I’ve added a new stat to the PitchF/x section, “Pace”, inspired by this post over at Beyond the Box Score, which shows how much time each pitcher takes in between his pitches.

The way I calculate Pace, is by taking the difference between the start time of the first pitch in the plate appearance, and the end time of the last pitch in the plate appearance. I then divide by the number of pitches in that plate appearance (minus 1). Pickoff attempts are considered just another pitch, since they don’t have time stamps of their own. Anything that looks like a game delay between pitches is thrown out. The average pace is about 21.5 seconds.

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Kicking off projection season, as usual, are the 2011 Bill James Handbook Projections, courtesy of Baseball Info Solutions.

They’re available right now in the player pages!

The leaderboards and team pages now have a bunch of new features!

– There’s a new Dashboard tab which mimics the stats shown the player dashboard area.

– wRC+, tERA, FSR, and TZL (Total Zone w/ Location Data) have been added.

– The Fans Scouting Report has been given its own section.

– WAR data for both batters and pitchers can now be filtered on a monthly basis. This is done by pro-rating UZR and Positional adjustments based on playing time.

– You can now go back as far as 1871 in both the leaderboards and team sections.

Here are some additional notes:

– All positional filtering is done on a qualified player basis. If a player played in 25% or more of his games at a particular position than he’s qualified.

– Reliever/Starter filtering pre-1974 right now will filter only on pure starters/relievers and any dual-role pitchers will be left out. This will be fixed in a future update.

If you notice any problems or spot any bugs, please let us know!

I’m pleased to announce that FanGraphs is now carrying the results of the Fans Scouting Report, conducted each year by Tangotiger. We currently have 2009 and 2010, but plan to eventually get all the years going back to 2003.

Right now it’s available in each of the player pages in both the “Advanced Fielding” section and its own section. It will soon make it’s way to the leaderboards and team pages.

The one thing that you probably need to know is:

FSR – Runs above average for fans scouting report.

Other than that, everything is on a 0 – 100 scale, with 50 being the average.

I’ve made some changes to the player pages:

– The change to the header allowed us to remove the sidebar and increase the width of the stat boxes. I personally think they look less cramped and now there’s room to add more.

– MLB Trade Rumors links specific to that player are now available on each page.

– Facebook like and a universal “share” button is now available on all the player pages.

– We’re now getting all the latest RotoWire news for every player and no longer just a small sampling of players.

I think that’s about it, for now. There may be some future changes depending on how these are received.

Because we can’t run chats everyday, feel free to use this thread to chat about today’s playoff games.

TB @ TEX – 5:00pm ET
MIN & NYY – 8:30pm ET

For all our Wins Above Replacement metrics (WAR) we use five year regressed park factors. These are now updated to include 2010 data.

Our final 2010 UZR update will be later this week, but as of now UZR has been updated through September 30th and is only missing the last three days of the season.

The self-proclaimed greatest pitcher there ever was returned to HBO last night to try his hand in a Mexican League (not to be confused with THE Mexican League, as far as I know).

Clearly Kenny Powers doesn’t read FanGraphs because Kenny Powers “f**king hates computers, all kinds.”

But, if he did, besides calling the site something heinously profane, he might remember that for his career he averaged just above .5 wins above replacement per season — not to mention that, even in his best season, he would have only barely cracked the top 20 relief pitchers according to WAR.

Season Team   G    IP  W   L  SV   SO  BB  ER    ERA  WAR
2001   GWT*  15  23.0  4   0  12   28   0   1   0.39    ----
2002   ATL   62  66.1  7   3  49  106  30  21   2.85    1.75
2003   NYA   64  62.2  7   3  39   79  20  33   4.74    1.13
2004   SFG   52  54.2  3  10  30   44  27  40   6.59   -0.46
2005   BOS   15  12.2  0   6   3    6   9  12   8.57   -0.31

The good news is, that assuming Kenny Powers is between the age of 29-31 (based on being drafted in 1999), he still has plenty of time to make it back to the big leagues!

Don’t forget to fill out the fans scouting report ballot for your favorite team over at insidethebook.com. Diamondbacks fans and Marlins fans are especially still needed!

It’s that time of year again! Tangotiger is running his annual Fans Scouting Report. Please take a moment and fill out scouting reports for the team of your choice!