This Week in SABR: November 16, 2012

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Welcome to This Week in SABR! Please note that the SABR office will be closed on November 22-23. The next edition of This Week in SABR will be sent on Wednesday, November 21.

Here’s what we’ve been up to as of November 16, 2012:

MLB Awards Week: Cast your vote for the 2012 GIBBYs now

Well, the Great MVP Debate of 2012 turned out to be a little anticlimactic, didn’t it? After all was said and done, after thousands of passionate arguments were made both for and against, after the battle lines were drawn in the war against WAR, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America clearly favored San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey by a wide margin with 27 of 32 possible first-place votes … and over in the American Leauge, Miguel Cabrera beat out Mike Trout.

OK, maybe we’ll still spend the rest of the Hot Stove League — especially during SABR Day on January 26 — discussing whether the voters got it right or whether Trout’s all-around brilliance should have trumped Cabrera’s historic Triple Crown. (For the record, in an online survey posted at SABR.org last month, 73% of you voted for Cabrera over Trout.) You can view the actual voting results on the BBWAA website here, including votes for the Cy Young Award, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year, too. You can also view historical award results dating to 1911 at Baseball-Reference.com. To read more SABR members’ articles on the awards, check out the “Around the Web” section at the bottom of this e-mail.

Since it’s still Awards Week, this is also a great time to remind you that all SABR members get to help decide who had the best performances of the 2012 baseball season in the 11th annual MLB.com Greatness in Baseball Yearly Awards.

The GIBBYs categories honor the best of 2012 in the following categories: Starting Pitcher, Rookie, Closer, Setup Man, Comeback Player, Manager, Postseason MVP, Top Play, Moment, Oddity, Walk-off, Fan Moment, Postseason Moment and Defensive Player of the Year.

The finalists in the Defensive Player of the Year category were selected by SABR, using traditional statistics and sabermetric analytics.

To cast your SABR vote in the 2012 GIBBYs, click here: http://sabr.org/research/sabr-members-vote-2012-mlb-gibby-awards

SABR members will have the opportunity to play a key role in selecting the winners of the GIBBYs. The votes from SABR members will be equal to each of the other four categories.

  • SABR members (20%)
  • MLB.com fans (20%)
  • Front office personnel (20%)
  • Retired players (20%)
  • Media (20%)

The winners will be announced at a reception at the annual Baseball Winter Meetings, which will be held December 3-6, 2012, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Call for papers: 2013 Pitch F/X Summit at SABR Analytics Conference

Our friends at Sportvision encourage interested participants and analysts to submit a paper for presentation at the fifth PITCHf/x Summit at the 2013 SABR Analytics Conference, March 7-9 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Topics related to PITCHf/x, HITf/x, COMMANDf/x and FIELDf/x are welcome. Past topics include Aging Curves, Plate Discipline, Catcher Framing, FIELDf/x Fielder Metrics and many, many more! Further developments in those area as well as new topics are encouraged.

Please submit abstracts and data sample requests via e-mail to Graham Goldbeck.

Sportvision is collaborating with SABR to integrate its PITCHf/x Summit into the SABR Analytics Conference. In its inaugural year, the SABR Analytics Conference attracted an international audience of almost 300 attendees, including MLB front office personnel from 18 teams. Integrating these two popular gatherings of influential baseball analysts and thought leaders will further enhance this event as the premier baseball analytics conference. Sportvision will manage a series of presentations specifically related to f/x data much like the PITCHf/x Summit. The presentations will be integrated with other SABR Analytics talks throughout the course of the event.

Students, get your application in for a Yoseloff Scholarship to attend 2013 SABR Analytics Conference

With generous funding from The Anthony A. Yoseloff Foundation, Inc., SABR will award up to four scholarships to college students who wish to attend the 2013 SABR Analytics Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 7-9, 2013. This scholarship will pay for registration, transportation and lodging up to a total value of $1,250.

The objective of this scholarship fund is to encourage student engagement with baseball analytics, and to engender an active interest in baseball research and SABR. The Yoseloff scholarship is to assist young researchers who want to attend SABR’s Analytics Conference and to introduce them to fellow SABR members and professionals within the baseball community. Through this fund, SABR hopes to inspire future baseball research, expose students to high-quality research and build the research capability of interested students.

For details on the scholarship requirements or to download an application form, click here. 

Please note: Participants in the Diamond Dollars Case Competition are not eligible for the Yoseloff scholarship.

Students must be currently enrolled in a high school, college undergraduate or graduate program, and be between 18 and 29 years of age at the time of the conference.

Fall 2012 Baseball Research Journal articles are now online

In case you missed it, you can get started reading the Fall 2012 edition of the BRJ online at:

http://sabr.org/research/fall-2012-baseball-research-journal

That link also offers you a way to download the PDF version of the magazine to read on your computer or e-reader device, as well as a chance to purchase additional copies of the BRJ for any baseball-loving family members or friends at the SABR Bookstore.

The new Baseball Research Journal was shipped out last week and should be arriving in your mailbox soon.

In the meantime, check out some of these great stories from the Fall BRJ:

And there’s more, of course. In addition to all of the BRJ articles you will find in the print edition, and profiles of the 2012 Henry Chadwick Award winners, we’re also proud to once again present special supplemental material, available exclusively at SABR.org, related to Herm Krabbenhoft’s ongoing research of Hank Greenberg’s RBI totals.

Click here to read more articles from the Fall 2012 Baseball Research Journal 

2013 “The National Pastime”: Call for Papers

The 2013 issue of The National Pastime, our annual convention journal, will be published at SABR 43 in Philadelphia next summer.

Our theme will be baseball in the Philadelphia area (the Tri-State area of Southeast Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware.) We are looking for submissions dealing with various levels of baseball from Little League and sandlot ball to all levels of professional leagues. Philly has a rich tradition of baseball from its early beginnings in the 1830s, to the National League and American Association Athletics, to Connie Mack’s A’s, the Hilldale Daisies, the Philadelphia Bobbies, the Philadelphia Stars and, of course, the Phillies. We are looking to provide a broad perspective of Philadelphia baseball from its early years to the present day.

If you are interested in submitting an article, please send an abstract to Morris Levin. Please include not only your topic, but why it interests you, and how you are qualified to research it. What sources do you plan to use? A typical article in The National Pastime runs 2,000 to 5,000 words. Upon receipt of your abstract, we will forward a copy of the SABR guidelines for submission of papers.

All interested authors should make sure their SABR membership is up to date. It is longstanding SABR policy that only the work of SABR members is published in our journals. You can renew your membership online at members.sabr.org before you submit your paper.

To read articles from this year’s The National Pastime, focusing on baseball in Minnesota, click here. The TNP archives can be found here.

You can also follow the SABR Connie Mack Chapter on its new Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/SabrConnieMackChapter

Save the date: SABR Day is January 26, 2013

The fourth annual SABR Day is coming up sooner than you think: January 26, 2013. We’re starting to compile details now on 2013 SABR Day chapter meetings around the country. We’ll post them as soon as we get them at SABR.org/sabrday. Chapter leaders, please send your SABR Day plans to Jacob Pomrenke at jpomrenke@sabr.org.

Regional SABR meetings are open to all baseball fans and are usually free to attend, so bring a friend! Guest speakers often include current and former baseball players, managers, umpires, executives, scouts, writers and authors.

Check back soon at SABR.org/sabrday for more information on a SABR Day meeting close to you.

9 new biographies published by the SABR BioProject

Nine new biographies were posted as part of the SABR Baseball Biography Project, which brings us to a total of 2,121 published biographies.

Here are the new bios:

All new biographies can be found here: http://sabr.org/bioproj/recent

You can find the SABR BioProject at its new home page: SABR.org/BioProject.

Bios on more than just ballplayers: Many of us have researched a ballplayer’s life outside of baseball and found their spouses’ lives to be equally compelling. Their stories deserve to be told, too. So in addition to Broadcasters, Executives, Managers, Scouts, etc., we’ve now added a new Spouses category to the BioProject website. You can browse all of these categories, and more, at http://sabr.org/bioproj/browse. So if you’ve ever thought, “Hey, that ballplayer’s wife should get the full BioProject treatment herself” — write the story and we’ll publish it!

Get involved! If you’d like to help contribute to the SABR BioProject, visit our BioProject Resources page or read the FAQs section to get started. We’re also looking to expand the BioProject to include all “encyclopedic” articles on baseball-related subjects from past SABR publications or committee newsletters. If you come across an article you think should be included in the SABR “baseball repository” at the BioProject, send a copy or link to markarmour04@gmail.com or jpomrenke@sabr.org.

Almost time to renew your SABR membership

As you probably know by now, we switched to the “rolling calendar” membership system last year. Anyone who joined SABR before then — which is most of you — should renew your SABR membership before December 31 as you’ve done in the past. Thanks again for all your support.

You can renew your membership for 1 year or 3 years online at the SABR Store; by phone at (602) 343-6450; or by mailing this downloadable PDF form and your payment to the SABR office at 4455 E. Camelback Road, Ste. D-140, Phoenix, AZ 85018.

Dues are the same as they have been in recent years: for this, you get three high-quality research publications (two issues of the Baseball Research Journal and one issue of The National Pastime); deep discounts to all publications in the SABR Digital Library; access to research resources such as Paper of Record (with complete archives of The Sporting News); discounts to SABR conferences such as the national convention (Philadelphia 2013), the SABR Analytics Conference, the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, and the Arizona Fall League Conference; access to a growing network of SABR baseball community, including our 27 research committees and 60+ regional chapters.

We believe SABR has something for everyone, from the active researcher to someone passionate about baseball. We hope you’ll invite your friends, colleagues and family members to join at http://store.sabr.org.

Registration open for 2013 SABR Analytics Conference

SABR has a long and storied history with baseball statistical analysis, evidenced by the link between our name and sabermetrics. While SABR is a multi-faceted organization involved in virtually every aspect of baseball, we have taken a major step to re-connect with our beginnings by producing and hosting the second annual

SABR Analytics Conference
presented by Major League Baseball and Bloomberg Sports
March 7-9, 2013
Phoenix, Arizona

Once again, we’re bringing together the top minds of the baseball analytic community under one roof to discuss, debate and share insightful ways to analyze and examine the great game of baseball.

The schedule will consist of a combination of Guest Speakers, Panels and Research Presentations — plus the unique Diamond Dollars Case Competition, in which undergraduate, graduate and law school students from across the country analyze and present a real baseball operations decision.

Conference registration is available now at the SABR Store. Click here to register. The conference is open to all baseball fans.

The 2013 SABR Analytics Conference will be held Thursday, March 7 through Saturday, March 9, 2013, in the Phoenix, Arizona area. The World Baseball Classic will also be in Phoenix that weekend, with first-round games scheduled at Chase Field and Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, and we plan to talk more about global baseball issues at the second annual Analytics Conference.

Featured speakers for the 2013 conference are expected to include Stan Kasten, President/CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers; Derrick Hall, President/CEO of the Arizona Diamondbacks; Brian Kenny, MLB Network host; and many others. More speakers will be announced soon!

Some of the topics we are planning to cover include:

  • General Managers Panel on how analytics shapes front-office decisions
  • Measuring Player Performance
  • New innovations in baseball analytics
  • Player Agents — their view of analytics
  • Advances in medical information and its impact on decisions
  • New applications of PITCHf/x data
  • The use of analytics in scouting
  • Player panel — the impact of data and information on performance
  • The International Game — the next hot spot for talent development

Sportvision is also pleased to announce that it is collaborating with SABR to integrate its fifth PITCHf/x Summit into the 2013 SABR Analytics Conference. Integrating these two popular gatherings of influential baseball analysts and thought leaders will further enhance this event as the premier baseball analytics conference. Sportvision will manage a series of presentations specifically related to f/x data much like the PITCHf/x Summit. The presentations will be integrated with other SABR Analytics talks throughout the course of the event.

SABR’s long history in this area of baseball research, coupled with our mission of advancing the understanding and knowledge of baseball, makes us the perfect choice to coordinate and host this ground-breaking event.

The inaugural SABR Analytics Conference in 2012 was an enormous success. For complete coverage of the 2012 SABR Analytics Conference, visit SABR.org/analytics/2012.

Donate to SABR and support the future of baseball research

This has probably been SABR’s most active year since our founding in 1971. We held our first Analytics Conference in March and are busily planning for the next one in March of 2013. Our deal with Major League Baseball Advanced Media provides a far-reaching outlet for our research. SABR 42 in Minneapolis was a tremendous success, and we are looking forward to SABR 43 in Philadelphia. On top of that we published three research journals, the Emerald Guide, and several e-books, continued to build our digital content, and held conferences covering the Negro Leagues, the Arizona Fall League, and 19th Century Baseball.

In the coming year we plan to do all of the above, plus publish a major book on the history of baseball broadcasting, continue to expand the BioProject, and create more team biography books. All of this is made possible by our strong professional staff in Phoenix and our all-star team of volunteer members around the world.

Of course, accomplishing all of this requires funding beyond the annual dues we all pay. The dues allow SABR to survive; it is donations from people like you that help us thrive. Since 2004 we have asked for, and have been fortunate to receive, additional funding from members who believe in what SABR does and can afford to give something extra. Also since 2004, we continue to say thank you to our donors by offering them small gifts to show the appreciation felt by all of our members who care about what we do in support of the greatest game on earth.

SABR is a 501(c)3 organization, which means your donation is tax deductible in the U.S. to the fullest extent of the law.

THE DONOR PROGRAM*

  • $25-$99: receive a “Donor” convention badge ribbon entitling early entry into the SABR Convention Awards Banquet
  • $100-$249: receive the above benefit plus a ticket to the SABR Convention Donor Breakfast that features a “State of SABR” presentation by our executive leadership
  • $250-$499: receive all of the above benefits plus the new SABR Lapel Pin
  • $500-$1,499: receive all of the above benefits plus a SABR MVP Polo Shirt
  • $1,500-$2,499: receive all of the above benefits plus a junior suite upgrade at the SABR Convention hotel
  • $2,500 and up: receive all of the above plus an executive level room upgrade at the SABR Convention hotel.

*convention-related premiums assume payment of registration fees and attendance

Please join me in supporting SABR and send your donation to the address above, or by visiting SABR.org and pressing the convenient DONATE button. By doing so you help SABR fulfill its mission and increase the impact of our baseball analysis and historical study.

— Paul Hirsch

Welcome, new members!

We’d like to welcome all of our new SABR members who have joined this week. You can find all Members-Only resources at members.sabr.org and the New Member Handbook can be downloaded here. 

Please give these new members a warm welcome and help them make the most of their membership by giving them the opportunity to get involved in their local chapter or a research committee.

Here is a list of new members:

Name Hometown     Name Hometown
Chris Bailey Johnson City, TN     Antonia Lopez Washington, DC
Dan Beaver Lemont, PA     Matt Mertz Catawissa, PA
Richard Carlson Novi, MI     Timothy Mitchell Lakewood, CO
George Castle Morton Grove, IL     Jeff Quagliata Oxford, CT
Charles Chubb Oakland Park, FL     Kevin Reichard Middleton, WI
James Fannin Chicago, IL     Dan Scanlon Auburn, NH
Blake Gordon West Columbia, SC     Eric Simon Wyckoff, NJ
Albert Jarvis Canton, OH     Oscar Valdovinos Riverside, IL
Pete Jenkins Denver, CO     Clay Wells Philadelphia, PA
Kevin Larkin Great Barrington, MA     Jim Wood Apex, NC

 

Research committee newsletters

There were no new SABR research committee newsletters published this week.

However, thanks to SABR member Fred Lenger, we were able to fill in the gaps to add about a dozen missing Biographical Research Committee newsletters from 2000-07. You can find them all by clicking here.

Find all SABR research committee newsletters at SABR.org/research.

Chapter meeting recaps

Here are the chapter meeting recaps published this week:

Visit SABR.org/chapters for more information on SABR regional chapters.

SABR Events Calendar

Here is a list of upcoming SABR events:

All SABR meetings and events are open to the public. Feel free to bring a baseball-loving friend … and make many new ones! Check out the SABR Events Calendar at SABR.org/events.

Around the Web

Here are some recent articles published by and about SABR members:

Read these articles and more at SABR.org/latest.

All previous editions of This Week in SABR can be found here: http://sabr.org/content/this-week-in-sabr-archives. If you would like us to include an upcoming event, article or any other information in “This Week in SABR”, e-mail Jacob Pomrenke at jpomrenke@sabr.org.

Find exclusive Members’ Only resources and information here: http://members.sabr.org

Did you know you can renew your membership at any time? 1- and 3-year SABR memberships are available by clicking “Renew” at http://members.sabr.org. Please also consider a donation to SABR to support baseball research at SABR.org/donate.

Are you following us on Twitter or Facebook? Get SABR updates every day at @SABR or by searching “SABR” on Facebook.

Replying to this e-mail goes to an undeliverable address. If you would like to contact the SABR office, please visit: http://sabr.org/about/contact-sabr


Originally published: November 15, 2012. Last Updated: April 3, 2020.

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