Carson Harrington Cistulli | |
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| Born | December 23, 1979 |
| Era | 21st-century poetry |
| Region | Western Poetry, Postmodernism |
Carson Cistulli (born December 23, 1979) is an American poet, essayist and baseball analyst [1] for the Toronto Blue Jays. His works of poetry include Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated, Assorted Fictions, and A Century of Enthusiasm.
Carson Cistulli was born December 23, 1979, in Concord, New Hampshire, to Philip Cistulli Jr. and Holly Young. [2] Cistulli passed his early childhood in a middle class Italian-American household until his parents' divorce in 1994. [3] Cistulli attended boarding school at Milton Academy in Massachusetts. [3]
After graduating from Milton in 1998, [4] he attended Columbia University where he studied under poet Kenneth Koch of the New York School of poetry. After his studies under Koch, he moved to Seattle to write. [3] He would later receive a bachelor's degree in Classical Civilizations from the University of Montana in Missoula and a master's degree in Creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. [2] [5]
In an essay about sports and aesthetics, "A Lengthy Meditation on Baseball and the Science of Happiness," Cistulli explained that part of his turn towards writing was a therapeutic response to anxiety attacks. Cistulli wrote that these attacks became so intense that he at times struggled to breathe: "During the fall of 2001, while living in Missoula, MT, I began experiencing some symptoms of generalized anxiety: occasional tightness or pain in the chest and limbs, invasive thoughts about death and illness [...] those symptoms persisted off and on into the next spring, at which time I developed a considerably less pleasant one (i.e., symptom): for long periods of time, and with no warning, I was unable to breathe involuntarily." [6]
Cistulli utilizes the notions of authorship, [7] [8] [9] poetic inspiration, [10] [11] and recontextualization. [12]
Lisa Baker writes that "In a day and age when we are quick to consume the rigid definitions of relationships fed to us by those who wield power, Cistulli tutors us in language's malleability; a new comparison, an unexpected verb in a familiar phrase can force an entirely new perspective—and perhaps one more curious and more generous." [13]
Cistulli's essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, [14] SBNation, [15] FanGraphs, [16] ESPN, [17] The Hardball Times, [18] The New Enthusiast, [19] RotoWire, [20] The Huffington Post, [21] The Classical [22] and The Portland Sportsman. [23] He won the FSWA 2011 basketball sports writer of the year award for his writing at Rotowire [24] [25] and was elected to the Baseball Writers' Association of America in 2012. [26]
Cistulli has written that his interest in sabermetrics is to explore "that place where quantitative analysis and aesthetics meet" [27] in practicing what he calls the art [28] of sabermetrical research. Within sabermetrics he is the creator of NERD, [29] [30] SCOUT [31] and historical GBz%. [32] [33] [34] [35] Cistulli has influenced many contemporary sports thinkers including Rob Neyer who, asked about the value of Cistulli's work within the sabermetric community, responded "there's value in just about everything that Cistulli does. He's got an original mind and we'll ignore him at our peril." [36]
Cistulli was previously the host of "Goal: The Soccer Show" (103.3 FM Northampton, MA) [37] and "The Shuttlecoque Sporting Hour" (1450 AM Portland, OR.) [38] He was formerly the host of FanGraphs Audio. [39]
On November 16, 2018, Cistulli announced that he had been hired by the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball, and left Fangraphs to work for the team. [40]
It has been reported that he is working alongside Jon Lalonde, Nick Manno and Brent Urcheck to "curate running rankings of the players in each organization." [41]
Cistulli and Kali Coles announced their engagement in May 2009 and married in August. [42] They have one son, Jackie. [43]
In sports analytics, sabermetrics is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific questions. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research, founded in 1971. The term "sabermetrics" was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is often considered its most prominent advocate and public face.
George William James is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books about baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he named sabermetrics after the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose.
Rob Neyer is an American baseball writer known for his use of statistical analysis or sabermetrics. He started his career working for Bill James and STATS and then joined ESPN.com as a columnist and blogger from 1996 to 2011. He was National Baseball Editor for SB Nation from 2011 to 2014, and Senior Baseball Editor for FoxSports.com in 2015 and 2016.
In baseball, a cut fastball or cutter is a type of fastball that breaks toward the pitcher's glove-hand side, as it reaches home plate. This pitch is somewhere between a slider and a four-seam fastball, as it is usually thrown faster than a slider but with more movement than a typical fastball. Some pitchers use a cutter to prevent hitters from expecting their regular fastballs. A common technique for throwing a cutter is to use a four-seam fastball grip with the baseball set slightly off center in the hand. A batter hitting a cutter pitch often achieves only soft contact and an easy out due to the pitch's movement keeping the ball away from the bat's sweet spot. The cutter is typically 2–5 mph slower than a pitcher's four-seam fastball. In 2010, the average pitch classified as a cutter by PITCHf/x thrown by a right-handed pitcher was 88.6 mph; the average two-seamer was 90.97 mph.
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.
Robert "Voros" McCracken is an American baseball sabermetrician. "Voros" is a nickname from his partial Hungarian heritage. He is widely recognized for his pioneering work on Defense Independent Pitching Statistics (DIPS).
Dayn Perry is an author and baseball journalist. He was also a special consultant for the San Diego Padres from 2001–2003.
The infield shift in baseball is a defensive realignment from the standard positions, to place more fielders on one side of the field or another. Used primarily against left-handed batters, it is designed to protect against base hits pulled hard into the gaps between the fielders on one side. Originally called the Williams shift, it has periodically been referred to as the Boudreau shift or Ortiz shift since then. After shifts became very effective in reducing base hits by Major League Baseball (MLB) batters, MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) agreed to begin restricting shifts starting in the 2023 season.
Earnshaw Cook was an American early researcher and proponent of sabermetrics, the analysis of baseball through statistical means.
Baseball Think Factory, abbreviated as BTF or BBTF, was a sabermetrically-oriented baseball web site which featured daily news stories in baseball, with original content contributed by SABR members such as Dan Szymborski. The site was previously branded as Baseball Primer, and was created in 2001 by the founders of Baseball-Reference. Contributors who have gone on to work for Major League Baseball front offices include Voros McCracken, Carlos Gomez, and Tom Tango. Bill James' Baseball Abstract books published in the 1980s are widely considered to be the modern predecessor to websites using sabermetrics such as baseballthinkfactory and baseballprospectus.
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.
In baseball, wOBA is a statistic, based on linear weights, designed to measure a player's overall offensive contributions per plate appearance. It is formed from taking the observed run values of various offensive events, dividing by a player's plate appearances, and scaling the result to be on the same scale as on-base percentage. Unlike statistics like OPS, wOBA attempts to assign the proper value for each type of hitting event. It was created by Tom Tango and his coauthors for The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.
Dave Cameron is a baseball analyst for the Seattle Mariners. He was formerly the managing editor and a senior writer for FanGraphs, an analyst for the San Diego Padres, and owner-operator of USS Mariner.
Win Shares is a 2002 book about baseball written by Bill James and Jim Henzler. The book explains how to apply the concept of sabermetrics to assess the impact of player performance in a combination of several areas including offensive, defensive and pitching to the overall performance of their team. The resulting "Win Share" also takes into account factors such as the era in which the player was active to allow easy comparisons between players from different eras. The book focuses primarily on the many formula involved in computing the final number of win shares accumulated.
Wins Above Replacement or Wins Above Replacement Player, commonly abbreviated to WAR or WARP, is a non-standardized sabermetric baseball statistic developed to sum up "a player's total contributions to his team". A player's WAR value is claimed to be the number of additional wins his team has achieved above the number of expected team wins if that player were substituted with a replacement-level player: a player who may be added to the team for minimal cost and effort.
Ultimate zone rating (UZR) is a sabermetric statistic used to measure fielding. It compares the event that actually happened (hit/out/error) to data on similarly hit balls in the past to determine how much better or worse the fielder did than the "average" player. UZR divides a baseball field into multiple zones and assigns individual fielders responsibility for those zones.
A Fielding Bible Award recognizes the best defensive player for each fielding position in Major League Baseball (MLB) based on statistical analysis. John Dewan and Baseball Info Solutions conduct the annual selection process, which commenced in 2006. The awards are voted on by 10 sabermetrically inclined journalists and bloggers including Dewan, sabermetric pioneer Bill James, and writers such as Peter Gammons, NBC Sports' Joe Posnanski, SB Nation editor Rob Neyer, and ESPN analyst Doug Glanville. The awards have historically been announced before the Gold Glove Awards, the traditional measurement of fielding excellence. Dewan wrote that this award cannot equal the prestige of the Gold Glove, which started 50 years earlier, but it provides an alternative.
In baseball statistics, NERD is a quantitative measure of expected aesthetic value. NERD was originally created by Carson Cistulli and is part of his project of exploring the "art" of sabermetric research. The original NERD formula only took into account the pitcher's expected performance while a later model factors in the entire team's performance.
Out of zone plays made, known by the acronym OOZ, is a baseball statistic used to measure a baseball player's performance on defense.
The New Enthusiast is a print and online magazine published by The Shuttlecoque Sporting Club. It was one of the first venues through which poet Carson Cistulli published his writings from November 2007 to March 2008.
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