Author Archive

Neil Weinberg FanGraphs Q&A

by
July 16, 2014
2:38
Neil Weinberg: Hey everyone, this is my first chat since joining FanGraphs, so let me get you caught up.

My job here is primarily to serve as something of a Site Educator. This means that I’m responsible for providing resources to readers about our data, advanced metrics, and how to make use of the features available at the site.

It’s possible you’ve seen me around the various baseball parts of the internet. My Twitter handle is @NeilWeinberg44 and if you want to get in touch about these kinds of questions at times other than 3pm on Wednesdays, that’s where to find me. It’s my job, so take advantage of it.

With that said, I will prioritize “how does this work?” and “what does this mean?” type questions during the chats, but feel free to ask regular questions about anything as well. Although if you’re here for fantasy advice or prospect talk, I’m probably less helpful than some of our writers. And if you’re here to discuss beer, I am literally the least useful person on our staff.

Think that’s it, queue is open and we’ll start at 3pm!
3:00
Neil Weinberg: Alright, let’s chat! I’ll probably hang out for an hour and fifteen minutes today, but will go longer most days if there are lots of questions.
3:01
Comment From DD
I can never find a direct link on the site for the Live Scoreboard Page. I always have to do a google search. Embarressing I know. Please point me in the right direction. Thanks!
3:02
Neil Weinberg: This is a link to Sunday’s. http://www.fangraphs.com/sc…

What you want to do is go to FanGraphs and look for the “Score” tab at the top. Hover over that and then click the current year (so 2014) and it will take you to the current day. Unfortunately, I can’t show you this in action because today is a very dark day on the calendar.
3:02
Comment From @BobbleHeadGuru
Why are there two different WARs. Why is fWAR better?
3:04
Neil Weinberg: There are two different WARs (actually 3!) because there are different ways to measure certain aspects of performance. Typically, most of the hitting measurements will be the same, but the different sites have different ideas about how to properly measure defense and baserunning…and pitching for that matter. I prefer fWAR, but I recommend looking at all of them. I’ll put together an updated Glossary entry about this in the future to break out the exact details.

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A (Re)Introduction to the FanGraphs Library

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July 11, 2014

Entering play on Thursday night, Kyle Seager owned a .274 batting average. Chris Johnson’s average was a nearly identical .273. The two third basemen have played in a similar number of games and have come to the plate close to the same number of times. If you use batting average to evaluate these players’ seasons, you’d come to the conclusion that Seager and Johnson are essentially equivalent players this year.

They’re not. In fact, it’s very clear Seager is substantially better than Johnson. Let me rephrase that: It’s very clear Seager is better than Johnson — but only if you’re well-versed in the language of baseball statistics. If you know how to properly value walks, extra base power, baserunning and defense, the difference between Seager and Johnson is impossible to miss.

At FanGraphs, our writers use statistics and metrics like wOBA, wRC+, FIP and WAR to evaluate baseball players and teams. We provide those tools, and more, so others might conduct evaluations on their own. Want to know Miguel Cabrera’s wOBA against lefties? You can find that on FanGraphs. But what if you don’t know what wOBA means, how it’s calculated or why you should care about it more than batting average?

You can find some of that information on FanGraphs. A well-motivated, self-starter could show up at the site, notice something called wOBA on the leaderboards, go to the glossary and figure out what it means and why it’s important. But it can be intimidating and challenging for people who are just starting out to make sense of everything we offer.

In an effort to make advanced statistics easier, and to understand and to better use the data and features available at FanGraphs, we’re relaunching and promoting the FanGraphs Library. There’s a lot of great information there already, but this revamped library is even better. There’s a steep learning curve, though, so I’ve been tasked with making things a bit simpler.

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