The Bleacher Bums: June 2, 2005 Archive

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Never needed that Slim-Fast endorsement, anyway.

Posted at 10:50 AM on June 2, 2005 by Josh Lee (1 Comments)

I'm still trying to figure out what possesses a professional sporting organization to decide that what it really needs to do is get into the web hosting business, but business sense or no, Major League Baseball is now offering a weblog-hosting service to its fans. I can't tell you whether they'll make any money or not, but anyone that presents me with Tommy Lasorda's blog can't be all bad.

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But where are the women?

Posted at 12:34 PM on June 2, 2005 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

Last year, my youngest son (then 15) and I drove to Cincinnati to watch the Reds play in their new ballpark. We do that from time to time. Hop in the car and drive to a ballpark far away and see what happens.

It so developed that the hotel in which we were staying was also hosting the SABR (Society of American Baseball Research) national convention, so there were lots of easels in the lobby with Catchers Interference on Tuesdays with high dewpoints vs. Catchers Interference on Thursdays with high ozone studies on it.

We were making our way through the mezzanine of the hotel to get to the game and it was Happy Hour or something so the going was slow. As we reached our destination -- an escalator -- my son piped up behind me, "I don't see any women."

It was then I passed on to my son, that which my Dad passed on to me at roughly the same age. "Son, you've got a better chance of attracting women with cheap cologne and Best of Bread 8-track tapes than you do with baseball statistics."

I relay this story only as a way to say, "yeah, I know, for that you are about to receive, I am truly sorry for the time you are about to spend.... alone."

I've been working on a couple of spreadsheets inspired by some SABR work. It's a project that's not done yet but I'll relay two things. One is XR (extrapolated runs), a measure of the runs created DIRECTLY by the player. The other is the percentage of offensive plays on the team for which the player is responsible.

PLAYER	XR	PLAY%
Shannon Stewart	80	12%
Torii Hunter	62	11%
Lew Ford	58	10%
Michael Cuddyer	46	9%
Jacques Jones	53	10%
Joe Mauer	51	8%
Justin Morneau	60	8%
Nick Punto	54	7%
Matt Lecroy	33	5%
Jason Bartlett	28	5%
Juan Castro	31	5%
Luis Rivas	14	4%
Terry Tiffee	15	3%
Mike Redmond	14	3%
Corky Miller	1	1%
L. Rodriguez	2	0%

These are based on stats through Tuesday night. To be honest with you, I didn't realize Shannon Stewart was as good as he's been -- offensively speaking. Little else surprised me except that after Castro's game on Tuesday night, I decided to take a closer look. Based on the above, he would appear to be creating runs at roughly the same clip Torii Hunter is. You also have to wonder why it took the Twins so long to bury Jason Bartlett and Luis Rivas in favor of Castro and Nick Punto.

-0-

At some point I hope to increase my spreadsheet work and come up with a formula that will help explain why a spelling bee is shown on a sports network.

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