| Student grouping algorithm |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|12:48 pm]
Ishaa Ndiyar
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| [ | mood |
| |  gee | ] |
( An algorithm puzzlerCollapse ) |
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| Trimming it down |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|01:57 am]
Ishaa Ndiyar
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| [ | Tags | | | later | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
I have no idea whether I'll start posting here again... recently it's been Facebook for quick thoughts and Twitter for thoughts too small for Facebook (i.e. nothing). I suppose baby pictures should go here and so should thoughts about baseball. But boy have I not had the time.
I let my paid account expire. Shrug.
Since I am barely reading LJ any more I need to stop using it as my RSS aggregator. That made sense when I read every day, at first, but even then it was threatening to overwhelm my friends page. For my own future reference, here are the feeds that I am going to have to get another way:
[info]38_pitches
[info]boogaloofeed
[info]bpunfiltered
[info]cardboardgods
[info]carolynhax
[info]comic_curmudge
[info]daily_wtf
[info]espn_ombudsman
[info]firejoemorgan
[info]freerngekidfeed
[info]girlsprettyrss
[info]jaysonstark
[info]lackadaisy_feed
[info]magicalwastelan
[info]photoshpdiaster
[info]savagelove
[info]snopes_dot_com
[info]thestraightdope
[info]waiterrant
[info]whitehouseblog |
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| Mike Schmidt, refusing to stoke the fire |
[Feb. 19th, 2009|05:38 pm]
Ishaa Ndiyar
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Mike Schmidt on Alex Rodriguez:In fact, when Schmidt was asked directly if he thought he'd have gotten caught up in trying performance-enhancing drugs had they been part of his era, he answered: "Most likely. Why not?"
...
"I look more at the psychological side of it," he said. "That's what's interesting -- how sports fans choose their heroes, how we as a human race choose our heroes, how our heroes always seem to let us down. You know, when you pick a sports hero, he at some point lets you down....
"My take on the whole thing is, rather than having an Alex Rodriguez as your hero, or a Roger Clemens as your hero, how about someone fighting in the war in Iraq, or a heart surgeon, or Barack Obama. Why not focus more on people who really matter in this world?" |
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| Poll! How do you feel about my baseball statistics posts? |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|10:13 am]
Ishaa Ndiyar
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How do you feel about my baseball statistics posts?
Shut up and post about the baby
4(30.8%)
I like baseball but my eyes glaze over at the statistics
0(0.0%)
I don't follow baseball but I'm enough of a nerd to be intrigued by any sophisticated domain model
1(7.7%)
This porridge is just right
6(46.2%)
VORP? Come on, what about WXRL, WPA+, and xFIP?
2(15.4%)
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| BP 2009: Phillies |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|09:48 am]
Ishaa Ndiyar
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Baseball Prospectus is projecting the Phillies to win 88 games. That looks like a normal regression to the mean to me. Every team that wins a division usually does slightly worse the next year.
I'm not worried. Anyone in that range has a shot at the playoffs. The Braves are also projected at 88, and the Mets at 93.
The Phils' offense is expected to be about the same (as measured by VORP, of course). The biggest loss would come from Pat Burrell's excellent 2008 (34.6) being replaced by Raul Ibanez's average 2009 (15.4), a loss of 19.2 runs.
However, Raul and Pat are expected to be about the same this year, as Burrell is projected at 18.4. Raul is expected to hit .280/340/450 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) and Pat is expected to hit .240/360/450. Ouch for .240, but obviously if he gets a little hit-lucky then all three of those numbers will go up. (Hit-lucky means a few more balls fall in for hits -- batting average is the most volatile of these stats, suggesting that chance plays a larger role.)
They also expect Victorino's VORP to drop from 34.2 to 24.3. The only difference is he'd lose 20 points of SLG, so this may have to do with the VORP baseline changing.
On the plus side, Eric Bruntlett, Carlos Ruiz, and Geoff Jenkins are all expected to improve with the bat. They'd pretty much have to.
The real problems are probably on the pitching side, where Cole Hamels may regress to merely outstanding, Brad Lidge simply cannot possibly repeat the perfect season, there's still no fifth starter, and Jamie Moyer doesn't even have a projection up yet, presumably because his only comparables are Satchel Paige and Ol' Hoss Radbourn. |
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| BP 2009: Review of VORP |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|09:02 am]
Ishaa Ndiyar
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Baseball Prospectus 2009 is almost out, and the projections have gone live on the web site. As always, the projections for the two league champs are free to non-subscribers, and for a change that's two teams we find pretty interesting.
BP's most famous statistic is called VORP, or Value Over Replacement-level Player. The idea of this stat is to measure how much better a given player is than the guy you would replace him with if he got hurt. That guy is competent at baseball, of course, but he's not really good enough to stick in the majors -- he's what's called a career minor leaguer, a roster filler, an organizational soldier.
Economically, the important thing about this guy is that you don't have to pay him more than the minimum, and you don't have to trade anyone to get him, and if he turns out not to be even that good, you send him back down and try another guy. Teams that make smart use of these guys can save millions of dollars a year by not overpaying for mediocre veterans.
Interestingly, this year, BP has adjusted the replacement level, and it's set the bar higher. They haven't yet published the complete explanation of this, but I think they have gone through and identified guys who really were replacement players, and found that they were, consistently, better than the original estimate. For example, the Washington Nationals of a couple years ago really were composed almost entirely of guys who weren't good enough to play for any other team, and by that reckoning should have been historically terrible. Instead, they were merely bad. |
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| Orioles new uniforms |
[Feb. 9th, 2009|05:20 pm]
Ishaa Ndiyar
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This is old news, but the Orioles have new uniforms this year.
The major change is that they now have Baltimore across the chest on the road jersey! This is nice. Almost every other team in the majors has the city name on the road jersey. Oddly, the other two exceptions were the two closest teams, Philadelphia and Washington, and the Nationals also just put their city name on their road jerseys. That leaves only the Phillies, but I say they get a pass because "Phillies" ~= "Philly".
The overall look is otherwise about the same, which is a shame because they could really do better with the black jerseys -- like a white outline on the scripts to match the black outline on the white jerseys. I have a replica jersey that does that even though it's inaccurate, and it looks better than just orange on black.
They also tweaked the sleeve patches and such, and got rid of the baseball diamond behind the main logo, which is good. The new main logo is still the bird perching on the Orioles wordmark, but, the weird thing is that they changed the feet on the bird to sit on the dot on the i, which makes sense -- but they also used that bird for the front of the cap, where it isn't sitting on anything. So it looks like it's... gliding? Standing on tiptoes?
http://mlb.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/pMLB2-5449485dt.jpg
They're also going to be making use of the cartoon bird:
http://assets.bizjournals.com/story_image/211407-300-0-2.jpg
which is dumb because there's a cartoon bird from the 1950s which is ten thousand times cooler:
http://baltimore-maryland.org/history/classic-orioles-logo.png
And that's what I think about that. |
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| Orioles fail |
[Feb. 3rd, 2009|11:58 am]
Ishaa Ndiyar
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The good news on the Orioles is: Nick Markakis and Adam Jones are for real, Brian Roberts is still around, and Baseball Prospectus is projecting their first-round draft pick, Matt Wieters, to be the best-hitting catcher in the major leagues. This season.
The bad news is that they just signed Ty Wigginton.
That would be fine if he were keeping third base warm for Billy Rowell. But nooo -- he's going to play first base and DH. Why do the Orioles do this? Why, in fact, do so many teams do this? First basemen and DHs have one job: hit. Preferably for power. Maybe you put an okay hitter at those positions if he's already on the roster and you're unable to make any other moves at the moment. You don't go out and SIGN him as a free agent.
I'm fine with Aubrey Huff as the other 1B/DH, though.
And I'm okay with Luke Scott in left field, as long as the plan is to give a lot of playing time to Felix Pie, who couldn't get it done to the Cubs' satisfaction but who is still only 24. He probably can't hit enough for left field, but at least you're giving a young guy a chance instead of a proven mediocrity. Also you could convince me that having a center fielder play left can get you some runs back on defense. |
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