As the off-season continues to dwindle down, a wicked head-cold, scrambling to get my ducks in a row to return to school, and off-season fatigue have me feeling like a worn out record in terms of topics to write about. In the vein, is there any kind of story, statistical analysis, season/player preview, etc., that you'd like to see from us?
While we're at the requests, something that'd I'd like to hear from everyone is what kind of regular feature would you like to see during the season? By regular, I mean like a weekly, to bi-monthly series. Ideas that I've been tossing around, are using the Fan Graphs Swing% statistics for batters (maybe some LD and BABIP% too), and maybe BABIP, HR/FB, and some other rate stats for pitchers, just to try and sort through the noise in the early part of the season. Those are kind of bland ideas, so suggestions and criticisms are welcome.
0 recs | 8 comments
FREEBIRD!!!
entropic soul - January 6, 2009
I had to give it a rec
Just for it’s wit.
Stephen Higdon - January 7, 2009
Sorry yube got a code.
I was sick before the holidays, so hopefully I’ve gotten that shit of the way.
Can’t think of any hot stove stuff I’m in dire need of now. You’ve been doing an good job generating interesting content during a slow period. I’m excited to see what you’ll come up with when you’ve got school work to procrastinate on again.
During spring training, it might be fun for CBers to collectively predict certain stats for certain players (or, hell, all players), then follow them throughout the season to see how close we are. Allow users to submit predictions and average them. See how good our groupthink is.
It would be fun to decide on a few select, offbeat story lines to follow throughout the season. These could be real, albeit unconventional, on-field stories, or just weird off-the-wall stuff, like keeping up with some of the MMPUS vendors, or grounds crew, or I don’t know what.
It’d also be fun to pick a role-player on the team for the site community to “adopt,” like he’d be the Come Hell or High Water Hero of the Crawfish Boxes for the 2009 season. Could help an unsung player get more love and get some attention for CB, too.
I think it’d be interesting to collect stats on how many of us go to games, how many games we go to, victories vs. losses seen, average amount paid for parking, # beers drunk, etc. Numbers could be interesting by the end of the year.
I’d be happy to pitch in where I can.
Austin Astroholic - January 6, 2009
I can't really think of anything else to talk about during the offseason.
You’ve pretty much covered all of the prospective trades and free agents out there. You’ve even got the nostalgia thing covered with the “Atroiest” contest.
Once the season starts, it might be cool to go through all of the other teams, looking at what they did during the offseason (particularly the smaller trades and acquisitions).
Only_A_Lad - January 6, 2009
You're doing a good job.
I’m not a huge fan of all those advanced stats. Some of Austin’s ideas could be interesting.
Jordan Sams - January 6, 2009
Well, thanks for all the kind words
@Austin Astroholic: I love that you’re sooooo right that once I get back to school and want to procrastinate, I’ll be more inclined to write stuff.
I dig all the ideas. I’ll process it all more tomorrow, but there’s some gold in them.
@Only_A_Lad: I think we’ll get on that wrap up idea ASAP.
@jsams: We’ll try to keep the stats at a low…or at least try and make them entertaining.
Stephen Higdon - January 7, 2009
There's an art to writing about stats.
One interesting challenge would be to write most of an article without any mention of a stat, numbers, or an acronym, simply explaining some sort of phenomenon we all can get a sense of intuitively and can’t really argue with. And then finish by pointing out how you can quantify that thing and that you can go find that information for any player you want. For example, BABIP/xBABIP as related to the dying quails speech from bull durham.
Sky Kalkman - January 7, 2009
I like that idea.
A really good idea.
Stephen Higdon - January 7, 2009
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