about more geeky stuff, baseball research and things like that. That's what this blog is for.
I'm very interested in graphics and other information display, so I'll probably post links to creative stuff like that. I also plan to write historical articles that complement the historical graphs. And I have inexplicably developed an interest in baseball win-related stats, such as Bill James's Win Shares and something called Win Probability Added. So you can expect a few posts about that stuff too.
If you're interested, I've created a complex spreadsheet full of WPA logic, which you can download at ftp.baseballgraphs.com/wpa. If you'd like to read more about Win Shares, try these links:
Win Shares Intro
An excellent analysis of Joe Morgan’s career, including some very good insights regarding some Win Shares’ limitations.
At the excellent Toronto Blue Jays’ site, Batters Box, Robert Dudek has posted a review of Joe Morgan’s career, using Win Shares as his criterion.
I particularly like some of Robert’s modifiers, which address some of the Win Share issues we’ve talked about on this site:
- A seeming bias against starting pitchers, which we’ve taken some steps to address.
- An issue in leagues with the designated hitter. I’ve suggested some steps to address this issue, such as the Win Shares baseline, crediting pitchers and batters with negative Win Shares when warranted, and pulling pitchers’ batting Win Shares out into the open. These may not be enough to address the DH problem, however. I need to do some more research.
- A historic issue in strike-shortened seasons, when evaluating player’s careers (which I hadn’t thought about).
Robert also talks about the use of Win Shares replacement level, which I hope to address as a continuation of the Win Shares baseline concept. A great article.
Something Robert missed, but there is a wholly non-arbitrary way to measure peak performance. It’s the square root of the sum of the squares of each individual year’s Win Shares. I like to divide those individual squares by the expected Win Shares, but either way, it ensures a player who earns 20 WS one year and 10 the next rates better than the player who earns 15 WS in each year.
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