Stolen Signs

We talk about how you build a baseball team for the playoffs and the future. It’s good to talk about baseball. Enjoy the playoffs.

Harry and Kendall talk about the Women's Baseball World Cup, then look at how the number of 🔥high velocity🔥pitchers has increased over the last 10 years. They wrap up with a discussion of how bullpen usage affects lineups and how it might affect your daily fantasy league. Stolen Bases book (https://amzn.to/2wmOnJw) by Jennifer Ring, Ph.D. (https://www.unr.edu/political-science/people/jennifer-ring) Women's Baseball World Cup website (https://wbwc.wbsc.org/) Women's Baseball World Cup...

We visit with Jason Benetti, television play by play announcer for the Chicago White Sox. We talk with him about his start in the business, taking over for a broadcasting legend, how he integrates Steve Stone's first hand knowledge, with the plethora of statistical data he has access to. We also touch on the All Star Game and how catchers are evaluated for the Hall of Fame.

Talking about the materials that make up a baseball with Dr. Meredith Wills (https://twitter.com/Bbl_Astrophyscs). We also revisit two-way players, dig into defensive metrics and why they're difficult, and are reminded that everything old is new again. How one tiny change to the baseball may have led to both the home run surge and the rise in pitcher blisters...

R.J. Anderson of CBS Sports came on to talk with us about the Rays recent usage of Sergio Romo as a starting pitcher. We talk about whether this concept will continue and if there may be other teams willing to try it out. We also talk with Anthony Rescan about his Baseball Prospectus Intern project for calculating surplus draft value. We threw in a handful of things we've learned over the last few weeks including tidbits about Kendrys Morales, Jordan Hicks, and the predictive value of...

We discuss the Report of the Committee Studying Home Run Rates in Major League Baseball released on May 24, 2018. We talk with committee chair Dr. Alan Nathan, and committee member Dr. Dan Brooks as well as radar and target tracking research engineer, Dr. Sean O'Rourke. We examine what the report is saying and what it means going forward.

Sam Miller joined us to talk about his recent article about evaluating Statcast's new Pop Time metric. Surprising exactly no one, we also talk about Shohei Ohtani, again. And take a look at Robinson Cańo's Hall of Fame candidacy. 'Pop' science: Your guide to learning a new MLB statSam MillerUsain Bolt playing baseballA big step forward in measuring commandEno SarrisCMD from Baseball ProspectusPart 1Part 2Part 3Harry Pavlidis Below is a table showing the comparative ratings of some of the...

Baseball is back and we're all so glad

PECOTA team projectionswinnersThe ShiftRussell A. CarletonJeff LongHome Runs Have Surged in MLB — Baseball Experts Explain WhyRob Arthur Other Links What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?

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. Links: The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball ThinkingRussell A. CarletonBasics Of Pitch Design Using RapsodoBaseball Prospectus' Park Factors by Handedness

We talk with Jonathan Judge (https://twitter.com/bachlaw) and Rob McQuown (https://twitter.com/Robmcquown), who oversee Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections (https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/fantasy/dc/) to get some more insight into how the projections are made, what's new this year, and of course hip hop. Sam Miller (https://twitter.com/SamMillerBB) asks how much we'd be willing to endure to play Major League Baseball...

We talk to Jeff Long (https://twitter.com/JeffLongBP), Sean O'Rourke (https://twitter.com/dj_mosfett), Wayne Boyle (https://twitter.com/PitchGrader), and Russell Carleton (https://twitter.com/pizzacutter4) about their recent Pitching Week (https://www.baseballprospectus.com/tag/pitching-week/) article about the Robot Strikezone and Robot Umpires (https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/37347/robo-strike-zone-not-simple-think/). New Power, Command, Stamina pitching metrics...

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...

We touch on many issues of the day as we wrap up 2017 in style. 3:10 - Marlins firesale fallout - Dan LeBatard show (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDT-a7fh5fc) 17:05 - Bob Bowman forced out at MLBAM (https://www.wsj.com/articles/baseballs-rainmaker-forced-out-after-alleged-misconduct-1513882805) 23:38 - Shohei Ohtani ZIPS, Steamer and PECOTA projections 35:20 - The Case for Long-Form Movement...

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. Effectively Wild Episode 1145: The Reigning-MVP Podcast (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/effectively-wild-episode-1145-the-reigning-mvp-podcast/) Effectively Wild episode where Ben and Jeff...

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...

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.

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 the bullpen 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...

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 (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=32960)) * Kendall learns to make adjustments...

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. Links: Alternate Reality Playoff RacesLet’s Improve the Wild-Card RoundThe Yankees Are Built to Bullpen the Wild Card GameBaseball’s ‘Hot Hand’ Is RealBeans &...