I haven’t been blogging much in the past couple weeks, but I’m hoping to turn over a new leaf with this past week’s FanGraphs top 10. There are more than a few surprises:

1. John Maine – The momentary Major League ERA leader (1.35) is also this week’s #1 player on FanGraphs. He’s been getting a lot of hype and some skepticism lately. I think everyone can agree he’s not as good as his 1.35 ERA, but I think there’s still a lot to like.

2. Barry Bonds – He hit 2 home runs this week and is now just 12 shy of breaking Hank Aaron’s record. He’s playing like the past 2 years didn’t happen.

3. Alex Rodriguez – Since hitting 2 home runs on April 23rd, A-Rod has now gone 41 at-bats without a single home run. I wonder if for every record breaking streak, there’s an equal (and opposite) record breaking slump?

4. David Wright – The other New York third-baseman has been in a season long slump. He’s both walking and striking out more, while his Isolated Power (ISO) has been cut in half. What’s the statistical culprit? A failure to get the ball off the ground.

5. Derek Jeter – The other and still “true” Yankee always seems to make the top 10. He’s having a pretty nice season which isn’t all that different from his MVP seas… oh wait… nevermind.

6. B.J. Upton – The rookie is having a phenomenal year and apparently everyone wants to see what all the hoopla’s about. Upon further inspection, he’s striking out only 38% of the time which puts him right there in Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn territory (sans the high walk rate). My magic 8 ball tells me this about his hot start: “Outlook Not So Good”. That’s how I do all my analysis, by the way.

7. David Bush – I’m a big David Bush fan and it could just be me visiting his page ever so frequently that pushed him up to #7 of the list. Despite his ERA over 6, he has the 3rd highest K/BB in baseball. Good things should happen soon.

8. Manny Ramirez – As soon as A-Rod started slumping, Manny started to pick things up. Since A-Rod hit his last home runs, Manny has batted just over .300 with 7 walks and 3 home runs, including a 2 home run game on May 3rd.

9. James Shields – This guy is looking really really good and should be on everyone’s radar. Few pitchers in the history of baseball have struck out over a batter an inning while walking under 2 batters per 9 innings. In fact, there have been just 11 starting pitchers to do it in a single season. Bruce Sutter, Tom Seaver, Sandy Koufax, Jason Schmidt, Johan Santana, Ben Sheets, Roy Oswalt, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson make up the 11.

10. Ichiro Suzuki – He’s off to a slow start, which apparently is concern enough for him to make his first top 10 list. He’s still getting infield hits but his BABIP is considerably below his norm. Fortunately for him, there’s still some 5 months of baseball left to right the ship.

If you haven’t noticed, there are a few new team blogs currently on FanGraphs. Garth Sears (Royals), Erik Manning (Cardinals) and our latest addition Tito Crafts (Red Sox) have been doing a fantastic job looking at games from a Win Probability angle, among other things.

If you have an idea for a baseball related blog, whether it be team specific or something entirely different, and you’re looking for a place to get started, feel free to send me a note. From there we can talk in more detail. You can either fill out a contact form, or e-mail me at david@fangraphs.com.

The 2007 Minor League stats are up and available for viewing in both the stats pages and the Leardboards. They will be updated every morning no later than noon Eastern.

Also, I’ve taken down the projections and spring training stats by default in the stats pages. You can still view them by clicking on “Show Projections” or “Show Spring Training”. I figured now that there was almost a full month of the season underway, the projections weren’t being used as much and they were causing some unneeded clutter. I’m open to putting them back up by default, but as long as I don’t hear complaints, they’ll stay hidden by default.

Bradford Doolittle wrote about WPA today in the Kansas City star and gives FanGraphs’ new Live Win Probability quite the favorable review. You can check that out here: These stats add something to the game

There’s also a Q&A session with me on his blog for those interested in some of the behind the scenes happenings at FanGraphs: Q&A With David Appelman

Last night we rolled in some changes to the way Clutch is calculated. For the most part, the results remained the same, but there are a few key differences which you should be aware of.

Clutch is no longer calculated using OPS Wins. Instead it’s calculated using WPA/LI, which is WPA divided by LI on a play-by-play basis. Take Alex Rodriguez for example who has a WPA of 1.03 and a pLI of 1.51. His WPA divided by pLI on a full season basis would be .68. Unfortunately, that is weighting each play incorrectly and does not correctly neutralize WPA. When you correctly weight each plate appearance by LI, his WPA/LI is 1.16. To get the new Clutch score, you merely do: WPA – WPA/LI.

Tangotiger goes into the details of what’s going on here in comment #5: What Exactly Clutch Measures.

This week’s top 10 most popular players on FanGraphs is devoid of Corey Hart and because of that it makes a lot more sense. Let’s get right to it:

1. Alex Rodriguez – You’ve not only managed to become number one in Win Probability Added (and nearly every other stat in the first week), you’re also the most popular.

2. Albert Pujols – Slipping from the top spot lats week, Pujols got off to a rough start by going 1-13 to start the season. But yesterday, he went 2-5 with one home run, signaling the end of the bizarro first week of baseball.

3. Derek Jeter – What has Jeter done this season to deserve such a prominent place on the FanGraphs top 10? Besides being Jeter, WPA says he’s the second most valuable Yankee thus far this season. Fitting he should be the second most popular Yankee.

4. Barry Bonds – His one home run this week puts him just 20 home runs shy of tying Hank Aaron’s all time best 755 home runs. At this rate he’ll have broken the record by September 3rd. Anyone know the vegas odds on that?

5. Felix Hernandez – His 8 inning — 3 hit — 12 strikeout performance gave him a Game Score of 87, which just happens to be the highest Game Score this season. Hopefully the weather will allow him make a second start sometime this season.

6. Todd Helton – He’s off to a decent start, but I’m not sure why he’s in the top 10. It could have something to do with the nosedive his Isolated Power has taken since the 2004 season.

7. Johan Santana – Why wouldn’t the best pitcher in baseball make the list?

8. Adam Dunn – The always intriguing Dunn is off to a hot start after having a scorching spring training. He’s batting an uncharacteristic .381 with 3 home runs so far this season.

9. Brad Lidge – Speaking of spring training, Lidge has been just as awful the first week of the season as he was during spring training. He’s pitched 1.2 innings, giving up 6 runs (3 of them earned) for an ERA just over 16. If he can’t get things together soon, he’ll definitely be out of the closers job, and possibly a job altogether.

10. Ryan Howard – Even though he’s batting just .217 with no home runs, he’s already drawn 7 walks, which ties him for the most in the National League with fellow teammate Jimmy Rollins. He only hit 1 home run in his first 11 games last year, so not much to worry about yet.

11-20: David Ortiz, Cole Hamels, John Maine, B.J. Upton, Jose Reyes, Ian Snell, Grady Sizemore, Roy Oswalt, Erik Bedard, Elijah Dukes.

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!