Stolen Signs

Kendall Guillemette and Harry Pavlidis discuss baseball statistics, as well as look for the stories and people behind the stats.

About the show

Kendall Guillemette and Harry Pavlidis discuss baseball statistics, as well as look for the stories and people behind the stats.

Stolen Signs on social media

Episodes

  • Episode 19: Park Factors and Pitch Design

    February 28th, 2018  |  1 hr 5 mins
    ballparks, baseball, mlb, pitching

    When we talk about park adjusted stats, and park factors, what does all of that mean? How do we arrive at those numbers and how do we account for changes over time? We also talk about "pitch design" and how that combines analytical data and player development.

  • Episode 18: Making PECOTA with Jonathan Judge and Rob McQuown

    February 15th, 2018  |  1 hr 16 mins
    baseball, mlb, pecota, projections

    We talk with Jonathan Judge and Rob McQuown, who oversee Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections to get some more insight into how the projections are made, what's new this year, and of course hip hop.

  • Episode 17: These Are Not the Robot Umpires You're Looking For

    January 31st, 2018  |  1 hr 4 mins
    baseball, mlb, pitching, radar, umpires

    We talk to Jeff Long, Sean O'Rourke, Wayne Boyle, and Russell Carleton about their recent Pitching Week article about the Robot Strikezone and Robot Umpires.

  • Episode 16: Inning(s) Eaters and Aces

    January 18th, 2018  |  57 mins 45 secs
    baseball, mlb, pitching, sabermetrics

    Stolen Signs is back. Harry and Kendall talk about the slow offseason, collusion and ideas on how to change the economics of baseball. After a short break (14:05) they discuss new research by Duke University that looks into neurological and motor skills and how they translate to baseball production, a new smart baseball that can provide some pitch tracking and tease some new work by the stats team at Baseball Prospectus. To wrap up (32:00), a look into the state of pitching and try to talk about what an inning(s) eater is and also what an ace is.

  • Episode 15: Twas the Episode Before Christmas

    December 22nd, 2017  |  1 hr 42 mins
    baseball, hall of fame, miami marlins, pitching, shohei otani

    We touch on many issues of the day as we wrap up 2017 in style.
    [3:10] - Marlins firesale fallout
    [17:05] - Bob Bowman forced out at MLBAM
    [23:38] - Shohei Ohtani ZIPS, Steamer and PECOTA projections
    [35:20] - Long form movement article from Jeff Long
    [51:00] - Major League Baseball's Statcast Can Break Sabermetrics by Emma Baccellieri
    [1:19:20] - Hall of Fame discussion

  • Episode 14: Shohei Otani and Japanese Baseball with Ben Lindbergh and Kaz Yamazaki

    December 7th, 2017  |  1 hr 23 mins
    baseball, japanese baseball, mlb, ohtani

    We talk with Ben Lindbergh and Kaz Yamazaki about the NPB posting system, differences between the mounds, balls, culture of MLB and NPB and dig a little deeper into some of the myths about Japanese pitchers coming over to MLB. We also look into the current state of the sabermetric community in Japan.

  • Episode 13: Wins Above Replacement discussion with Sean Forman (bWAR), David Cameron (fWAR), Greg Matthews (openWAR), Rob McQuown and Jonathan Judge (WARP)

    November 29th, 2017  |  1 hr 2 mins
    baseball, sabermetrics, statistics, wins above replacement

    We welcome Sean Forman from Baseball Reference, David Cameron from FanGraphs, Greg Matthews from openWAR, Rob McQuown and Jonathan Judge from Baseball Prospectus to the show.

    With all the recent discussion about Wins Above Replacement statistics, we wanted to get people who create and maintain the statistics together to talk about how their respective stats are created and calculated. We talk about what replacement level is, positional adjustments, how to accurately portray confidence in the precision of the statistic.

  • Episode 12: Making Sausage and Catching Up

    November 16th, 2017  |  1 hr 25 mins
    baseball, pitching, statistics

    Harry and Kendall look back at the World Series, discuss the Cy Young awards and the BBWAA vote has lined up with BP's pitching metrics over the past few years.

    Next up is a preview of some new pitching statistics that the Baseball Prospectus stats team is working on and why that's proven to be a challenge. Harry gives a look into how these statistics are imagined, designed, tested, and tweaked throughout the process.

  • Episode 11: Unusual Paths to the Rotation and Everything Old is New Again with Jarrett Seidler

    October 26th, 2017  |  1 hr 2 mins
    baseball, pitching, world series

    This week Harry and Kendall talk to Jarrett Seidler from the Baseball Prospectus Prospects team about the cyclical nature of baseball in general, and analytics specifically.

    Harry and Kendall also take a closer look at how pitchers end up in their eventual roles and examine their route to get there. For this exercise they looked at pitchers with a debut season of > 20 IP as a reliever, and fewer starter innings than reliever innings in that year and then went on to log > 75 IP as a starter in a subsequent season, with fewer reliever than starting innings. Check out the spreadsheet.

    This Week I Learned:

    Harry - A look into research done with Kate Morrison for Ben Lindbergh's Ringer piece about Dallas Keuchel and the Dodgers - https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2017/10/24/16533310/houston-astros-los-angeles-dodgers-dallas-keuchel-kryptonite

    Kendall - Is it possible that Major League Baseball is coming to Portland? - http://www.baseballamerica.com/columnists/expansion-trigger-realignment-longer-postseason/#IpHtEd8vb3JeJHOB.97

  • Episode 10: Looking back at PECOTA

    October 12th, 2017  |  1 hr 16 mins
    baseball, projection, sabermetrics, stats

    We start by talking about projection systems in general, then dive into 2017 PECOTA team projections. We look to see how adding in actual playing time affects the team totals. Then we talk about individual players that out-performed and under-performed their PECOTA projections.

    This Week I Learned:
    Harry learns that "bullpenning" is a thing, sort of, maybe, kind of. (h/t Matt Trueblood)
    Kendall learns to make adjustments in parenting, just like hitters like Mike Trout have had to make adjustments to high fastballs. (h/t to Jeff Sullivan)

  • Episode 9: Playoff Formats and Rosters w/ Rob Arthur, Ben Diamond, Greg Matthews, and Travis Sawchik

    September 28th, 2017  |  1 hr 25 mins
    baseball, mlb, playoffs, sabermetrics

    We sat down with Rob Arthur, Ben Diamond, Greg Matthews, and Travis Sawchik to talk about the MLB playoffs. We touched on playoff formats (past, present, and future?) and then moved on to talk about roster construction and optimization for the playoffs. After that, Harry and Kendall talk about the things they learned this week.

  • Episode 8: Pitcher Similarity Scores

    September 21st, 2017  |  58 mins 51 secs
    baseball, pitching, sabermetrics

    This week Harry and Kendall discuss pitcher similarity scores. Where did they come from? What are they? What can they be used for? And what might they evolve into.

  • Episode 7: The Rise of the Two-Way Player

    September 16th, 2017  |  1 hr 6 mins

    With the news of Shohei Ohtani's imminent posting from the NPB, this episode we talk with Sung Min Kim from the Sporting News about the posting system as well a

  • Episode 6: Baseball and Psychology with Dan Brooks and Russell Carleton

    September 8th, 2017  |  1 hr 9 mins
    baseball, performance, psychology, sabermetrics, stats

    This week Harry and Kendall welcome Dan Brooks from Brooks Baseball and Russell Carleton from Baseball Prospectus. We talk with Dan and Russell about how baseba

  • Episode 5: Sabermetrics Timeline

    September 1st, 2017  |  1 hr 1 min
    baseball, sabermetrics, stats

    Harry Pavlidis and Kendall Guillemette go through a rough outline of the history of sabermetrics.

  • Episode 4: Stats and Storytellers with Jonah Keri

    August 25th, 2017  |  1 hr 12 mins
    baseball, sabermetrics, stats

    This is the first in a new recurring series called Stats and Storytellers. We're excited to welcome Jonah Keri as our first guest.