It’s become a practice of the present author in recent years to begin in February a painstaking search for the new ballcap that will express his entire being. It’s also become a practice in recent years to parlay that search into web content so that the author might “remain” “employed.”

Two years ago, this pursuit yielded a Winston-Salem Spirits cap from 1994 with a weird red sun and melancholy eagle on it. Last year, I had the fortune of procuring a handsome Diablos Rojos cap from the actual team store at Parque Fray Nano in Mexico City. In each case, I have documented the relevant search for the benefit of posterity — even if posterity has failed to show any real interest in my work.

Last week, the author began this year’s edition of the search. What follows is the second installment of the newest volume.

To wit:

Atlanta Braves A-Town Corduroy 5-Panel Velcro Snapback (Link)
Style: Snapback
Time Left: 23 days, 5 hours
Cost: US $17.99 (Buy It Now)

While it’s difficult to conceive of a scenario in which one would voluntarily acknowledge any sort of affiliation with the city of Atlanta, this cap is almost certainly the best means by which to do it. The low crown preserves one from the awkward fit offered by other new caps. As for the corduroy, it’s the most expedient way to announce publicly that, regardless of what these so-called “credit reports” suggest, one has plans to acquire a sweet conversion van in the near future.

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Wins Above Replacement (WAR) has as its genesis Bill James, even if Bill might not necessarily take the credit (or blame based on some readers) for it. But make no mistake, Bill provided the plumbing for it. For those interested, you can read Brandon Heipp’s account on that backstory.

When you put all the plumbing together, you can create a framework. And that’s what WAR is, a framework to provide an estimate. Wins Above Replacement is an estimate of… something. What that something is is different for every person. While the currency is wins, it’s not clear what those wins represent. There are reasonable choices you can make along the way. And for every fork in the road you take, you may diverge yourself from the next guy. This is why WAR can never be one thing.

As a framework, WAR leaves little room for discussion. Whether it’s what you see at Baseball Reference or at FanGraphs or openWAR or (to some extent) at Baseball Prospectus, they have as their framework the WAR that was championed on my old blog, which culminated with this article. But a framework is not the same as an implementation. 95% of the cars on the road all follow the same core design. That’s the framework. But a Chevy is different from a Lexus. Those are implementations. And there are as many implementations of WAR as there are baseball fans. Whereas Baseball Reference and FanGraphs and the others provide a consistent, systematic implementation, most fans have their own personal mish-mash of arbitrary, biased, and capricious combination of stats, which can change as their mood fits.

This series of articles, of which there may be a dozen(*) is an effort to try to come up with a WAR metric that will satisfy the Straight Arrow readers.

(*) I have no idea. This is the first one I’ve written.

***

I’ll ask you a series of questions, starting now. The openWAR guys talk about “preservation of runs”. That is a good starting point, and a great way to describe the concept. So, the question centers around whether we want to make sure that everything adds up at the play level. If you get a bases-loaded walk, do we want to make sure that exactly one run is accounted for or not?

If you care about “talent”, you just want to account for around +.30 runs for offense (and -.30 runs for defense), because you don’t want to be concerned with the specific base-out state. (We’ll talk about “preservation of wins” in a later question.) Similarly, is a bases-empty walk and bases-empty single the same thing or not? And if you want to preserve runs, are you ready to accept a bases-loaded walk and a solo HR as being the exact same thing?

So, have a discussion, and then answer this poll question:

There are plenty of other discussion points that go into building an implementation of WAR, and we’ll get to those in the future. For this post, I’m interested to hear what you guys think about this issue specifically.

Position: Miami Marlins Baseball Operations Data Architect

Location: Miami

Description:

The Data Architect will assist in the modeling, housing, and integration of baseball data from a wide variety of sources. This position will be responsible for creating enterprise database systems and setting standards for operations, programming, security, and backup. It will involve construction of large relational databases, integrating new systems with existing applications, and refining system performance and functionality within the Microsoft SQL Server platform to enhance the information retrieval and analysis capabilities of the Baseball Operations department.

Responsibilities:

• Perform data modeling and requirements gathering for Microsoft SQL Server database implementation.
• Develop high-performing, scalable solutions including schema design, storage engines, indexing strategies, SQL tuning, ETL processes and Stored Procedures to integrate disparate data sources into a unified system.
• Understand the format, definitions, limitations, and content of external and internal data feeds.
• Reconcile differences across data sources and consolidate into a single master repository to ensure “single version of the truth” consistency across applications and reports.
• Develop processes ensuring data standards, security, stewardship, lineage, and metadata management.
• Develop and document database architectures, schemas, physical structure, functional capability, security, backup, and recovery specifications.
• Support data and reporting requirements for a variety of applications, analysts, and end-users in the Baseball Operations department.
• Provide technical and strategic advice for the creation and implementation of new data standards, databases, products, and vendors.

Qualifications:

• Some familiarity with baseball and sabermetrics preferred.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to individuals with diverse and non-technical baseball background.
• Knowledgeable about software development best practices and long-term maintainability of code.
• Ability to effectively diagnose, isolate, and resolve complex problems pertaining to data infrastructure and integrity.
• Strong work ethic, attention to detail, and ability to self-direct.
• Ability to work evenings, weekends, and holidays during the season.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, computer engineering, or equivalent professional experience required. Master’s degree a plus.
• At least 5 years of experience required, with preferable experience with architecture and design responsibilities in a large and challenging database environment.
• Extensive knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server (2005, 2008 with migration to 2012), Transact-SQL and third-party transformation middleware such as Scribe required.
• Demonstrated data modeling ability required.
• Experience designing, implementing, and managing large data warehouses and cubes in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services required.
• Advanced knowledge in query development, including SQL, MDX, and stored procedures required.
• Experience using XML and JSON formatted data strongly preferred.
• Experience supporting or using statistical and/or data mining applications strongly preferred.
• Business intelligence, data warehousing, or OLAP experience preferred.
• Experience in a .NET programming language preferred.
• Experience with a scripting language (Perl, Python, Ruby, etc.) a plus.
• Knowledge of other database platforms (PostgreSQL, Oracle) a plus.
• Familiarity with any application development and/or web technologies a plus.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
Interested applicants can email their materials to marlinsbaseballjobs@gmail.com.

Last year in these pages, the author — in an effort to justify his employment — published a pair of posts inviting the public to consider the virtues of LSU freshman Alex Lange’s curveball.

Lange is now an LSU sophomore and has recently recorded his first start of the season for Les Acadiens, during which he posted a 9:3 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 24 batters over 6.2 innings versus the University of Cincinnati (box). What else Lange did was to exhibit the breaking ball which scouts are calling “a good breaking ball” and “fine, yeah, a pretty strong breaking ball, now please stop bothering me, I’m with my kids.”

In any case, the following Betamax footage depicts examples of that same pitch from Lange’s season debut.

Like this footage, in which Lange records his first out of the season by means also of his first curveball of the season, against a Cincinnati batter (right fielder Vince Augustine) who appears to exhibit not no resignation while also swinging his bat:

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Tony Phillips passed away today, at the age of 56. Unlike some of the reporters sharing stories from their days covering him on Twitter — this one from Jeff Passan is great — I never had any interaction with him, and can’t share any personal stories in his memory. But what I can share is my memory of just how good Tony Phillips was at baseball.

Phillips really came into his own in 1990, when I was nine years old and getting seriously into baseball. And for the next decade, I must have watched Tony Phillips be the cause of my team losing on at least a half dozen occasions. He was never the other team’s best player, at least not according to the announcers, but he was one of those remarkably good role players that the good teams always seemed to have. And, with the benefit of some better ways of evaluating players these days, we can look back and say that Phillips just may have been his team’s best player on a number of occasions.

His peak ran about seven years, from 1990-1996. Here’s the position player leaderboard during that stretch.

That’s a who’s-who of the best players of the 1990s, and Phillips is square in the middle of that class. For that seven year period, he was essentially the equal of Craig Biggio. As J.J. Cooper put it:

RIP Tony Phillips. If you're too young to remember him, he was Ben Zobrist before there was Ben Zobrist.

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) February 19, 2016

The comparison is apt, and if Phillips had played a couple of decades later, he’d be celebrated as one of the game’s most valuable players. While he wasn’t flashy, he didn’t hit a ton of home runs, and his positional versatility meant he was never considered an elite defender, his all-around game made Phillips a tremendous asset for his teams.

Rest in peace, Mr. Phillips.

It’s become a practice of the present author in recent years to begin in February a painstaking search for the new ballcap that will express his entire being. It’s also become a practice in recent years to parlay that search into web content so that the author might “remain” “employed.”

Two years ago, this pursuit yielded a Winston-Salem Spirits cap from 1994 with a weird red sun and melancholy eagle on it. Last year, I had the fortune of procuring a handsome Diablos Rojos cap from the actual team store at Parque Fray Nano in Mexico City. In each case, I have documented the relevant search for the benefit of posterity — even if posterity has failed to show any real interest in my work.

In any case, what follows marks the beginning of this year’s search.

To wit:

Absolut Vintage Strapback Cap (Link)
Style: Strapback
Time Left: 8 days, 2 hours
Cost: US $9.00 (Buy It Now)

Have you ever wanted to give the impression that you were a devotee of 80s sitcom Moonlighting without actually having to watch all 68 episodes of it? Have you ever wondered what a baseball uniform designed by Patrick Nagel might look like? This cap goes some way to addressing both of those concerns.

Read the rest of this entry »

Short updates about over 1100 players are now on the player pages! As part of our new approach to membership, the player caps are free. Each player cap attempts to put the player in context by talking about recent career events and their outlook for the coming season — mostly with a fantasy slant. No matter your interest, however, you’ll find some nuggets in there, including Blake Murphy on Adam Rosales, Matt Klaassen on Alcides Escobar, Craig Edwards on Logan Schafer, and David Wiers on Chase Utley.

Thanks very much to our writers, listed below! They each worked hard to bring you insight.

The fantasy research pieces that used to be part of FG+ are now running over at The Hardball Times, with pieces about the following topics. Also free!

Thanks very much for your readership. I hope you enjoy these as you prepare for the upcoming season.

Our writers:
Adam McFadden
Alex Chamberlain
August Fagerstrom
Ben Duronio
Ben Pasinkoff
Blake Murphy
Brad Johnson
Bradley Woodrum
Brandon Warne
Brett Talley
Carson Cistulli
Chad Young
Chris Mitchell
Colin Zarzycki
Craig Edwards
Darren Scheinbein
David Temple
David Wiers
Dustin Nosler
Dylan Higgins
Eno Sarris
Jeff Zimmerman
Karl de Vries
Matt Klaassen
Michael Barr
Mike Podhorzer
Owen Watson
Paul Sporer
Paul Swydan
Scott Spratt
Scott Strandberg
Zach Sanders

The Brewers continued the rebuilding process on Friday dealing power-hitting outfielder Khris Davis to the Athletics in exchange for prospects. Here’s what my fancy computer math thinks of the prospects who are now property of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Jacob Nottingham, C, 6.8 WAR (Profile)

Nottingham was a former sixth-round pick who broke out in a big way in A-Ball last year. After an underwhelming two years in a Rookie Ball, he slashed .309/.364/.493 in 122 games between the Houston and Oakland organizations. He had a wee bit of trouble making contact as evidenced by his 20% strikeout rate. But he made up for it by hitting for loads of power.

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For those of you who are interested in learning a little bit about the history of FanGraphs and our operations, Barry Svrluga wrote a great piece in the Washington Post about how it all got started.

Position: Miami Marlins Baseball Analytics Intern

Location: Miami

Description:

The Baseball Analytics Intern will assist Baseball Operations decision-making through the analysis and research of baseball information. The specific day-to-day responsibilities of this position will vary depending on the baseball calendar, but it requires a general knowledge of how to use objective data to answer baseball-related questions, with a strong preference for a candidate possessing an established foundation of statistical and database management skills.

Responsibilities:

• Perform advanced statistical analysis on large datasets in order to assist in the decision-making of the Baseball Operations department.
• Expand upon existing analytical strategy by improving existing resources and creating new databases, models, and reports.
• Perform ad-hoc research projects as requested and present those results in a concise, straightforward manner.
• Monitor publically available baseball research.
• Provide administrative support and complete general intern duties as requested.

Qualifications:

• Understanding of and passion for the game of baseball.
• Ability to communicate baseball analytics concepts to individuals with diverse baseball backgrounds.
• Strong work ethic, attention to detail, and ability to self-direct.
• Ability to work evenings, weekends, and holidays during the season.
• Bachelor’s degree or relevant practical experience required.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite required.
• Familiarity with current state of freely available baseball research required.
• Knowledge of ball tracking data (e.g. Pitch F/X, TrackMan, etc.) strongly preferred.
• Experience with relational databases and SQL strongly preferred.
• Experience with R statistical software package strongly preferred.
• Experience with at least one scripting language (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby) a plus.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
Interested applicants can email their materials to marlinsinternships@gmail.com.