Stolen Signs

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 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.

Episode 3: Not Just Academic: Rob Arthur and Jim Albert on the Hot Hand

August 17th, 2017  |  1 hr 12 mins

baseball, sabermetrics, stats

This week we talked to Rob Arthur of FiveThirtyEight and Jim Albert, professor of mathematics and statistics at Bowling Green State University about Rob's artic