There
I was, the oldest guy at the magazine rack, not looking at girlie
magazines. I picked up a Who’s Who in
Baseball, underwhelmed as ever. Why or
why did The Baseball Register stop printing?
Who’s Who is like the NYT, deciding what’s fit to print. E.g., nothing on White Sox outfielder J.B.
Shuck, even though he batted .266 in 143 at-bats. The Register included people with one at-bat,
one inning pitched and less. You could
find a lot of minor leaguers in TBR, too.
Oh, well.
I
also bought Lindy’s Sports Baseball for a second straight year, if for no other
reason than to see what they would say about the Sox after predicting them to
win the Central Division in 2015. Answer—third
place in ’16, with the comment “This is not a championship roster.” Ouch.
At least they have the organizational arrow pointed in the up direction
(seriously, and literally).
The
things you learn these days. Little did
I know that Chris Sale led the Al last season with a 2.73 FIP (Fielding
Independent Pitching), a metric that tries to strip away the effect of
defensive play on pitching; the result is essence of ERA. Of course, FIP should not be confused with
ERA+, which compares the league to the pitcher, or ERA-, which compares the
pitcher to the league. Oh, did I mention
BABIP yet? That’s Batting Average on Balls
in Play, something that Adam Dunn might have liked. The funny thing here is I used a form of this
stat years ago with Clare, when she was having a hard time adjusting to Bronco
Ball. This must be a case of great minds
thinking alike.
I’m
not a big metrics’ guy beyond WHIP, walks and hits per inning pitched. That said, there’s enough old-time scouting
stuff in Lindy’s to keep me reading.
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