This afternoon we rolled out a new homepage.

The idea of the homepage changes was to better organize and highlight content.

The larger two stories at the top and then the four others further down the page are articles that we’re featuring. They may be brand new articles or articles that we don’t want to get lost in the shuffle when we’ve had a busy day.

Other than that, everything that was in the old layout is available in the new layout, except in a more condensed three columns instead of two.

The other main change is the site is now centered and a little bit wider than before.

With the changes, we’ve also implemented a new article search feature that lets you use the player search box to search for any article on the site across all our blogs.

If you’re wondering if there are more layout changes on the way, there will be a minor update to the article pages to center them and change the font size over the weekend.

I’ve seen that generally the reaction to the changes have not been positive. We’re always open to suggestions and if there are things you like or don’t like about the new layout, please use this thread as an opportunity to weigh in.

Update: For those of you experiencing the boxes around the comment icons and headers, those should be gone now. There was a formatting issue with IE browsers only.

The 2013 Hardball Times Annual is 15% off for today only with the following discount code: LNDEY3Y4

Just follow the link and when the book is in your shopping card copy and paste the discount code into the box and you’ll get 15% off. This discount code is only valid when you order through this link.

We now have new search functionality, which will hopefully allow you to get to the player pages much faster than before.

Typing something in the search box will now display a drop-down of all the players you searched for, just as would have been displayed on the actual player search page. You are still able to hit enter and get to the old search page if you want.

One additional note is that when the search bar is empty, the drop down displays a list of the most popular Major League and Minor League players on FanGraphs.

As the title says, the FanGraphs iPhone app is discounted to $0.99 for today only!

The app will of course include data for the 2013 season and already has the 2013 Bill James Handbook Projections available in the player pages.

The Hardball Times Baseball Annual for 2013 is now yours for the purchasing. This is something we do every year, just for the heck of it. In fact, this is our ninth THT Annual, and we’re trying a few new things this year.

First of all, we went the self-publishing route. We always had a great relationship with our previous publisher, ACTA Sports, but it’s so easy to self-publish, and the economics are better (we think). So you’ll notice that our cover art has changed, and we won’t be available in bookstores. The price is lower, and the dimensions are a bit smaller, too. We’ll let you know how it goes.

The Annual is now 6″x9″—easy to carry and read. We dropped the stats altogether after significantly cutting them back last year. As time went on, the stats became a less important feature of the Annual, because it’s so easy to pick up your stats online at any time. Other than that, the format is exactly the same.

You’re left with 300 pages of baseball eloquence, primarily contributed by THT and Fangraphs writers, as well as a few special guest writers. Here is the specific table of contents:

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The 2013 Bill James Handbook Projections courtesy of Baseball Info Solutions are now available on the players pages!

The player pages now have some some additional usability features.

– You can now hover over any stat header and get the definition of the stat. This will soon make its way to all sections of the site.

– Seasons, Teams, and Positions are now linked back to the leaderboards. For instance if you are perusing Mike Trout’s page and you click on the Angels link in his 2011 season, it will bring you to the 2011 Angels leaderboards for the corresponding section.

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There’s a new positional option for the leaderboards labeled NP (Non-Pitchers). This will exclude all players that qualify as pitchers from any of the batting leaderboards.

This works at both the team and league levels as well, making it easier to compare teams across leagues.

To better isolate batting and base running skills, SB and CS have been removed from wOBA and given their own category wSB.

What’s Changed?

wOBA, wRAA, wRC, wRC+ – These all no longer include SB and CS. SB and CS have been removed entirely from the wOBA calculation include the weights calculation.

Batting – Batting in the Value section no longer includes SB and CS.

Base Running – Base Running in the Value section now includes SB and CS.

FanGraphs Guts! – Our Guts! section now has updated weights and the SB and CS weights for use in wOBA have been replaced with the raw run values.

What’s New?

wSB – how many runs above or below average a player is at stealing bases.

UBR – (miscellaneous baserunning / advancement) is now broken out into a separate category which is in the Advanced section. This contains all the information that was formerly just in Base Running.

The Value (WAR) section for pitchers has been updated to help further break out a pitcher’s value. These stats are now available in the leaderboards and player pages.

We’ve added the following stats:

RA9-Wins – Wins above replacement calculated with RA9. This is both park adjusted and league adjusted.

BIP-Wins – Wins above average based on BABIP. This is both park and league adjusted.

LOB-Wins – Sequencing (and miscellaneous) wins above average calculated as RA9Wins – WAR – BIPWins.

FDP-Wins (Fielder Dependent Wins) – This is the full difference between RA9Wins and WAR, or BIPWins + LOBWins.

WAR – Wins Above Replacement remains unchanged.

Dave Cameron will have two posts with more details about these new stats at 9:00am and 10:00am and will be answering questions during his 12:00pm chat.

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