Just a quick reminder that we will have Live Win Probability all season long.

Some Quick Notes:

– Nightly loads have resumed as usual. They will typically start sometime between 3 and 5 am EST and last about 20 minutes. If you’re using FanGraphs during this 20 minute window, you may notice some slowdown. Our loads this year are quite CPU intensive.

– Minor League stats will be loaded nightly starting April 5th.

– We’re considering live stats “unofficial” as far as Win Probability goes. The nightly loads will be the “official” ones. They should be very similar.

– We’ll be leaving the projections in the stats pages up by default for at least another week along with the spring training stats. They will both be hidden eventually, but will always be able to be un-hidden using the “Show Projections” or “Show Spring Training” buttons.

Debuting Today:

–Joseph Michael Smith made his major league debut today. He struck out one and walked one, in one-thirds innings.

Despite last night’s lack of live win probability, the Yankees-Tigers game is now up and running. No need to refresh the page, live stats will just keep coming.

Don’t forget we’ll have every single game live this season starting opening night. If you have any feedback, please let us know!

Update: It still hasn’t showed up, and I’m assuming it won’t. There may be two live spring training games tomorrow.

Update: So, we were supposed to be getting live data for this game, but obviously it’s not being delivered. I’m hoping it will start to show up, even if it’s late.

We should have the Dodgers-Angels game live tonight. There’s been a number of improvements since yesterday and you should no longer need to refresh the page since it should update by itself.

Overall we’re still getting our feet wet with the live data. I’m sure our live data displays will evolve significantly over time. If you do get a chance to check out the game tonight, we’d certainly like to hear your feedback, positive and negative.

If anyone wants to take a peek at some our Live Win Probability stuff in the extremely early stages. You can check out the remainder of the Mets-Braves spring training game.

I’m not sure if there will be any other live games today, but there should be various games running for the 4 or so days left of spring training.

Please remember this is really an “alpha” product right now, and will hopefully be “beta” worthy by the time the season starts. It’s also only the scoreboard as there will be the usual big graph, play-by-play and box scores for each game. We’ll probably have live pitch counts too.

You will have to refresh the page to get the graph to update for the time being. The F5 key is probably the easiest method of doing this.

Time for me to get back to work!

Box Scores have been added to potentially make your life just a bit easier. They contain all the usual goodies including the position the player played and the order the player hit in the lineup.

If you see anything missing that you feel is essential, just let us know and we’ll try and cram it in, assuming we have readily accessible in our database.

There’s an interesting thread going on over at Sons of Sam Horn that eventually delved into Manny Ramirez’s clutch hitting abilities.

There’s currently a stat displayed on FanGraphs called “Clutch”. This Tangotiger invention is the difference between a player’s Win Probability Added and his OPS Wins once it has been Leverage adjusted. Simply put, it’s how well a player did in his actual environment (which includes close and late and runner on base situations) and how he would do in a context neutral environment.

So if we look at Manny Ramirez, he had a -1.36 Clutch last season, and over the past 5 years he has a -4.80 Clutch. His -1.36 last season was among the worst when looking at qualified batters. Needless to say, Clutch suggests he’s anything but a clutch batter.

To further reinforce the point let’s look at his high/medium/low leverage splits. A 1.70 or greater Leverage Index I considered “High” and a Leverage Index lower than .75 I considered “Low”. Anything in between was “Medium”

LI Level     OBP   SLG    OPS
High        .439  .536   .975
Medium      .449  .623  1.072
Low         .426  .649  1.075

The more important the situation, the worse Manny Ramirez does. His on base percentage stays pretty similar, but his slugging percentage takes a rather large hit as the situation becomes more important.

All in all, the numbers in any situation are pretty damn good, but he certainly didn’t elevate his game when the game was on the line.

Sometimes I find it fun to look at which players are being looked at the most on FanGraphs. To me, it’s a bit of a “buzz” meter for certain players. Obviously people are looking at players they’re interested in, and some of it is probably how visible certain players are on FanGraphs. There’s nothing scientific about this, but I thought FanGraphs visitors might enjoy seeing who their fellow visitors are most interested in. Here are the “results” for this past week (3/12 – 3/18).

1. Albert Pujols – This isn’t a huge surprise to me. He’s at the top of pretty much every lits and is incredibly visible on FanGraphs as a whole. Apparently everyone wants to see just how great he is!

2. Johan Santana – Also not much of a surprise. He’s the best, hands down.

3. Corey Hart – The Brewers’ Outfielder is having a strong spring, but #3? Maybe we have a disproportionate number of Brewers fans visiting the site, or perhaps people are just checking out his projections for their fantasy baseball drafts.

4. Adam Dunn – His extremely high strikeout totals and equally high walk totals make Dunn a constant topic for debate. Not to mention, his power seemed to disappear last season. His stats are always worth some extra scrutiny.

5. Ian Kinsler – Not quite as much as a surprise as Hart since this player is on most fantasy baseball managers’ radar.

6. Manny Ramirez – He’s constantly in the news. I don’t have anything else to add.

7. David Ortiz – His Win Probability numbers are always worth a look. He’s had two, rather astounding, back to back seasons and no MVP to show for it.

8. Derek Jeter – As popular a player as any and another player where it’s especially fun to look at his Win Probability numbers considering his “clutch” reputation. He didn’t live it down… last year.

9. Barry Bonds – Something would be wrong if he wasn’t in the top 10.

10. Ryan Howard – And in the 10-spot, the reigning NL-MVP. Everyone must be wondering if he can repeat his 58 home run season.

If people are interested, this could become a weekly feature, with maybe the top 10 and “movers and shakers”.

Tangotiger is conducting his 2007 community projections:

“I’ve seen the results of six forecasting systems this year. (I’m sure some of you have seen more than that.) And all were based on some algorithm with little leeway for human interaction. Why is that? Because we can’t trust any single person’s opinion. But, what if we can get a consensus, a Wisdom of Crowds? Who knows more about whether Papelbon will be a starter or reliever this year: an algorithm or a Redsox fan? Who knows more about the number of games a 2006-injured Hideki Matsui will play in 2007: an algorithm or a Yankees fan? There are certain human observation elements that are critical for forecasting. That’s where you can come in, and why you are here.”

When you have a free moment, head over there and fill in the OPS and ERA projections for your favorite team!

We’ve just added play-by-play data in the Play Log section for each game. At this time, play-by-play data includes the Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, Home Team Win Expectancy, and the Batter’s Win Probability Added (WPA) for each and every play of the 2002-2006 season.

Win Expectancy is calculated as the result of the play, while Leverage Index and Run Expectancy are calculated before the play happened.

Everything is calculated before the play happened. We’ve also added BRAA which is the difference between Run Expectancy at the start of the play and the end of the play.

If you click on the play, you’ll get the pitch sequence for each play in a little pop-up box. The playoff games pitch sequence is a little screwed up right now. It “snakes” around, so for the first line it will be “pitch1, pitch2, pitch3, result” and then for the next line “result, pitch3, pitch2, pitch1”. We’ll try to get this cleared up soon.

We’ve also moved all the Win Probability graphs out of the Team section and into the Scoreboard section. We’re just trying to make things a little more organized and it will allow us to eventually vastly enhance our team stats.

If you have any problems or suggestions on how to improve the new scoreboard or play-by-play sections, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Thought I’d show a quick preview of our new scoreboard. This way you’ll be able to quickly see all the day’s graphs in one convenient place.

You’ll also notice that the box score and play log links aren’t quite working yet. I’m hoping they will be sometime next week.