RP9: Thursday, August 5, 12:30 – 12:55pm, Georgia 7,8,9

There have been different eras in baseball with different run scoring environments, including the well-characterized Dead Ball Era. Attempts to quantify differences between eras have looked at season-to-season differences of league-wide measures such as runs per game for a season. Instead of using the more distilled “league season” data, Andres explores whether using “player season” data would help better define year-to-year differences in baseball performance. Applying Tom Tango’s “Marcel the Monkey” projection system based on age-adjusted regression of a weighted set of three years of a player’s major league performance data, he compares the projections to the actual ensuing year performance for all players in all years possible, looking for measures of under- or over-performance. Andres asserts that this more quantitative approach to yearly differences in baseball will help better define the different baseball eras for the major leagues.

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Dr. Andy Andres (andyandres@gmail.com) is on the faculty at Boston University's College of General Studies in Natural Sciences and Mathematics, where he teaches biology and physics. He earned his PhD in Human Nutritional Sciences and Physiology from Tufts University. He also teaches one of the first ever college courses in sabermetrics, offered at Tufts. In the summer, Andy teaches science and coaches baseball in the MIT Science of Baseball Program. A former tutor in biology at Harvard College, he taught a seminar in exercise physiology and ergogenic aids for athletic performance there for 17 years. As a Datacaster/Stringer for MLB Advanced Media, he scores games at Fenway Park for various Internet applications. For Ron Shandler’s BaseballHQ.com, he analyzes baseball statistics and writes baseball research analyses. A diehard Red Sox Fan, Andy lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife, Kate, and their three children, Maddie, Aubree, and Griffin.