I have a project due for my journalism class next week. I'm doing a series of stories on baseball statistics analysis on the web. I have a good slate of articles written or lined up. The feature is an interview with our very own Xanthan on Bay City Ball and his general thoughts on STATS.

The only problem I have: I'm presenting my work as a website, per the rule of the class. We must present our projects in the medium we chose to report upon. I know jack about how to create a website. I can use some help and advice with cheap and easy ways to build websites. Cheap and easy, just how I like it. There. The joke has been made for you.

Anyway please read the exclusive STATS interview as it's pretty interesting. Forgive the spelling out of nearly everything in the interview. I have to present this stuff to people who don't know or care about baseball.

Warning: it's about 2700 words and might be much to the tl;dr crowd.

Exclusive STATS interview with Chris Quick, founder and operator of Bay City Ball.

Chris Martinez: Introduce yourself, come on, come on. ;) But I do need a brief blurb on who you are, the name of your site, and other vitals.

Chris Quick: My name is Chris Quick. I'm 25 years old, and I run the Giants blog “Bay City Ball.” I'm a huge fan of baseball but I also enjoy photography, history, reading, and cooking.

CM: How did you get involved with baseball statistical analysis?
 
CQ: I got involved in baseball and statistical analysis in a kind of haphazard way. One of the most appealing aspects about baseball to me has always been the numbers involved with the sport. I don't think you'll find any other sport that lends itself to numbers like the way baseball does. Growing up when someone would mention numbers like: 3,000, 300, or 755 my mind -- and I think the minds of many other people -- would immediately would race to baseball. Those were baseball numbers.

Everywhere you look in baseball there are numbers. Turn a baseball card over and you'll see rows and rows of numbers. You really can't avoid the 'numbers' side of baseball. So, I always had that drawing me to baseball. I was a poor student in math when I was younger -- and I still am to a degree -- but in the context of baseball, numbers made a lot of sense. They were almost comforting. Eventually, one thing led to another, and I started to examine the numbers in greater detail.

CM: Are there any writings you particularly follow or believe in? Bill James, “Baseball Prospectus,” etc.?

CQ: I think one of the great things about statistical analysis in baseball at this very moment, is that there is a huge amount of work being done by a large variety of authors. And not just in terms of quantity, but also quality. There is a huge amount of good work being done. I think everyone
who's into baseball analysis enjoys Bill James (founder and central figure of sabremetrics). He was one of the first to pose some very important questions.

I also read Baseball Prospectus (a think tank website for sabremetrics and publisher of an annual volume of each season’s statistical findings),  “The Hardball Times” (website updated daily on a number of baseball topics: baseball history, statistics, current events and minor leagues. Also, another publisher of an annual volume of writings from the site), Tom Tango (founder of “Tango on Baseball” sabremetrics website and author of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball), and Pete Palmer (who wrote a forward to Tango’s book and co-author of the American football statistical book The Hidden Game of Football. Palmer also co-edited ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia).

CM: What do you use in your analysis? Tools, writings, websites?

CQ: My setup is pretty basic. I use a spread-sheeting program, such as Excel, to make plots and run other minor mathematical formulas on the data set if I need to. I probably do 80% of my work in Excel and for my purposes, it does a pretty good job. I'm in the process of using database
software, such as MySQL, to create a database of every pitch that was thrown in 2007-2008. It's a little more intensive and requires some programming -- not one of my strong suits -- so that's taking a little more time.

There are some great free databases out there in regards to baseball. For example: The Lahman Database is freely available and includes over 120 years of baseball statistics. If you're familiar with data-basing software, you can query the data for anything you could think of. Want to know who has the most career homeruns of anyone under 6ft tall? Databases like Lahman will help you answer your question.

Using other websites is also a huge help to me. I don't go a day without checking out sites like: FanGraphs (a website providing statistical analysis for major and minor league baseball with graphs and projections), Statcorner (in-depth sabremetrics analysis per team), Baseball Reference (a comprehensive web database for box scores, statistics, rosters, player histories, for every Major League team that has existed) The Hardball Times, Baseball Prospectus, or The Baseball Cube (sortable statistics on the web for every player who has played organized baseball in the United States, from high school through the majors). Each site has a wealth of data that you can pull out and use, and a good many of them are completely free. The resources available to those who are interested in statistical analysis is really quite amazing.

CM: Talk about Pitch F/X.

CQ: Pitch F/X is a camera system that first appeared in the 2006 Major League Baseball playoffs. By the 2007 season most parks had the system outfitted and by 2008 every park in MLB had the PFX camera system installed. The system works by positioning cameras at specific locations in the park and then, on a pitch-by-pitch basis, it will track specific parameters for each pitch thrown once it leaves the pitchers hand and reaches home plate. Parameters such as velocity, horizontal break, vertical break, release point from the pitcher, and location the pitch crossed the plate are all included.

MLB then dumps all the data out onto their website servers after each game and allows the public to browse and download the data. If you've ever used MLB.com’s Gameday application -- a real-time game update tool that can be accessed through the MLB website -- you're seeing PFX data in front of you. The Gameday application uses PFX data and was one of the prime motivations for installing the camera system around MLB. If you've ever seen a baseball game that overlays the strike zone of an at-bat and then tracks the pitches -- TBS, FOX, ESPN all do this on their television game broadcasts-- you're seeing PFX data.

What's truly amazing about PFX is that it allows us to understand a multitude of things about a pitcher. How much was his breaking ball breaking? What was the fastest pitch he threw that game? The slowest? What arm-slot is he throwing the ball from? Does it change for different pitches? All of these questions can be answered through the use of PFX data. For the first time instead of just using our eyes -- which often fib to us -- we can understand the what happens to the flight of a ball once it leaves a pitchers' hand. The possibilities are endless.

CM: What made you decide to blog about this subject? How did Bay City Ball get started?

CQ: It was partially a coincidence. PFX is a relatively new technology and when I started my blog in 2006 it was just starting to be used in the playoffs for TV purposes. People like Josh Kalk -- author of the PFX Webtool -- were starting to do fascinating work with PFX data in 2007 and I
started there.

Seeing what people like Kalk were doing with the data excited me and I started to monkey around with the PFX data. Today I download the data myself, run it through a spreadsheet, and post the results on my blog.

My reason for starting BCB was pretty simple. I thought about baseball a lot and I wanted to share my thoughts on the topic. A secondary goal, for me, of starting a blog was to become a better writer. I wanted an excuse to write every day, or every other day, and baseball is a good
excuse for me. At any point during the day I'm probably thinking about baseball in some manner and BCB is a good release for those thoughts.

CM: Is there a special feeling among those who embrace sabremetrics on the web, as bloggers and writers? Like a secret society? Most of you don't get paid for your work, not like Bill James does.

CQ: I do think there is a special feeling among those who are "SABR inclined" but I would argue that it's nothing like a secret society. There is definitely a feeling of group membership but that's
true of most things people participate in. What I think is fantastic about sabremetrics is that the information is all freely available. That's a big reason why I think it's less of a secret society and more of a open house.

Tom Tango, the creator of wOBA –weighted on base average, a linear weights metric that takes all the potential outcomes of an at-bat, weights them, and then scales it to something like on base percentage -- makes his mathematical formulas freely available. You can log on to his site right now, and see how he calculates wOBA. That, to me, is amazing. It's there for the taking. Websites like StatCorner, The Hardball Times, and Baseball Reference all freely give out their data. Again, it's there for the taking. I think SABR is wide open for people that are interested in the area of baseball research. In fact, most of the authors I've come into contact with have been very friendly and very helpful. We're all huge fans of baseball and the fact that a huge portion of writers, authors, bloggers
don't get paid for there work stresses this point.

CM: Do you feel SABR has made the game more accessible to fans or has it possibly put some people off with the numbers and metrics?

CQ: I definitely think it has made the game more accessible. Like I said in my previous answer, all the data you could ever want is freely available and many with good tutorials, glossaries, and how-to-do's if you don't understand a specific metric or number. I think for those who want the data-- and maybe new ways to look at the game -- it's there for them. I think that those who don't, won't ever approach the data because it's not something they are interested in.

CM: What about the mainstream media's acceptance of this type of analysis? Why do you think it took so long for the analysis to make it into a sportswriter's thinking? Is it because of the web putting the information out there, combined with a younger generation who is better wired not just for change, but for using the technology?

CQ: I think sportswriters are notoriously stubborn to change. And, I think a large part of the general mainstream media's resistance to a numbers based approach is laziness. The average sportswriter -- let's call him Bill Plaschke -- doesn't want to learn about why Juan Pierre might not be as good as they assumed. I think it's shocking for some writers when a numbers based approach flips a preconceived notion on it's head such as the value of wins and losses in baseball. It's hard to get over stuff like that and I think it's easier to shovel “playerisms” and old baseball stories instead. These writers have made a good living doing exactly that.

I think the point of it being a generational thing could be true but you can find very good sportswriters such as Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star who've taken to SABR concepts and write about them freely in their columns. I think it boils down to you either want to learn or you don't. And for many sportswriters, that means writing about the game the way people did in the 60's or 70's and lambasting those who don't want to write about baseball in such terms as nerds, or bloggers living in their basements.

CM: Do you think Tim Lincecum's Cy Young Award (MLB’s award for the top pitcher in both leagues) this year had to do with a shift towards SABR thinking within the media? In the past a 20 win season was enough to win a Cy Young (hi, Bartolo Colon). This year the man with the most wins did not get the award. Instead, a man with the best overall statistical performance won.

CQ: I would like to think so and I think for once the Baseball Writers Association of America (the body of working sportswriters who cast votes for major MLB awards such as Most Valuable Player) got it right in regards to the National League Cy Young Award. I think the writers saw that Lincecum was a terrific pitcher on a pretty terrible team and the fact that they may have used *other things* than the almighty “W” to evaluate him is a good step.

CM: Where do you see yourself in statistical analysis on the web, in the future? Even just three years ahead, as the internet is so dynamic.

CQ: Hopefully in 3-years I'll still be updating BCB and maybe even branching out some. It's hard to say because life has a habit of not caring for your plans, but I'd love to be writing about baseball in another 3-years. Everyday I learn something new about baseball.

CM: Did you ever have a journalistic interest in the game or was it all about playing with the numbers for you?

CQ: I think baseball has had some *really* great stories. It's a game that seems to grow them well -- Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, Josh Hamilton, et al. I think sportswriters like Joe Posnanski have shown us that it doesn't have to be an either-or choice. You can write a piece on baseball
that's very heavy on the storytelling aspect but sprinkle in numbers as well. I think they go
very well together and it's what made Bill James such a fantastic writer. He was a fan of the history of baseball but also the numbers aspect. I think the best writers can blend both worlds. As for me, I'll still be slanted towards the numbers but it would be cool to tell a story now and then.

CM: I've been told by some proponents of sabremetrics that the "old" statistics like batting average are now useless. What is your take on the conventional thinking versus sabremetrical thinking? Do the new schools of thought render the older stuff obsolete?

CQ: I don't think that batting average is essentially useless, it's just that it tells us *very *little in the big scheme of things. Think of it as mosaic art. It's just a tiny blot on a canvas full of thousands of blots. But, people try to take that small blot and make it the entire picture without
thinking what BA tells us, how's it's calculated, and what it's missing.

You'll hear people say that "He's a .300 hitter" but the fact is that it doesn't really tell us *anything *about that player. I think you run into problems when you take a stat like BA and try to make it all encompassing of what kind a player a ".300 hitter" is. On some level BA has some value, but it's just smaller than most people would like.

I think we are seeing a shift in the "new school vs. “old school" in baseball. If you turn on ESPN and watch a baseball game you might see OPS listed next to the slash-stats batting line of BA (batting average)/OBP (on base percentage)/SLG (slugging percentage). OPS isn't perfect, but it represents a willingness to change and learn about new numbers and their value. Heck, I heard Jon Miller (ESPN play by play announcer for MLB broadcasts and longtime San Francisco Giants broadcaster) describe OPS on an ESPN broadcast this past year. I think the new school stuff gives us a clearer picture of what's happening. It's not THE answer but a part of the process of getting a better understanding.

Chris Quick’s work can be seen on his blog baycityball.com.