Martha Burk was the woman who protested outside the 2003 Masters Tournament because Augusta National didn’t allow women to hold memberships at the club (there are still no women members at Augusta, so clearly it was effective). Anyways, a bunch of other fuckfaces showed up to protest with her, and they had signs.
I’m not sure anyone was really expecting any hilariousness to come out of this, but god damn if I don’t want to shake this mans hand. Let’s revisit one of the greatest pictures in the history of photography and sexism.
If you’re reading this post wondering “Hey Warbucks, what IS the best kept secret in fantasy baseball?” Then you won’t be disappointed, cause Warbucks always brings the goods.
There’s a man who resides in Virginia named Ron Shandler, and he produces “The Bible of Fanalytics” called Baseball Forecaster. This publication isn’t like every other magazine stocked on shelves in Barnes & Nobles and Borders (who the fuck shops at Borders anyway?). This book will not only help you win your fantasy baseball league, it will change the way you watch baseball, follow baseball and interpret baseball statistics for the rest of your life.
Shandler has broken down the statistical landscape of baseball and applied it to the fantasy landscape in a way no one else has before. To borrow from the first paragraph welcoming new readers, Shandler writes:
“The Baseball Forecaster was the first book to approach prognostication by breaking performance down into its component parts. Rather than predicting batting average, for instance, we look at the elements of skill that make up that stat and reverse-engineer those skills back into batting average. In all, we call this ‘component skills analysis’ ”
A couple statistical tidbits that will warp your mind -
H% (hit percentage)
In 2000, Voros McCracken (Greatest porn name ever) published a study that concluded that “there is little if any difference among major league pitchers in their ability to prevent hits on balls in the field of play”. So, although a highly skilled pitcher will be able to showcase the ability to strike hitters out, and may have a tendency to give up a few amount of home runs, McCracken figured out that once a ball is hit and will fall into the field of play, the pitcher has no control over where that ball lands. The standard hit percentage for a pitcher is 30%.
That’s fucking mind-boggling. Tim Lincecum has the same chance to have a ball fall for a hit that Pedro Feliciano does. This is a statistical fact. The goal here is that you can take this knowledge and apply it to your fantasy research. An example: In the 2009 season Ricky Nolasco a had a shitty year, right? Not so fast, young buck. Studying Nolasco’s ’toolbox’ you can see that his hit percentage was 36%! Keeping in mind that a standard hit percentage among ALL MAJOR LEAGUE PLAYERS is 30% you can deduce that Mr. Nolasco was terribly unlucky in that he gave up too many unwarranted hits.
Hit rate can also be calculated and applied to batters as well.
Hit Rate (or BABIP – Batting Average on Balls In Play)
However, a batter DOES have control over the amount of balls put into play that fall for hits. All batters establish their own individual hit rate that will stabilize over time. Some batters are better than others in this stat (for instance Derek Jeter will always put more balls into play than Adam Dunn). Applying this to fantasy, you can see when a players batting average is elevated due to a high hit percentage, or was terribly unlucky and didn’t have many balls fall into play.
I can go on and on about this amazing piece of literature. It is routinely over 200 pages, and the day it comes in the mail is the happiest day of my year. That either means this shit is THAT amazing or I lead one sad fucking life.
Although it might be too late to use this year, go here and buy yourself a copy.
