RotoGraphs is now accepting applications for fantasy baseball writers. These are paid, part-time positions that require a commitment of five posts per week. We are specifically looking for writers with knowledge of multiple fantasy formats, who are comfortable with writing strategy-based articles.

Writers may be asked to tackle specific topics as assigned, but a big part of the job is to independently develop interesting topics and ideas on a regular basis. Strong writing skills and the ability to write clean copy are important along with a familiarity of the statistics found on FanGraphs.

To apply, please send us email with your background and why you’d like to write for us. Please include anything you think will be helpful in evaluating your application such as: writing samples, links to current blogs, fantasy experience, resume, etc….

Interested writers can contact us (David Appelman and Marc Hulet) at wanted+rotographs@fangraphs.com with the heading RotoGraphs Application 2010.

Here’s a timeline of FanGraphs I put together for the Second Opinion intro, but just didn’t make it in there. I had totally forgotten that when the site first launched it didn’t even have BABIP (I think it might have been there under a different name: H%).

(click for full size image)

FanGraphs Audio is now available on iTunes! You can either search for it and it will show up under podcasts, or you can just follow this link.

I just implemented a very slight change to how we calculate the positional adjustment for WAR. Previously we were calculating it based on full games played at a position. Now it is being calculated by innings played, which is a bit more precise.

This may shift a player’s positional adjustment up or down a run at the most, and will mainly impact multi-position players, but that’s about it.

It’s come to my attention that the Fielding component for the CHONE projections is per 150 games and not a raw total for the season that I, for some reason, thought it to be. The Fielding projections have now been properly adjusted based on projected games.

I’ve also made a few slight changes to the Fan Projections that adjusted some extremely unrealistic ballots, mostly pertaining to players with zero playing time, but who were projected to hit over zero home runs and extra base hits.

Update: The 2010 Second Opinion is Now Available!

I’m pleased to announce that FanGraphs will be dipping its toes into the publishing world with its very first publication: The FanGraphs Second Opinion: 2010 Fantasy Baseball Companion, or for short, the 2010 Second Opinion.

First let’s get to what’s in it:

– Over 400 in-depth player profiles written by many of the FanGraphs and RotoGraphs contributors you’re already familiar with.

– Articles covering: closer situations, players coming back from injuries, sophomore players to watch, 2010 fantasy prospects, impact trades, the big questions for 2010, and something that Carson wrote, where he answers your questions before you even ask them!

– Stats & Graphs: Each player profile is accompanied by a stat box with 10 very useful stats for both fantasy and real-life player evaluation including spark graphs showing career trends.

– Team previews: Each team is previewed for next season, giving you the rundown on what to expect from a fantasy and real-life standpoint.

The book will first be available for download in PDF format late February for the low price of $7.95.  In addition to the PDF, you will have access to all the information in the book on FanGraphs.com when logged in to your FanGraphs account.  This information will include the written player profiles which will be integrated into the stats pages and all the articles and team previews in the book.

In addition, some of you may have noticed that FanGraphs has been contributing to ESPN Insider (ESPN’s all sports premium content) this past month with more to come.  If you purchase the book and are logged in, you’ll also have access to these articles and future articles we publish on ESPN Insider, on FanGraphs.com, through March 1st, 2011.

As we get closer to the book’s release, there will be more information and sample pages available.

As a few of you have noticed, tRA was on hiatus for a couple days. Now it’s back, but as tERA. Quite simply, tRA is on a runs allowed scale and not an earned runs allowed scale, which I believed caused some confusion, especially when I placed it right next to xFIP, which is on an ERA scale.

It seemed the natural thing to do was to compare tRA to ERA/FIP/xFIP and with tRA on a runs allowed scale that didn’t quite work, but now it should.

To convert back to tRA, just divide by .92.

For a couple years now I’ve wanted to get better splits up and running on FanGraphs, but other things have taken priority. We’ve had Lefty/Right and Home/Away splits in the graphs sections for almost four years, but never have there been any tabular splits.

In the player pages, there’s a new section called “Splits”. It’s right next to the season stats tab:

Give it a click and you’ll have access to Lefty/Righty, Home/Away, Monthly, Batted Ball, Location, and Leverage splits, with the full selection of stats from the “Standard”, “Advanced” and “Batted Ball” sections.

You can then browse the splits by individual season, comparing one split to another, or you can take a look at the career tab, where you’ll be able to see how a player has fared in a particular split over time. If you just want to see the career total lines, you can collapse the individual season by clicking on the “Show Season Splits” button.

Splits are currently available for all Major League players dating back to 2002. As always, if you have any feedback, or notice anything’s not working as expected, just let me know.

I’ve made a few updates as requested for the Fan Projections.

– The Fan Projections now only require 15 votes to be eligible. This added an additional 200 or so players into the mix and I imagine that most MLB regulars and some not so regulars should have Fan Projections now.

– There’s now an UZR column in the sortable projections.

– You can now export the Fan Projections to either Excel or CSV files in the projections page.

Yesterday, Tangotiger released the 2010 Marcel projections and now they’re available on all the player pages and in the sortable projection pages.

Couple things of note about the Marcel projections.

– About Marcel, Tango himself writes, “it is the most basic forecasting system you can have, that uses as little intelligence as possible. It uses 3 years of MLB data, with the most recent data weighted heavier. It regresses towards the mean. And it has an age factor.”

– The wOBA calculation I’m using for FanGraphs is going to be different than the ones included in the projections. To keep things consistent, I’m including SB and CS and using the 2009 weights, just like all the other projections.