Category Archives: Baseball

It’s the OBP, Stupid!

By Bryan Packman | Published: January 1, 2010
I hope the signing of Miguel Olivo truly does mean that the Rockies intend to give Chris Iannetta the full workload of a starting catcher. It’d be a shame if Jim Tracy and the Rockies organization was tempted to play Olivo more than necessary, considering he has a lifetime OBP of .278, compared to [...]
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Rockies To Sign Miguel Olivo – Let the Good Iannetta Times Roll

By Bryan Packman | Published: December 30, 2009
The Colorado Rockies are apparently close to a deal with catcher, Miguel Olivo. Rather than examining the strengths and weaknesses of the potential signing, I’m going to take the following from this news: the Rockies are done with Yorvit Torrealba! For the past three seasons, Chris Iannetta has had to share time behind the plate [...]
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Closers, Saves, and Alternate Realities

By Bryan Packman | Published: October 7, 2009
Up 5-4 against the Tigers in Game 163 last night, I thought Twins manager, Ron Gardenhire, should have used Joe Nathan to begin the top of the 8th inning. The Twins ended up winning the game anyway, so this may all be moot. But by using Nathan in the eighth from the outset, [...]
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Calculating FIP and WAR from Retrosheet Data, Part 1

By Bryan Packman | Published: August 31, 2009
Ok, I finally have the beginnings (Finally have the beginnings? That doesn’t sound right.) of FIP and WAR calculations for starting pitchers. After parsing pitching data out of retrosheet files from the 2007 season, I calculated FIP and WAR for SP on a per-game level. By taking a weighted average of these game-level [...]
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Off to Minny

By Bryan Packman | Published: August 28, 2009
Going to Minnesota for a short weekend trip. Hopefully I’ll run into a few of those 10,000 lakes, but I doubt I’ll see much more than that ugly, green carpet covered by a big, white balloon. Made a lot of progress on my FIP and WAR calculations last night … almost ready to show some [...]
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Park Factors

By Bryan Packman | Published: August 27, 2009
Oh, it feels good to be back. Yesterday, I spent a full day at the office programming, and then programmed for a few more hours once I got home. After feeling “stuck” at a job I stopped liking, it’s been a while since I’ve felt that passion for something I was working on. [...]
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Weird Things about ERA

By Bryan Packman | Published: August 21, 2009
One of my planned projects during my new found unemployment involves sabermetrics. As a first step, I’m writing scripts to parse Retrosheet files and calculate advanced pitching metrics like FIP and WAR. Along with these advanced metrics, I’m also calculating more traditional stats like ERA. When some of the resulting ERAs in my database [...]
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