Baseball Prospectus (BP) is an organization that publishes a website, BaseballProspectus.com, devoted to the sabermetric analysis of baseball. BP has a staff of regular columnists and provides advanced statistics as well as player and team performance projections on the site. Since 1996 the BP staff has also published a Baseball Prospectus annual as well as several other books devoted to baseball analysis and history.
Baseball Prospectus is formally an entity of Prospectus Entertainment Ventures, LLC, a private corporation that runs websites and publishes books focusing on the statistical analysis of the sports of baseball, basketball, and ice hockey. As of August 2014, the President & CEO is Joe Hamrahi, and Vice President is Dave Pease.[2]
For several years, Prospectus Entertainment Ventures (PEV) partnered with Football Outsiders for the publication and promotion of Football Outsiders Almanac ( ISBN1-4486-4845-9), before 2009 called Pro Football Prospectus ( ISBN0-452-28847-9).
On October 10, 2007, PEV launched Basketball Prospectus,[3] a new website for the analysis of men's college and pro basketball, with Joe Sheehan taking the role of Managing Editor[4] and announcing the lineup of principal writer-analysts for the site. Initially, this website did not require a subscription for access, but it introduced subscriptions in 2011 for access to most of the material on the site. BasketballProspectus.com's first annual book, College Basketball Prospectus 2008–2009 ( ISBN0-452-28987-4), was published in October 2008. It released Pro Basketball Prospectus 2009–10 for purchase online in October 2009.[5] Subsequently, it published both College Basketball Prospectus 2010–11 ( ISBN1-4538-7282-5) and Pro Basketball Prospectus 2010–11 ( ISBN1-4538-6899-2) in both print and online (PDF) modes.[citation needed]
On March 19, 2008, Imagine Sports announced a strategic partnership with PEV and Baseball Prospectus. Imagine sports owns the baseball simulation engine "Diamond Mind Baseball".[6]
On October 14, 2008, PEV announced the acquisition of Baseball Digest Daily (BDD),[7] an online blog devoted to baseball analysis and statistics. Joe Hamrahi, new Chief Financial Officer of PEV and founder of BDD, reported that "PEV's decision to acquire Baseball Digest Daily further enhances the content offerings of Baseball Prospectus by adding some of the game's best analysts as well as over 100 pages of baseball news and original content. In addition, BDD's player tracker provides a platform for serious fans and fantasy baseball enthusiasts to easily monitor the progress of their teams, allowing users to manipulate and track the progress of an unlimited set of players over a customized period of time".[8]
At the same time, PEV revealed publicly that it "owns a significant interest in 538 (www.fivethirtyeight.com), a political analysis website that generates over 700,000 unique visitors daily."[citation needed]
On February 23, 2009, Prospectus Entertainment Ventures (PEV) launched the website Puck Prospectus[9] with the intent of providing cutting-edge analysis of hockey. Will Carroll assumed the role of the Executive Editor, and Andrew Rothstein, the founder of Puck Prospectus, assumed the role of the Managing Editor.[10] Puck Prospectus published its first annual book, Puck Prospectus 2010–2011 ( ISBN1-4538-1784-0) in both online and print formats. Initially a free site, Puck Prospectus introduced subscriptions in 2011.
On March 24, 2009, Baseball Prospectus announced that Nate Silver was stepping down as its Managing Partner, and Kevin Goldstein was assuming this role. At that time, PEV relinquished its previously announced financial interest in Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog. At the same time, it was announced that BP has a partnership relationship with ESPN.com.[11]
In January 2010, PEV's Managing Partner Kevin Goldstein reported that one of BP's founding members, Joe Sheehan, had departed the organization.[12] He reported that John Perrotto had been elevated to full-time status on the BP staff and would become the new Editor-in-Chief of BaseballProspectus.com, taking over that responsibility from Christina Kahrl. And he reported that Jeff Euston was joining the BP staff and that Euston's Cot's Baseball Contracts website[13] would be joining the Baseball Prospectus family. In February 2011, Perrotto was replaced as Editor-in-Chief by Steven Goldman.
In February 2010, BP's "Fantasy Manager" Marc Normandin announced that BP had established a partnership with Heater Magazine.[14]Heater Magazine ceased publication after the 2010 season.
In November 2011, Kevin Goldstein announced that he was stepping down as PEV's Managing Partner in favor of Joe Hamrahi.[15] On March 3, 2012, Hamrahi announced that Steven Goldman was stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of BaseballProspectus.com; Goldman had taken a position as a lead baseball writer for Bleacher Report.[16] Ben Lindbergh was named Managing Editor of Baseball Prospectus on March 5, 2012[17] and Editor-in-Chief of Baseball Prospectus on July 13, 2012.[18]
On April 30, 2012, PEV's Managing Partner Joe Hamrahi announced that "Dan Brooks, Harry Pavlidis, and Brooks Baseball have agreed to team up and join forces with Baseball Prospectus. BrooksBaseball.net is the premier site for PITCHf/x analysis and pitch classification".[19]
On March 15, 2013, after explaining a week earlier that its key staff of writers had been hired away by ESPN, Baseball Prospectus's Dave Pease declared in response to a question in the comments: "Basketball Prospectus will not be publishing any new content. We are going quiet. The archives will remain available. Thank you".[20] On March 8, Pease had written: "You've probably noticed our Basketball Prospectus Premium coverage has been pretty quiet lately. You may have also noticed that our core pro writers, Kevin Pelton, Bradford Doolittle, and John Gasaway are now writing for ESPN Insider on a regular basis. Late last year, we learned that, following their completion of the Pro Basketball Prospectus 2012–13 and College Basketball Prospectus 2012–13 annuals, Kevin, Bradford, and John would be moving to ESPN on a full-time basis".
History
Baseball Prospectus was founded in 1996 by Gary Huckabay, who recruited the initial contributor group of Clay Davenport, Rany Jazayerli, Christina Kahrl, and Joe Sheehan, with the publication of the first annual set of forecasts. "That first year, BP charged $20 for a statistics guide produced on a photocopier. It printed around 300 copies and sold about 170 to fellow statheads, even though the book was missing the St. Louis Cardinals. 'It was terrible,' recalls Kahrl, 'but it nevertheless didn't discourage us.' Within a few years Brassey's Inc. published the guide, which grew to about 3,000 copies. By 2007 it reached The New York Times bestseller list, topping 70,000 copies at $21.95 a pop."[21]
The kind of sabermetric approach favored by Baseball Prospectus has gained significant acceptance by the management of many Major League Baseball clubs, notably the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians. BP has often been considered the modern successor to Bill James' Baseball Abstract series of books in the 1980s.[22]
Reflecting its legacy as a group of sabermetricians who met over the Internet, BP has no "main office." Working for BP is a second or part-time job for many of the regular staff, who conduct their work for BP in their own home offices.
The website BaseballProspectus.com began in 1997 primarily as a way to present original sabermetric research; publish advanced baseball statistics such as EqA, the Davenport Translations (DT's), and VORP; and promote sales of the annual book.[23] Beginning in 2003, the site placed most of its new articles, its PECOTA forecasts, and some of its statistical databases in a "premium" section that could be accessed only by subscription. However, in May 2011, BP "announced it has made its entire archive of premium and fantasy content over one year old completely and permanently free to the public".[24]
Until 2007, when the site began to post general advertising, the premium subscriptions and book sales were Baseball Prospectus' main source of revenues. Baseball Prospectus does not publish a financial report or information about its subscriber base, but it appears to have used its income to expand its breadth of coverage,[25] and it has not increased its subscription prices since initiating its premium service. It also offers a subscription to those interested in fantasy baseball, at a lower price than the premium subscriptions and giving access to fewer features and articles.
BaseballProspectus.com has a corps of staff writers who publish articles on a regular (typically weekly) basis under a featured heading. In addition, occasional articles are published by other BP staff or freelance authors. Some former regular writers no longer appear on the site but are employed on the staffs of major league baseball organizations, including as of 2014 Keith Woolner (Cleveland Indians),[26]James Click (Tampa Bay Rays and others),[27] Dan Fox (Pittsburgh Pirates),[28] Mike Fast (Houston Astros),[29] Kevin Goldstein (Houston Astros),[30] and Colin Wyers (Houston Astros). In addition, Keith Law, now a columnist for The Athletic, in 2002 moved from Baseball Prospectus to work on player evaluation in the front office of the Toronto Blue Jays. In 2009, Nate Silver turned his full attention to his FiveThirtyEight political analysis website; he resigned his executive post at BP and handed over management of PECOTA to other BP staff.
Given the competing career opportunities for some of BP's best-known and most statistics-savvy analysts, maintaining a fresh supply of sabermetrically sophisticated writers remains a challenge.[31] During the 2009 baseball season, BP ran a multi-week open talent search competition in the spirit of the popular television program American Idol, in which aspiring writers submitted articles for evaluation by BP's staff members, with one contestant a week from among the final ten selected by the staff then voted off by the subscribers. At least three new regular BP writers (winner Ken Funck, Tim Kniker, and Matt Swartz) were discovered through this Prospectus Idol contest.[32] In addition, BP had added Eric Seidman to its staff early in 2009 and then acquired Russell Carleton ("Pizza Cutter") and Colin Wyers in December 2009 to bolster its coverage of technical sabermetric issues. As late as the Fall of 2008, Seidman, Swartz, Carleton, Wyers, Daniel Novick and BP Idol finalist Brian Cartwright made up the entire staff of "Statistically Speaking" aka StatSpeak at MVN.com.[33] Carleton left the BP staff in May 2010, but returned in July 2012. Seidman and Swartz left in February 2011.
Wyers was hired away by the Houston Astros in October 2013. In the press release announcing his hire, Jeff Luhnow noted, "Colin Wyers is a brilliant man with lots of well thought-out, practical, ideas. He is insuring the financial security of this company for years to come. Oh yes, and his personal hygiene is above reproach". Wyers' final article for BP reviewed the history and process of the "brain drain" of sabermetricians as writers to baseball analytics specialists working for Major League Baseball itself: "Colleges can crank out people who know and understand the tools, but the sabermetrics community has given teams people who have demonstrated that they can use those tools to find useful insights into the game of baseball. So teams court them as part of their effort to win games".[34]
Although the site maintains a strong sabermetric core and has expanded its statistical databases, it regularly attends to issues such as baseball prospects (the First Year Player Draft and minor league baseball), international baseball, the economics and business of baseball (valuation of players, team and stadium finances, the player marketplace),[35] and fantasy baseball (PECOTA, the "Fantasy Focus" series of articles, forecast manager and other fantasy tools). BP HAS also published monographs on specialized topics, including the application of sabermetric analysis to historical topics – an emphasis clearly seen in Mind Game (2005 – a history of the Boston Red Sox), Baseball Between the Numbers (2006 – which addresses some historical comparisons), and It Ain't Over 'til It's Over (2007 – about historical pennant races).
By the beginning of the 2011 baseball season, none of BP's founders was an active contributor to the website or publications, though some of their earlier articles were included in two Best of Baseball Prospectus compendia that were published in 2011.
Products
Baseball Prospectus creates several products:
Website
The website www.baseballprospectus.com, which contains articles, statistical reports, and fantasy baseball tools. The site contains some free content, although it has become increasingly available only by paid subscription. Authors write regular bylined columns on the site and numerous other writers contribute occasional articles. The site also covers baseball history as well as current issues and events, including games and series, injuries, forecasts, player profiles, baseball finance, and the player marketplace.[36]
BP annual and Futures Guide
Every year, BP publishes a print guide to the upcoming baseball season, called the "annual." The annual contains essays on each team and other topics, as well as PECOTA projections and analysis for every Major League player and many prospects. BP also publishes a separate annual Futures Guide with extensive reporting on minor league and amateur prospects.[37]
Other books
Other baseball-related books, such as Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning (2005) ( ISBN0-7611-4018-2) and Baseball Between the Numbers (2006) ( ISBN0-465-00596-9). The latter was chosen by the editors of Amazon.com as the best book on baseball (and third best on sports in general) published in 2006.[38]
Podcasts
Effectively Wild, the daily Baseball Prospectus podcast, ran on the site until episode 1006, when Sam Miller left to join ESPN.[39] As of August 2020, the podcast continues on FanGraphs and is hosted by Miller, former BP editor-in-chief Ben Lindbergh and FanGraphs managing editor Meg Rowley.[40][41]
Flags Fly Forever, a traditional fantasy baseball league-focused podcast, has run weekly since January 2014.[42]
Five and Dive, a twice-weekly podcast on various baseball topics hosted by BP editor-in-chief Craig Goldstein, Sports Illustrated writer Emma Baccellieri, and Bradford William Davis of the New York Daily News.[43]
For All You Kids Out There, a weekly podcast focusing on the New York Mets organization hosted by BP writers Jeffrey Paternostro and Jarrett Seidler.[44]
Stolen Signs, a podcast on baseball statistics and the people who develop them hosted by Kendall Guillemette and Harry Pavlidis.[45]
The Infinite Inning, a weekly podcast on the intersection of baseball and culture hosted by BP writer Steven Goldman.[46]
Three-Quarters Delivery, a weekly podcast on minor league baseball and player development.[47]
TINO (There Is No Offseason) a dynasty league fantasy baseball podcast, has run regularly since January 2014.[48]
The annual Internet Baseball Awards (IBA) are based on fan voting. They started in 1991 with the Most Valuable Player, Cy Young (pitcher), and Rookie of the Year awards, in each of the two major leagues. In 1998, an award for Manager of the Year was added in each league.
Theories
Baseball Prospectus writers promote several theories on proper baseball management and analysis, many of which are contrary to those of conventional baseball wisdom.
Baseball Prospectus researchers have concluded that there is no repeatable ability of clutch hitting. As writer Joe Sheehan said, "Over the course of a game, a month, a season or a career, there is virtually no evidence that any player or group of players possesses an ability to outperform his established level of ability in clutch situations, however defined."[49] They cite studies which find that there is insignificant correlation between year-to-year performance in clutch situations.
In an article published in 2006, Nate Silver argued that clutch hitting ability does exist to a degree. He argued that although not as important as traditional baseball analysis would suggest, clutch hitting ability was more significant than other sabermetric studies had shown. The article also found there to be a connection between clutch hitting ability and situational hitting, or the ability to adjust a hitting approach to fit the given situation.[50]
Views on traditional statistics
Baseball Prospectus writers often successfully argue that traditional baseball statistics such as RBIs, wins, and batting average are poor reflections of a player's true contributions. For example, they have argued that RBIs are too dependent on factors outside of the player's control, namely the production of other hitters in the lineup.[51][52] They similarly argue that wins are too affected by factors such as the team's offense and bullpen.[53]
Closer usage
Baseball Prospectus writers assert that teams are typically inefficient in their use of their best relievers. Teams typically assign their most effective reliever to the position of closer, using him in only save situations. According to many Baseball Prospectus writers, a team's best reliever should be used when the opposing team has its best chance at increasing its chances of winning.[54]
Views on sacrifice bunts and stolen bases
Many writers argue that the sacrifice bunt and stolen base are overused in baseball. Teams will often attempt these plays when the score is close. Writers for Baseball Prospectus often argue that teams are, on average, actually lowering their expected number of runs scored. They argue that stolen base attempts are not completed frequently enough for them to be beneficial to the offense.[55] For sacrifice bunts, they argue that the team is giving up more by sacrificing an out than they gain by advancing a runner one base. Their thinking is derived from the grid of expected runs in an inning based on the outs and runner situation, which shows that the sacrifice is detrimental to a team given average players in most of the situations in which it is typically used.[56]
In a series of articles in 2004, James Click argued that sacrifice bunts are beneficial in some situations, dependent on the quality of the batter at the plate and the situation in the game.[57]
Statistical tools
Baseball Prospectus writers use a wide variety of sabermetric tools. Among the major tools that they are credited with inventing are:
Equivalent average (EqA) – a combination of various hitting numbers designed to express a player's overall offensive contribution.[58]
Equivalent Baserunning Runs (EqBRR) – a statistic indicating a player's rate of run production resulting from his baserunning.[59]
Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP) – a measure of the impact of a particular start by a pitcher on his arm, based on pitch count.[61]
Peripheral ERA (PERA) – a pitcher's expected ERA based on park-adjusted hits, walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed.[62]
PECOTA – a system of player projection based on similarity to previous player seasons.[63]
Value over replacement player (VORP) – a measurement of the number of runs contributed by a player over the expected level of performance the average team can obtain if it needs to replace a starting player at minimal cost.[64]
Baseball Prospectus, as well as other sabermetric analysts, are criticized for taking the human aspect out of the game of baseball. For example, Murray Chass of The New York Times wrote in an article that he did not want to hear or read about new-age baseball statistics any more (referencing Value over replacement player specifically), saying:
"I suppose that if stats mongers want to sit at their computers and play with these things all day long, that's their prerogative. But their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game threatens to undermine most fans' enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein. People play baseball. Numbers don't."[66]
Nate Silver, BP's Managing Partner at the time, responded to this criticism in "An Open Letter to Murray Chass," including offering to meet Chass to watch a ballgame.[67] Silver expounded on the case for a positive impact of sabermetrics on the game of baseball in an article "How Sabermetrics Helps Build a Better Ballgame," published on Baseball Analysts.com.[68]
Another type of criticism comes from those who believe that by broadening its coverage and audience, Baseball Prospectus is becoming more like the mainstream media and losing what made it unique. In response to a question along this line in an on-line chat, Silver wrote:
From a brand standpoint, we're more concerned about differentiation based on quality than differentiation based on where we fall on sort of the "saberpolitical" spectrum.[69]
Criticism of journalistic standards
Baseball Prospectus was widely criticized for publishing and aggressively promoting a 2003 story claiming that banished player/manager Pete Rose had reached an agreement to return to baseball.[70]Will Carroll made the rounds on television and radio, claiming to have spoken to unnamed sources who had actually seen the agreement.[71] Spokesmen for both Rose and Major League Baseball refuted the claim,[72][73] but Carroll and his colleagues insisted their reporting was accurate. No other news source confirmed the story. In fact, Rose was not reinstated and remains banned from baseball.[74]
Notes
↑ Former BP writer Keith Law, who writes for ESPN.com, is also a member of the BBWAA.
↑ Press Release:Archived October 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine "Prospectus Entertainment Ventures (Owner of Baseball Prospectus) Announces Acquisition of Baseball Digest Daily (BDD)", by Joe Hamrahi, Tuesday, October 14, 2008.
↑ See, for example, James Fraser, "'Baseball Prospectus' — Escaping Bill James' Shadow", By the Numbers (Newsletter of the SABR Statistical Analysis Committee) 10, No. 2 (May 2000).
↑ Dave Pease, "Welcome to Big September", BaseballProspectus.com, September 19, 2011: "On September 19, 1996, we registered the domain name baseballprospectus.com. At the time, the main reason we wanted the site is so all our Usenet friends and customers could get more information about the Baseball Prospectus annual, which we'd just self-published with an imposing print run of about 200".
↑ Dan Fox joined the Pirates front office in April 2008 to become their Director of Player Systems Development. See Dan Fox, "Schrodinger's Bat: Opus 100", BaseballProspectus.com, April 17, 2008. As evidence of what Fox is doing for the Pirates, see this article on Fox's MITTArchived July 22, 2009, at the Wayback Machine .
↑ In 2012 Goldstein became the Pro Scouting Coordinator for the Astros. See Kevin Goldstein, "Goodbye to the Internet", BaseballProspectus.com August 31, 2012.
↑ The MVN.com network went belly up in December 2009 for financial reasons. See Evan Brunell, "The End of the Most Valuable Network, MVN.com", EvanBrunnel.com, December 7, 2009.
↑ Colin Wyers, "Manufactured Runs: Moments of Transition, Moments of Revelation", Baseball Prospectus, November 1, 2013.
↑ This carries on the tradition established by the late Doug Pappas, who wrote regularly for BP from 2001 until his untimely death in 2004.
↑ Silver, Nate (2006). Jonah Keri (ed.). Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game Is Wrong. New York: Basic Books. pp.14–34. ISBN0-465-00596-9.
↑ Keri, Jonah (2006). Jonah Keri (ed.). Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game Is Wrong. New York: Basic Books. pp.1–4. ISBN0-465-00596-9.
↑ Perry, Dayn; Woolner, Keith (2006). Jonah Keri (ed.). Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game Is Wrong. New York: Basic Books. pp.49–50. ISBN0-465-00596-9.
↑ This new statistic was incorporated into BP's regular daily and seasonal statistical reports effective with the 2008 season but also calculated for previous seasons. It has also been incorporated into PECOTA estimates for 2008. The fundamental work on this metric was developed in a series of columns by Dan Fox. See, for example, Dan Fox, Schrodinger's Bat: The Running Man", BaseballProspectus.com, September 7, 2006, "Schrodinger's Bat: The Baserunning Edition", Baseball Prospectus, October 18, 2007, and "A Running Comparison", Baseball Prospectus/Unfiltered, November 14, 2007. Also see Dan Fox, "The Tortoise, the Hare, and Juan Pierre: Translating Baserunning into Runs", in S. Goldman and C. Kahrl, Eds., Baseball Prospectus 2008 (New York: Plume, 2008): 558–563.
Sabermetrics is the original or blanket term for sports analytics, the empirical analysis of baseball, especially the development of advanced metrics based on baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. The term is derived from the movement's progenitors, members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), founded in 1971, and was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and considered its most prominent advocate and public face.
Equivalent Average (EqA) is a baseball metric invented by Clay Davenport and intended to express the production of hitters in a context independent of park and league effects. It represents a hitter's productivity using the same scale as batting average. Thus, a hitter with an EqA over .300 is a very good hitter, while a hitter with an EqA of .220 or below is poor. An EqA of .260 is defined as league average.
Clay Davenport is a baseball sabermetrician who co-founded Baseball Prospectus (BP) in 1996. He co-edited several of the Baseball Prospectus annual volumes and is a writer for BaseballProspectus.com. Much of his work for BP was behind the scenes, where he maintained and implemented advanced statistics for the website.
In baseball, value over replacement player is a statistic popularized by Keith Woolner that demonstrates how much a hitter or pitcher contributes to their team in comparison to a replacement-level player who is an average fielder at that position and a below average hitter. A replacement player performs at "replacement level," which is the level of performance an average team can expect when trying to replace a player at minimal cost, also known as "freely available talent."
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a book by Michael Lewis, published in 2003, about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its general manager Billy Beane. It describes the team's sabermetric approach to assembling a competitive baseball team on a small budget. It was adapted into the 2011 film Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.
Keith Woolner is an author for Baseball Prospectus and is the creator of the statistic Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). VORP is acknowledged by the sabermetrics community as one of the key concepts in the analysis of a player's performance and market valuation.
In sabermetrics and basketball analytics, similarity scores are a method of comparing baseball and basketball players to other players, with the intent of discovering who the most similar historical players are to a certain player.
Murray Chass is an American baseball blogger. He previously wrote for The New York Times and before that the Associated Press on baseball and sports legal and labor relations. In 2003 the Baseball Writers' Association of America honored him with the J. G. Taylor Spink Award. He took a buyout from the Times, along with Supreme Court writer Linda Greenhouse and dozens of others, in April 2008.
The Hardball Times is a website which publishes news, original comments and statistical analysis of baseball each week Monday through Friday, in addition to the Hardball Times Annual book which features essays by leading sabermetric personalities. The website features the slogan "Baseball. Insight. Daily." Run by current owner Dave Studeman and David Gassko, it was founded by Aaron Gleeman and Bill James' assistant Matthew Namee in 2004. Fangraphs acquired the site in 2012. The Hardball Times went on temporary hiatus in early 2020 due to decreasing traffic caused by the delay of the season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nathaniel Read Silver is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, and elections. He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight, and held the position of editor-in-chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News, until May 2023. Since departing FiveThirtyEight, Silver has been publishing on his Substack blog Silver Bulletin and serves as an advisor to Polymarket.
PECOTA, an acronym for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, is a sabermetric system for forecasting Major League Baseball player performance. The word is a backronym based on the name of journeyman major league player Bill Pecota, who, with a lifetime batting average of .249, is perhaps representative of the typical PECOTA entry. PECOTA was developed by Nate Silver in 2002–2003 and introduced to the public in the book Baseball Prospectus 2003. Baseball Prospectus (BP) has owned PECOTA since 2003; Silver managed PECOTA from 2003 to 2009. Beginning in Spring 2009, BP assumed responsibility for producing the annual forecasts, making 2010 the first baseball season for which Silver played no role in producing PECOTA projections.
Joseph S. Sheehan was born in New York City on February 26, 1971, and attended Regis High School. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1994 with a degree in journalism. Sheehan lives in the New York City area. He is one of the founders and was a co-editor of the first annual book of sabermetric baseball forecasts and analyses by Baseball Prospectus in 1996 as well as several later volumes.
Rany Jazayerli is a Chicago-area dermatologist and co-founder of and writer for Baseball Prospectus. He developed the statistical concept of Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP), which relates to high pitch counts in baseball.
William Joseph Pecota is an American former Major League Baseball infielder. He is the namesake of PECOTA, a sabermetric created by Nate Silver and owned by Baseball Prospectus.
Christina Kahrl is one of the co-founders of Baseball Prospectus. She is the former executive editor of the think tank's website, BaseballProspectus.com, the former managing editor for their annual publication, former writer and editor for ESPN.com, and is currently sports editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. She is a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
In 1986, Ron Shandler began publishing the Baseball Forecaster, an annual publication focused on applying sabermetrics to fantasy baseball, and later founded Baseball HQ, a website with the same focus. Shandler has an MBA from Hofstra University.
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FanGraphs.com is a website run by Fangraphs Inc., located in Arlington, Virginia, and created and owned by David Appelman that provides statistics for every player in Major League Baseball history.
John Perrotto is a sports journalist who has written for The Beaver County Times, Baseball Prospectus, DKPittsburghsports.com, and Basketball Prospectus in his checkered career. He is a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America and a voter in the annual Baseball Hall of Fame election and occasionally other annual Major League Baseball awards.
Sports analytics are collections of relevant historical statistics that can provide a competitive advantage to a team or individual by helping to inform players, coaches and other staff and help facilitate decision-making both during and prior to sporting events. The term "sports analytics" was popularized in mainstream sports culture following the release of the 2011 film Moneyball. In this film, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane relies heavily on the use of baseball analytics to build a competitive team on a minimal budget, building upon and extending the established practice of Sabermetrics.
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