Prospectus Idol Entry

I've read Brian a lot before this contest has started and I believe this was, as KG said, a "homerun". It lays great ground work for future pieces. I can already see an article about the quality of each pitch (strikes and balls) using p f/x.

I've always loved Brian's work, and this was a great read.

(I wish the graphs would pop out when I clicked them though, they are tough to read in this format)

This was bumpy reading for me in several places, but the overall concept, work and results is really interesting.

I like the work and it's interesting, but the thing that holds it up for me is that it's quite a bit denser than even the densest posts on BP. It's interesting, but it's a serious bit of reading, and if I found it on the 'Articles' page I think I'd read the first half, say, 'huh,' and then move on. And that's not really what I'm looking for in a new analyst.

The thing that sucks about being a BP Idol contestant is that you can't be part of the judging process. Well, you can, but it seems really sleazy to go over to another contestant's page and write anything negative, constructive or otherwise. Anyway, now that I'm out I can have some judging fun here in the last week.

Starting out this article I got really excited because Brian had an interesting topic and he used a great narrative device, which, to me, helps to show his maturation since the beginning of the contest. He was always a good analyst but we needed more personality.

Later, it fell a little flat later for two reasons that have plagued Brian since the beginning:

1. He completely drops the narrative which helps to both explain what he's doing and makes it into enough of a story to pull the less stat-oriented through.

2. I hate to seem like the old grammarian, but there is no thesis. This had 4-6 sentences that basically told me he is going to talk all about the relationship between balls and strikes, but you need one concise sentence that tells the reader what it is you intend to demonstrate/prove with your piece. I feel that a lot of the 'heavy eyelid' comments that Brian gets would go away if he was clear about what he was doing from the get-go. It gets hard to read when you don't know what you're reading about.

Brian is great at doing analysis and I feel like I can learn a lot from him, but the writing still needs to be tightened up.

Increasing the contact rate may decrease the walk rate, but the secret to pitching more to contact is to make sure the H/9 and/or HR/9 does not increase. The name of the game is limiting runs.

As Daisuke showed last year, walks don't kill you if you can prevent H and HR (he did but was that skill or luck). In 2009 his strike% went up, Contact% went up, BB went down, So/9 stayed high but his H/9 and HR/9 exploded. Maybe Daisuke lost his lucky charm, or his arm problems prevented him from limiting H and HR, not sure, but his lower BB/9 did not help.

That said, I enjoyed the article and look forward to seeing your further research on this subject.

As someone who had a hard time understanding and/or enjoying Cartwright's early work, I'll outright say I understood and enjoyed both this article and his Unfiltered post. Brian has put a lot of effort into listening to feedback and has adapted his writing style to become more approachable to those similar to me who like sabremetrics but are relative laymen when it comes to the methodology and terminology. Over the last few weeks, I am starting to "get" why he has such a fan base and that is primarily through his efforts to improve his writing abilities.

Brian, thank you for extending a hand to teach people like me.

I finished the article feeling confused. I understand there are three possible outcomes at each PA... a K, a BB, or contact. I guess I'll echo the "what's the thesis?" feedback. Is it this?

Higher strike % = Lower walk %
Higher contact % = Lower walk %

Is that real insight? Is there any relationship (or perhaps 2nd order interaction) between str% and con%?

Perhaps the point is more to introduce another set of statistics that may be useful for projections, without drawing any conclusions yet on what the relationships might be. I guess that is ok, but some kind of tip of the hat to the work that has already been done would be nice. Back in January, Eric Seidman showed some analysis on Oliver Perez demonstrating the importance of contact rate on pitches thrown in the zone vs those out of the zone. Shouldn't contact rate in Brian's article be broken down into "in zone" and "out of zone contact", or at least some acknowledgement be made that it could? (see http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8452)

I get a similar feeling from the unfiltered post... why just post Oliver projections, when posting the Pecota numbers alongside could be equally as instructive and more familiar to readers here. Introducing new concepts is ok, but not if it is presented with tunnel vision to what others before have done.

And we have a winner.

I'm not impressed; I would choose to appreciate this a lot more if it was a chapter of a book, or a monthly (or less often) feature article piece. In that case, it would go through several rounds of editing, have 500 words added in conclusions and non-data wrapper, and so on. In this form, it doesn't shine.

I am not voting for it, since I wouldn't like to read this type of piece frequently, but I would like to ask BP's staff to consider offering him a infrequent but in-depth guest column.

The following comments are not related to the quality of the piece - it was well done, well-researched and a good read.
But I'd like to understnad the theory. To me a lot of the discussion on strikes is like "voo doo economics". I had this debate in week 1 when the fellow eliminated last week who said that Voros "proved" that Ks are an accurate measure of pitcher effectiveness (he never "proved it" - he found some evidence to support his theory).
So when I read this: "A low contact pitcher must pound the strike zone to keep his walk rate manageable. A pitcher who relies on batters chasing pitches outside the strike zone (such as Oliver Perez or Ian Snell) is likely to be far less consistent, dependent on the skill of the batters in laying off those pitches."
My question is why isn't a low contact pitcher (or any pitcher) also dependent on the skill of the batter? Don't some batters K a lot? Aren't some batters better at hitting strikout pitchers than others? A side question - would a strikout pitcher prefer to face a low strikout hitter or a high strikeout hitter? To me, this entire area - pitching -remains extremely unsophisticated, especially compared to statistical measurement of hitting.
Anyway, good luck to you and thanks for many good reads the last couple of months.

I started out this contest with a wildly negative opinion of Brian's work. I thought his writing skills were so bad that whatever he was trying to say got lost in translation. That said, I've been very impressed by the steady improvement in his work since then, to the point that I really do wish there could be more than one winner.

I won't lie - my vote goes to Ken, whose work I've enjoyed throughout, and who finished very strong. But as another commenter stated, there really should be a place at BP for a semi-regular piece by Brian, delving more deeply into the nuts and bolts of sabermetric analysis. I never thought I'd say that, but there it is.

While this wasn't my favourite article of the week (it was second), and I'm struggling with whether I should vote for it (knowing that I'd be diminishing the marginal value of my other vote by doing so), this article is easily the most important written in the competition. This is the sort of research that other analysts in the sabermetric community will pick up and run with. This is the sort of article that could start a revolution.

I have been slow to appreciate Brian's work. The main problem, for me, is that his writing style appears to presume interest in a relatively technical topic at the outset. Brian's introduction clearly indicates what he plans to study, but not why anyone would be interested in it. I grant that how much of this is needed depends upon the audience as well as the audience's familiarity with the writer. For me, at least, Brian is making me work harder than I would like to.

That said, his research is interesting and potentially very important. The bullet at the end about major league equivalencies was intriguing. All in all, Brian is a fine analyst but needs a strong editor.

The best topic & research but yet the article that was hardest to follow. It's a tough decision for me.

For my final day stump speech -

My main area of interest is player valuation - how to measure each player's batting, pitching, fielding, baserunning, etc. Part of that is being able to control for the ballparks and level of competition.

My thinking about these things over the years is largely grounded in two concepts - How good were the players I got to see play as amateurs, and can I design the best simulation game ever?

Much of what I write is about the process, giving the readers a peek into the black box of statistical procedures. I want to intereact with other analysts to ensure that the methods are accurate and the best available, and to have the general fandom understand and trust the process.

Once the numbers are run, you have the players. Who's the best prospect? If two guys hit the same, can we seperate them on their fielding and baserunning? Why does Derek Jeter have Gold Gloves? Which pitchers are toughest to steal on? etc, etc.

I have enjoyed the oast year or so of writing on the internet, and especially the last few weeks here at BP. I know I still have many new things to learn, and I hope to be able to share them with you here.

None of the contestants are really finished writers, but Mr. Cartwright's writing is the most unfortunate. He has a world of insight, statistical sophistication and (obviously) intelligence, but his presentation skills, I am sad to say, don't close the deal, in fact make it very hard to grasp his points. There is no question in my mind, however, that he can eliminate this handicap- it will just take some sustained hard work (best, I suggest, with a professional tutor/ instructor), doing the simple (but not easy) blocking and tackling of learning how an essay is structured, and to eliminate the occasional stylistic/ grammatical clunker ("Without throwing any higher of a percentage of strikes..." just doesn't get it), he'll be fine. Great stuff, and good luck, Brian

Something that I'm very interested in is pitcher's control. It seems like they either have it or they don't. I wonder how often a pitcher's strike% improves from high school to the minors, through the different levels in the minors, from the minors to the majors, and once in the majors from year to year.

As an O's fan I used to think that once Daniel Cabrera finally harnessed his great stuff and improved on his control he would be an ace. Looking back now that seems silly.

I've seen pitchers add a new pitch, I've seen pitchers adjust the grip and improve a particular pitch, I've seen pitchers adjust their strategy in terms of what pitch to use when, but I've never really seen a dramatic shift in control.