By now, it seems like I’ve got a decent bunch of daily readers. I really appreciate you coming back here and checking in every day… good to know my opinions have value to someone other than myself.
For those of you that are just finding your way around, I thought it might be helpful to put together a post on how you can best use my website, to enhance the way you experience this blog and baseball in general. So, consider this post your roadmap for Saber By The Bay.
First of all, I’m glad to be able to write for an audience composed of people who both are just getting interested in sabermetrics, as well as fans who have been on the bandwagon for years and are as saber-savvy (or even more so) as I am. For those of you who are beginning to find your way in analytical baseball fandom, I’ve included a few tools to help you with that.
First of all, I’ve been trying to link to definitions and descriptions of the more advanced statistics I’ve been using. Every time you see WAR, FIP, UZR, wRC+, or the like, click that stat and it will send you to an explanation of what that stat means and how it can be used.
At the bottom of each post, there’s a comment link. I love to hear your feedback on my posts. Your comments help me write better and more engaging posts, and if you’ve got any questions, further points, or just plain disagreements with what I’ve written, I’d love to make it into a conversation. Throw up a comment and start a discussion of your own.
Many of the statistical definitions come from The Hardball Times’ stat glossary, which is a fantastic resource for fans with any level of sabermetric knowledge. I’ve linked that in my website sidebar, and I highly suggest reading through it a few times. Also in the sidebar are a few of my favorite baseball websites. Fangraphs is a great page, both for the multitude of advanced statistics it tracks and the fantastic analytical pieces from their staff writers that come out several times a day. MLBTradeRumors is another superb site, with news and updates and the latest whisperings from around the league. If there’s anything brewing anywhere in baseball, you can bet it’ll show up on MLBTR. Though I’ve linked THT’s stat glossary, I think you’ll also enjoy The Hardball Times itself. They’ve got a lot of great analysis and some really good writers. THT is always a fun read. Finally, McCovey Chronicles is my favorite Giants blog on the web. The writing’s extremely entertaining as well as insightful and thoughtful, and the McC community is chock-full of educated baseball fans ready for a heated discussion on just about anything baseball (or anything else).
In addition to these links, I’ve put up a few books that I think you might be interested in. Beyond Batting Average is a book put out recently by Lee Panas that is a great introductory read for anyone just getting into sabermetrics, though it also has a ton of historical and contextual information that would benefit any fan of baseball at any level of sabermetric knowledge. Baseball Between the Numbers is a little more advanced, as is The Book, and both are fantastic reads for fans looking to delve deeper into sabermetrics and how the use of advanced statistics can change the way we play and manage the game. Among other things, the authors look at run expectancies based on the decisions made by managers, showing that certain choices we take for granted as the way baseball is played are simply wrong, and hurt a team’s chances of scoring runs and winning games.
The blog archive is fairly self-explanatory. Click on the month to expand the posts for that month, and click on a page to check it out.
Finally, scroll down just a bit more and you’ll see my twitter account. Subscibe and I promise I won’t spam you… I’ll tweet to let you know when that day’s post is up, as I can’t post at the same time every day (a full class schedule and my other responsibilities make it tough for me to be consistent in what time these posts go up). I’ll give you a brief description of the post and throw in a link to boot. Additionally, you can subscribe to my RSS feed, a few boxes up.
That’s pretty much it. The only other thing of note is that if you scroll down a bit more, you’ll see that this young site has just hit its 2000th pageload. Hitting 2000 in just over a month is a great milestone, and I couldn’t have done it without all of you, my loyal readers. It feels great to be able to entertain and teach through my writing, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site. Thanks!
-Doug
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