I’m pleased to announce that earlier this year, coolstandings.com joined the FanGraphs family and we’ve now integrated their playoff odds into FanGraphs, with some additional features available here on our site as well.

I’ve always been an admirer of the work Greg Agami and Sean Walsh did at coolstandings.com, and we couldn’t be more pleased to have their product as a part of FanGraphs. And we’re excited about using some of the data available on FanGraphs to make the forecasts even better.

There are currently three different ways we simulate the season to generate the playoff odds:

FanGraphs Projections Mode – This mode uses the combination of Steamer and ZiPS projections, along with the updated FanGraphs Depth Charts, to calculate the expected winning percentage of each remaining game in the major league season. This model incorporates the latest updates to each team’s roster, including injuries, acquisitions, and adjusted playing time allocations.

Season to Date Stats Mode – This mode uses current season to date statistics, weighted more heavily towards the most recent games, to calculate the expected winning percentage of each remaining game in the major league season. (This is the old “Smart” mode on coolstandings.com)

Coin Flip Mode – This mode uses a coin flip to determine the winner of each game, giving each matchup 50/50 odds. (This is the old “Dumb” mode on coolstandings.com)

The coolstandings models incorporate actual remaining schedules into their forecasts, so in addition to the estimates of each team’s talent, the strength of their upcoming opponents is also included, and the simulations are run 10,000 times hourly.

In addition to the standard odds of winning the division or earning a place in the wild card play-in game, we also have the odds of each team winning each level of the playoffs all the way up to odds of winning the World Series.

Right now we’re showing the current playoff odds, but you can visit coolstandings.com for all the historical playoff odds. We’ll also be adding these to FanGraphs in short time. You can find a permanent link to the Playoff Odds from the Standings drop down in the toolbar at the top of the site.

Web Application Developer, Baseball Development

The St. Louis Cardinals are seeking a web application developer with a passion for baseball. This developer will collaborate with the Baseball Development team to build the Cardinals’ next generation of baseball analytics and scouting applications. The ideal candidate is a versatile developer with demonstrated ability for working within a team framework

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with baseball operations decision-makers to define and develop new applications
• Adapt existing applications for mobile environments
• Create tests and documentation around new features and functionality

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree and at least 2 years experience as software engineer / web developer
• Proficiency with front-end web development technologies (including HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and JavaScript frameworks)
• Strong understanding of mobile UI/UX design concepts and demonstrated ability to apply responsive design techniques
• Familiarity with server-side web programming frameworks and SQL Server or other relational database systems
• Passion for baseball, strong intellectual curiosity and communication skills

To apply, please send your resume to ccorrea@cardinals.com

FanGraphs will be not be accessible for about 2 hours sometime between 12:00am ET and 5:00am ET this morning (July 22nd) for server maintenance.

Mobile Application Developer, Baseball Operations – New York Yankees (Bronx, NY)

Primary Responsibilities:
• Assist in the development of our next-generation scouting application
• Analyze existing systems to extract requirements
• Develop an application architecture/design
• Integrate with existing analytics tools, web-applications, and databases

Qualifications and Experience:
•Proficient in mobile web development technologies: HTML5, CSS3, jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, and/or other mobile-optimized JavaScript frameworks.
• Knowledge and experience in native application development (iOS, Android, Windows) and the use of native application wrappers such as PhoneGap, Appcelerator, etc.
• Experience developing backend SOAP/REST web services in .NET/C#
• An understanding of mobile UI/UX design concepts, and a demonstrated ability to deliver an outstanding user experience in a mobile environment
• Strong SQL skills developing complex queries, stored procedures, functions in Microsoft SQL Server or other relational databases
• Experience in handling the entire lifecycle of mobile application development (requirements, design, code, test, debug, deploy, and maintain)
• Ability to decompose existing systems, extract functional requirements, and develop an application architecture with minimal technical guidance
• Ability to work independently with strong worth ethic and communication skills
• Bachelors degree in Computer Science or equivalent
*Full-time telecommuting available under the right circumstances.

This description is intended to describe the type of work being performed by a person assigned to this position. It is not an exhaustive list of all duties and responsibilities required by the employee. The New York Yankees is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The company is committed to the principles of equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment.

Note: When you apply for this job online, you will be required to answer the following questions:

1. Do you have experience in handling the entire lifecycle of mobile application development (requirements, design, code, test, debug, deploy, and maintain)?

Apply for this position

We’ve updated the site with 2013 park factors, which you can see on our FanGraphs Guts! page. These will be updated daily for the rest of the season and we will have the more granular park factors for 2013 updated shortly (on a weekly basis) as well.

To explain a little more about our park factors, we use up to 5 years of data to calculate park factors using Patriot’s method. When a park makes significant changes to their layout, or it is just a brand new park, we use only data from the changed or new park.

In the case of Safeco Field and PETCO Park, which had significant fence movement, we are only using 2013 data to calculate the park factors. With just this season’s worth of data, the park factors for these parks are being heavily regressed (90% towards 100, a neutral park).

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we rolled out our brand new depth charts and standings, and since then there’s a few things that have been added:

– Full injury information is now available in the depth charts. You can find out more about the injury if you hover over the little medical icon. This is updated in real time as soon as the injury information becomes available to us.

– On the Standings page, things are now broken out by division. We’ll be adding AL and NL only tables soon.

Daily updated Steamer Projections are now available in the player pages and the projections pages. These come in both the Rest of Season (RoS) and Updated variety. RoS is the projection for only the remainder of the season, while Updated is the forecast for the player’s final season line, including his performance to date.

One thing to note about the daily updated Steamer projections is that a full new projection for each player is calculated each day of the season, the same way the pre-season calculations are calculated, just including this year’s data.

Much thanks goes out to Jared Cross, Dash Davidson, and Peter Rosenbloom for putting these together.

Live stats are now available in the leaderboards!

You can view either full season stats with today’s data incorporated into them, or just stats for today’s games.

At long last, one whim of Carson Cistulli’s is now available on FanGraphs!

In the leaderboards, you can now view just yesterday’s stats!

On our live scoreboard page we now have each game’s lineup for the day. This information from now on should be available as soon as the teams announce their lineups each day, usually many hours before the game.

We’re also now using this same data to power the “Starter” field in FanGraphs: The Game, so you should know if a player is in the lineup much sooner than before.

If you think things are delayed, or there’s no lineup for a game where you think there should be, please let us know!