Stolen Signs

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 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 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

Episode 2: DIPs, FIP, DRA and You

August 15th, 2017  |  1 hr 25 mins

baseball, dra, fip, pitching, sabermetrics, stats

We briefly recap SaberSeminar 2017, answer a listener email about how to learn more about baseball stats, and we have a discussion about pitching metrics w/ Jon