Pavlidis: A new direction for stats at Baseball Prospectus
From SABR member Harry Pavlidis at Baseball Prospectus on December 19, 2013, with mention of SABR members Colin Wyers, Bill Skelton and Stuart Wallace:
Two things about Baseball Prospectus that seem to remain true:
- A lot of things change
- A lot of things stay the same
Nate Silver is gone, but PECOTA remains. Clay Davenport and Colin Wyers have both moved on, passing on stewardship of our projection system. The same can be said—perhaps with different names and acronyms—about other BP stats, like FRAA, WARP, and the underlying bits, such as park factors.
We’ve recently celebrated the departure of a few staff members, including Colin, as they’ve gone off to work for major league clubs. We love when this happens, and we hope it continues. It’s reassuring to know we’re doing the right things here, or right enough for teams to take our talent. At the same time, it’s something you could refer to as a business continuity risk.
This is a great problem to have. And when I joined BP last year, it struck me as something that could be managed such that we could all enjoy the success of our colleagues while continuing our work to serve our subscribers. In the wake of the latest turnover, we have a chance to put some of our ideas in motion, though most of this was in motion while Colin was still with us. Colin, myself, and Rob McQuown have been finding ways to make PECOTA more modular, to make all of our stats more transparent and, in the end, to improve our statistical offerings wherever we see opportunity to do so.
Many of you saw this process unfolding with Colin’s series of “Reworking WARP” articles. Some of you have asked if the series would continue, and even more of you have asked if we’re going to replace Colin. The answer to both questions is the same—sort of.
Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22449
Originally published: December 19, 2013. Last Updated: December 19, 2013.