Rob

Oh THAT'S it? The proclamations I make on how rebellious and edgy my posts are? Why didn't you say so my main man bro?!!??! Don't mind them. This is just some initial hazing. Keep up the awesome jokes and you'll be part of the crew in no time. GREAT CALL, SULLEY. I LOVE YOU PETER NINCOMPOOP. I MISS YOU... already.

I can't right at this moment but I have looked at it before and I can tell you with certainty that it's still horrific. His strikeout rate jumped up and his HR/FB took a dive. Those are much bigger problems than any BABIP stuff.

Another excellent point and something I considered after I went to bed last night. It's hard defending your writing after midnight.

I didn't design the xBABIP formula so I can't give you an exact answer as to how many season in 100 the line will be within 'x' (my contribution is mostly basic algebra ;)). But let me see if I can't help explain a bit better... The simple fact of the matter (and the point of the exercise, really) is that even given a full season of 650 plate appearances, BABIP does not stabilize sufficiently. You can look at the back of a baseball card for your favorite player and probably pick out 2-3 seasons where he performed way over or way under what he normally did in the rest of his career. The purpose of this exercise is mostly to smooth out those sorts of years from a players career. If you put a gun to my head and made me answer, I'd probably say not to read too much into anything within 10, maybe 15 points of batting average for most players.

Got a team or teams in mind? Pitchers suffering from bad "luck" may be the result of a slight systematic bias. The xBABIP formula is designed to project players with large amounts of plate appearances (you can observe actual lines approaching adjusted lines as plate appearances go up just by looking at the Cubs). Guys who hit as poorly as most pitchers do tend not to get many plate appearances, so they may not be adequately represented. Also worth noting, most pitchers are told not to try to beat out grounders. With this few plate appearances, beating out a couple could make a HUGE difference in an overall line. I suspect there is more to it than that. All batted balls of a certain type are not created equal, but the system will treat them all equally. Starlin Castro will hit ground balls harder, on average, than Ryan dempster, because Castro is good at making hard contact and dempster is not. So yes, castro's speed will help him get more hits, but he's also going to hit more ground balls that elude the fielders. I suspect that if you did this exercise on Rey Ordonez you'd conclude that he was "unlucky" throughout his career, because he only had a babip of .271 and kept the ball on the ground a lot. But in reality he was just a weakling who couldn't run fast and didn't hit the ball hard frequently enough. I think that Barney may be a similar type - a better player than Rnez, but weak and not fast, so possibly prone to regularly "underachieving" his expected line. As I talk about in the comments section, the formula I'm using for xBABIP does look at HR/FB% and IFH% and uses them to adjust for power and speed respectively. It's not perfect, but it does do a pretty good job of it (though it wouldn't shock me if it was not accurate enough for extreme cases, such as many pitchers).

I wouldn't read too much into it. Why postpone organizational meetings unless you're hurrying to get ready for your main moves this offseason?

Got a team or teams in mind? Pitchers suffering from bad "luck" may be the result of a slight systematic bias. The xBABIP formula is designed to project players with large amounts of plate appearances (you can observe actual lines approaching adjusted lines as plate appearances go up just by looking at the Cubs). Guys who hit as poorly as most pitchers do tend not to get many plate appearances, so they may not be adequately represented. Also worth noting, most pitchers are told not to try to beat out grounders. With this few plate appearances, beating out a couple could make a HUGE difference in an overall line.

What's manlier than sweaty men in rubber costumes wrestling through a scale model of downtown Tokyo?

It's RAAM. http://www.platformnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/raam.jpg

I remember one of the first times I did this sort of evaluation was back in 2008 when we picked up Jim Edmonds off the scrap heap and everybody thought he was finished. I used a pretty bastardized version of this process to show he wasn't done just yet. And then he took off the with the Cubs and I've loved this sort of evaluation ever since. Of course then I was doing all the calculations by hand with a methodology that was pretty sloppy. Now I have a better xFIP formula and a spreadsheet (thank god) that can do as many players as I want at once. So if anybody has any interest in seeing full team numbers from previous years or even other teams, just lemme know.

I love the front office overhaul. Although it's kinda scary to me that we can add so many people in and not have to fire anybody (sans Hendry, I guess). I suppose that just goes to show how tiny our front office really was before all this.

You know how sometimes I post a bunch of luck-neutral batting lines for misc. players? Yeah, I did it again

Ramon Ortiz. Miguel Batista I think this speaks more to the fact I need to get a life more than anything, but I could probably name 99%+ of the rosters of each MLB team off the top of my head. Therefore, I am not surprised to see anyone's name. That said, I always feel like Darren Oliver should be retired when I see his name, though he's still fairly good (but not when he really needs to be... :x ). I don't know that I could do the 25 man from each team, but I could probably name 25 players in each system (including majors).

The Red Sox actually went into spring training one year intending to convert Papelbon from closer to a starter. He decided he preferred closing. That killed the experiment pretty quickly.

Did my entry tonight. I left one entry conspicuously blank, and that'll hurt my chances of winning the contest. But I'm not jinxing anything if I can avoid it. Also left Javier Vazquez blank. I assume that'll count for a win if he retires?

That was pretty neat.

Sooo... No articles telling us Theo was on the phone with Pujols at 12:01 EST last night? I'm kinda disappointed.

Ran into John Cleese a few years back in the Phoenix airport. I feel sorry for tall celebrities... there was nothing he could do not to get noticed (and summarily mobbed).

Also, he went a bit overboard with the plucking.

Throwing Dempster 120 pitches and 6+ innings regardless of effectiveness .

Epstein is gonna get Earl Weaver and I'm gonna be all "is that all? I thought you could do better." And it'll be awesome.

:yahoo:

You're crazy. Aimi Eguchi

If the Rays trade Upton it's a near certainty that Jennings will slide over to CF.

Didn't Dusty Baker always talk about Cliff Floyd becoming a manager one day, even letting him manage a couple meaningless games at the end of seasons? I wonder what he's up to.