Be sure to take a moment and fill out a ballot for this year’s Fans Scouting Report!

You have Player X that went 13-4 with a 2.00 ERA in 153 IP.

You have a bunch of other pitchers who pitched 216 innings and performed at various levels (see poll).

For the Cy Young voting, you would place Player X right below which pitcher?

Note: Presume the league average starting pitcher is a .500 pitcher, with a 4.00 ERA.

You have a player that created 105 runs in 105 games.

You have a bunch of other players who played in 162 games, and they created 150, 140, 130, 120, 110, and 100 runs.

After which guy in the list would you slot the 105 game player, with respect to MVP.

Note: Presume the league average player would create 81 runs in 162 games.

Congratulations to Ervin Santana for completing the 273rd no-hitter in major league history and the third no-hitter of the 2011 season!

While every no hitter is a great accomplishment and a rare feat, not all no-hitters are created equal. Tangotiger recently created four different game scores based on various criteria, for the different ways you might perceive a particular start.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’d like to work for in baseball:

Executive Development Fellow (EDF) – Web Software Development, Baseball Systems
Full job posting and application process can be found online at www.indians.com/jobs.

The primary responsibilities of the EDF are to assist the Software Development staff with designing and supporting web-based applications for the Baseball Department. Through an intensive and structured 12-month immersion program, the EDF will also be exposed to other facets of the Indians business operations and will participate in a comprehensive orientation and mentoring program to enhance professional development.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve seen some stories floating around the blogosphere which relate to the choices you have when it comes to your baseball stats. In general, the stories have been directed at the SIERA metric, which was unveiled in great detail last week. Overall, the reception was very positive and we’re really glad Matt Swartz agreed to work with us.

Here at FanGraphs, we’re about expanding baseball knowledge and enjoyment through opinion and analysis. Obviously, we think adding SIERA to the site brought something new to the table and we wouldn’t have added it had we thought otherwise.

That’s not to say that reasonable people can’t disagree. If you think one ERA estimator is too complex and is ruining baseball, that’s fine. You’re welcome to use another of our myriad statistics. I’m sure you’ll find one that works for you. From our perspective, our variety is our strength. Whether you use FIP, xFIP, tERA, SIERA or plain, old ERA to judge pitchers, the whole point of this site is to heighten your knowledge — and enjoyment — of baseball.

For those of you who don’t know how FanGraphs selects its statistics, it should be noted that we don’t develop in-house figures. We look around and edit down the incredibly large selection of metrics being created and then select the ones that have the most relevance. We work closely with those statistics’ creators to make sure things are calculated and displayed properly.

Denouncing work by claiming it’s anti-baseball does everyone a diservice. No one is forcing our readers to use these numbers. In fact, I hope you look at them critically and let us know how we can make them better. I’m betting that improvements would mean more — not less — statistical investigation, critical thinking and debate among the thousands of baseball fans who visit our site daily.

Whether you like your baseball full of complex stats or void of stats entirely, there’s a place for you at FanGraphs. And, in my mind, that’s exactly how it should be.

K% and BB% for pitchers have been added to the player pages and leaderboards in the “Advanced” sections.

They are both calculated using Total Batters Faced. SO/TBF and BB/TBF.

Due to popular demand and to decrease general confusion, K% has been changed from K/AB to K/PA.

On average, you’ll see players’ K% drop about 2% and, at the very most (rare cases like Adam Dunn), about 6%.

This is a site-wide change and impacts stats pages, splits, leaderboards, and graphs that contain K%.

Last night we rolled out some changes to the menu bar in an attempt to improve navigation on the site:

If there’s something that you would like to have quicker access to, that isn’t already in the menu bar, please let us know!

If you don’t see the menus correctly, please hit refresh on your browser.

Last year during our very first FanGraphs Event, we gave out FanGraphs t-shirts to everyone who attended and up until this day, those were the only FanGraphs t-shirts that were let loose into the world! Turns out we had some left over, and now we’re selling them for $19.99 each, which includes shipping and handling.

For you t-shirt aficionados, they are Fruit of the Loom brand, 100% cotton, and actually fit quite nice. They come in navy blue, and white. The supply of these is fairly limited, and some of the white ones are out of stock. If there’s demand, maybe we’ll make another batch.

They’re on sale now!