The Hoyt Scale Re-Revisited, and other Primate Tales

The Baseball Primer version of my Hoyt piece, featuring 20 additional pitchers (now a total of 55), is now up. It's even listed on the front page of the site. This is the first time I've had an article published at BP, so it's a proud day for me. I guess this makes me a Primate -- a worthy prize for spending so many hours monkeying around with a spreadsheet.

Speaking of Primates and Primers, there's the Primeys, the results of which were posted a couple days back. No, I didn't win for Best Internet Baseball Weblog. The result wasn't even close; the very talented TEAM of Baseball Prospectus writers won in a landslide, claiming over 50% of the vote. I came in a respectable third place, just behind Aaron's Baseball Blog:

1. 50.8% Daily Prospectus
2. 18.6% Aaron's Baseball Blog
3. 15.9% Futility Infielder
4. 10.1% Big Bad Baseball
5. 4.6% baseballjunkie.net

Really, I'm not disappointed in the showing at all, though I do feel that the B-Pro team belonged in a different category (one Primer poster, imitating Coffee Talk's Linda Richman, noted: "Daily Prospectus is neither daily nor a prospectus. Discuss.") Still, according to the turnout, this means I got about 70 votes. Since I don't recall paying off that many non-Jaffe family members, that means a good handful of you out there voted for me on your own accord, for which I thank you sincerely. It was an honor to be considered, and a thrill to be sharing space on a ballot which included names such as Bill James, Rob Neyer, Voros McCracken, Doug Pappas, and Joe Sheehan, not to mention Primer legends such as Tolaxor, the Score Bard, the Royals Slogans thread (I'm on there as Royle Stillman) and the Giambi-Mabry thread. And as they say, wait 'til next year.

Finally, while we're on this prime(r) tip: Aaron Gleeman, whose blog edged me for 2nd place, has an interesting look at 2003's Top 50 Prospects on Baseball Primer. Check it out.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 10:32 PM Link

Early Birthday Party

On February 1st, the best website in the history of the galaxy will celebrate its third birthday. If you've read my site regularly, you know that I often sing the praises of Baseball-Reference.com and you may even know that I designed the site's Babe Ruth banner that gets seen millions (yes, millions) of times a month. But you might not know much about the man behind B-Ref, Sean Forman. Doctor (yes, Doctor) Forman's an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at St. Joseph's University who runs B-Ref in his spare time, and he covers the site's expenses by selling sponsorships of individual pages (I sponsor eight myself). Philadelphia's weekly City Paper has a worthwhile article on Dr. Forman and his labor of love. Go read the piece and then buy yourself a player to celebrate.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 1:29 PM Link

Keeping Tabs

I'm nerding out over revising my Hoyt piece for Baseball Primer and I think I just discovered why my data charts look different depending on which browser I'm using -- it's the invisible tab characters which are artifacts of cutting and pasting from Excel. Might try to redo some of those charts in my piece here for posterity's sake. In the meantime, know that I'm back working on SOMETHING after another unspeakable week at my job, and should be resuming my regularly scheduled posting soon.

Postscript: Hot damn, my chart fix worked! Expect new and improved charts from this day forward.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 8:16 PM Link