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BZR Interview with MLBTradeRumors.com’s Tim Dierkes

I’ve been a fan of Tim Dierkes’ RotoAuthority.com for a couple years. I thought I’d have Tim on Baseball Zealot Radio to talk about his other site, MLBTradeRumors.com which has been around for a little over a year now. The way I hear it, the response to it has been overwhelming.

Anyway, it’s the perfect timing to have someone on who specializes in MLB hot stove action. We take some time to chat with him and find out a little about him then talk some MLB.

Bonus points for Tim for being a U of I alum.

Enough jabbering… the show notes:

Show Notes for Episode 36:

Hosts: Tom:

Summary: Tim Dierkes is our guest for our first episode of 2008. Tim has two web sites, MLBTradeRumors.com and RotoAuthority.com. He talks a bit about his background and his work with both sites.

We then talk about some of the pressing hot stove issues including Johan Santana, Erik Bedard, and Joe Crede.

Time: 21:35

Date Recorded: 1/30/08

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Bat-girl weighs in on Santana

Bat-girl, an extremely popular Twins blogger retired from the blogging thing last year but Metsgrrl managed to coax an opinion out of her about the Santana deal.

Another Top Cub List from Bleed Cubbie Blue

Last winter, Al Yellon of Bleed Cubbie Blue counted down the Top 100 Cubs of All Time. It was a great reason to check out his site (not that you need one). Each day was another Cub waiting for me.

In the winter of 2008, Al has another cool list to help us count the days down to spring training. It’s the Top 20 Cub HR of All Time.

Today’s is #16, Larry Biitner’s game winning home run on opening day in 1978.

Similar to the Top 100 Cub list from last year, Al’s posts are exhaustively researched and bring back a little bit of history. Today’s especially for me brings back memories as that was when I was growing up with the Cubs.

Once again, thanks Al!

Library of Congress posting photos

The Library of Congress has posted over 3,000 photos on the popular image sharing site Flickr. The photos have no copyright restriction and are considered public domain.

The interest to us is that many are baseball-related such as the photo at left (Managers Bobby Wallace and Hal Chase in the year 1911). To view them, here is a good place to start. There are some real priceless photos going back to early 20th century.

As part of the project, the LOC wants the Internet community to “tag” them for easy categorizing. I believe the new term for that is “crowdsourcing”. If you are so inclined, get involved and help tag the photos.

Here’s a Zdnet article on the LOC project.

Browse around. There are some cool pictures to see.

Looking past the easy stats

As much as I like Harold Baines, I rather enjoyed Ken Tremendous’ posting on Fire Joe Morgan. Bit by bit, he dissects a Mike Downey article from the Chicago Tribune.

A snip:

(quoting from Downey) Harold Baines has more hits than Brooks Robinson, Charlie Gehringer, George Sisler, Luke Appling, Lou Gehrig … (keep going) … Billy Williams, Luis Aparicio, Nellie Fox, Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, Reggie Jackson, Ernie Banks … (don’t stop now) …

Who on blog’s green earth would evaluate HOF inductees solely by hits? What kind of insane cherry pick is that? Not any other stat. Not longevity or era…not even taking position into account. Just: hits. Hits! That’s like evaluating pitchers based on saves and deciding Pedro Martinez doesn’t get in because he only has three.

KT’s posting is lengthy, opinionated but actually on the mark.

Schilling’s side

With developing technologies of the Internet, more and more MLB players are taking advantage of this by writing on blogs and websites. Some are MLB.com sanctioned which I would presume would be monitored. Other players have there own websites where I would assume they would have more freedom.

Most players talk about life as a player or events that happen to them in their journey through the minors or majors. Others even talk about how they play the game. Most are interesting as they give us an inside look into the game of baseball.

But wait till one of them actually has an opinion.

Curt Schilling, who, let’s face it, is no stranger to having an opinion, recently wrote this on this on his official blog, 38 pitches:

“Roger has denied every allegation brought to the table. So as a fan my thought is that Roger will find a way in short order to organize a legal team to guarantee a retraction of the allegations made, a public apology is made, and his name is completely cleared. If he doesn’t do that then there aren’t many options as a fan for me other than to believe his career 192 wins and 3 Cy Youngs he won prior to 1997 were the end. From that point on the numbers were attained through using PED’s. Just like I stated about Jose, if that is the case with Roger, the 4 Cy Youngs should go to the rightful winners and the numbers should go away if he cannot refute the accusations.”

No doubt you have heard about this in the media. But please read the entire post before making up your mind about Schilling and his ideas. The media the way that it is tend to focus on the sensational points rather than the substance of the matter. Some media outlets do a fair job of covering the job… others just focus on what sells. Further, many fans are reacting to headlines and soundbites rather than considering the original source.

Did Schilling’s article persuade me that Clemens needs to give up his four Cy Youngs? No, he didn’t. But that’s not the point.

The point is that Schilling had a lot more to say.

The Baseball Zealot’s Top Reference Web Sites for Every Baseball Fan- Part 1

Back when I became a hard core baseball fan, the one way to get access to data was to wait for the local newspaper to print them. For me it was Tuesday for the NL stats and Wednesday for the AL. Boy, I couldn’t wait to open the sports page on those days.

Obviously, things have changed with the advent of the Internet. Now we have any kind of data we want with a few mouse-clicks.

With that, I decided to write a series of posts detailing my favorite reference web sites I use when I want baseball stats, data or any sort of reference information.

A few points before we get started:

Keep in mind that I will be discussing websites which have a focus on stats, data or referential information. Not blogs, team fansites, or general baseball websites.
These sites are not necessarily listed in any order of preference.
I realize that there are the popular ones out there (I’m talking about the big media ones). I’m trying not to focus on them since you probably know about them (chances are you probably know the ones listed too).

In Part 1, I’m going to focus primarily on those web sites that focus primarily on stats. Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will discuss minor league and fantasy league sites.

Well, here goes:

Retrosheet

Any talk of baseball stats reference web sites begins with Retrosheet.org. Not only is it useful as an end user site but many sites use the data from it as a back end.

The mission of Retrosheet is threefold:

First is the collection of the game accounts… The second activity is the translation of these accounts to a unified, modern system which is essential since there are an extraordinary variety of scoring systems which have been used. The final activity is the entry of the translated accounts into the computer.

The end result is a compilation of boxscores and game accounts which are accessible by browser or downloadable in database form.

The philosophy behind Retrosheet.org is refreshing if unusual in this day and age.

The ultimate objective of Retrosheet is to make this basic play by play

information publicly available for all interested researchers.

Graphically, there’s nothing fancy about Retrosheet. No clickable maps or glowing images. Just honest to goodness baseball data. Do make the effort to check out their Noteworthy Events page, though. It’s very interesting.

We managed to have Mark Pankin from Retrosheet on our podcast earlier this year. It’s a very interesting show if you’re interested in the inner workings of Retrosheet.org

Baseball Reference

I honestly don’t know what I’d do without Baseball Reference. When I doing my APBA replay of the 1979 season B-R.com was indispensable. This baseball stats site has it all. In addition to being organized well, it is very interactive.

Stats are updated daily and are organized by league, team, and player. Historical stats from the beginning of organized baseball can be viewed as well as leaderboards for every stat. We can also view postseason stats, manager records, and awards.

Baseball Award has recently unveiled Play Index which can help determine streaks, events, and splits. Caveat: Some of more intense searches for Play Index require a paid subscription.

One of my favorite blogs is Baseball Reference’s Stat of the Day. A dedicated cadre of stat freaks who play around with B-R’s Play Index post interesting stat anomalies.

Founder Sean Forman was kind enough to come on Baseball Zealot Radio to talk to us about Baseball Reference in January 2007.

Day by Day Database

David Pinto who keeps us all up to date on baseball news on Baseball Musings also has a little gem almost hidden away called Day by Day Database. This database is quite handy for:

viewing batting and pitching logs
comparing players stats over a given time
viewing batting, pitching and team splits over a given time
viewing batting and pitching streaks

Again, nothing fancy here but the interface is simple if you know what data you want. As is true for most event databases like this, the data goes back to 1957.

I find this most handy for splits data. With one search, I can find out stats on twelve different splits on Albert Pujols for the month of May 2007. Sometimes, you just gotta know.

MLB.com’s Sortable Player Stats

Sometimes the best place to get stats is the horse’s mouth. MLB.com’s Sortable Player Stats database is run on a robust engine and is very customizable.

Yes, it’s sortable on all stats and yes, you can filter by pretty much anything. It covers splits on all levels. However, the one thing that this database does that I haven’t seen elsewhere is the Milestone Tracker. This convenient little tool allows you to see which milestones (both who’s passing who and passing those all-important numbers) will be met in the coming future or have been achieved recently.

New for the MLB.com Sortable Player Stats: It now covers Winter League stats and Arizona Fall League stats.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will be highlighting websites that focus on minor leagues and fantasy baseball.

2007 Baseball Search Trends

I don’t know why but I enjoy looking at Google’s search trends. I guess it’s the geek in me. But it does give us a sense of what we find interesting or important as a online society. Sometimes, the Hot Trends page kinda scares me.

Anyways, I did a simple search on the term "baseball" for the year 2007. This was what I got:

The result was pretty predictable. There was a slight bump in April at the beginning of the year when fans are gearing up for the season. The spike in early July can certainly be attributed to the All-Star game. Folks, are trying to find the All-Star ballot is my guess.

There is a small hill around post-season time but not as much as I would have thought.

Then I did a comparison between "White Sox" (in blue) and "Cubs" (in red) again for the year 2007.

With the year the Cubs had (and quite frankly, the year the Sox had, too), it’s no surprise that online folks were searching for the Cubs. It doesn’t hurt that the Cubs can be seen nationwide on WGN either, I suppose.

You can see the big spike at the close of the season when the Cubs clinched the playoff spot (and right before they blew it against the Dbacks). Yet, except for that, the Sox pretty much go toe to toe with them in the Google News searches for the year.

I don’t consider this a scientific study by any means but it is a scratch on surface. If you’re interested in playing around with Google Trends, have at it. It gives you a lot more information like regional data as well as attempting to match spikes with news events.

Cubs Blogger appeals to Fukodome

Al from Bleed Cubbie Blue, posted an open letter to Kosuke Fukdome. He did it in Fuk’s native language, (Japanese) with the help of Google Translate and it didn’t turn out half bad:

Many of my readers, myself included, want to sign the contract for you PUREKABUSUMASU. You just need Cubs – a left-handed hitting right fielder who plays good defense, who is often on base by drawing walks and hitting both well…

You can see the the letter in whole (both the Japanese and English versions) at Bleed Cubbie Blue.

With the loss of Jacque Jones, I hope this helps.

New digs for The College Baseball Blog

Brian over at The College Baseball Blog informs me that they have a new address. You can now access them at http://thecollegebaseballblog.com . It seems that the site has gone through a renovation… it looks nice. Anyone who follows college baseball should definitely put The College Baseball Blog in their favorites. Brian tirelessly puts in … Continue reading “New digs for The College Baseball Blog”

Anyone who follows college baseball should definitely put The College Baseball Blog in their favorites. Brian tirelessly puts in a lot of work covering the topic.