I've been intending to do this a while, but here are a few links I wanted to share that, for one reason or another, didn't get the FanShot treatment. Enjoy.
Year2 at Team Speed Kills takes at how his bowl projections did, while Matt at Statistically Speaking looks at how spreads can be used to judge bowl performances. And no, I'm not just bringing this up to point out how well our F/+ picks did (23-11-1, baby!); how dare you imply such a thing.
While you're at Statistically Speaking, be sure to check out his SDPI posts (for starters: SEC, Big 12). It's a really interesting way to compare teams to others within their own conference.
Head on over to Fangraphs to get a lesson on How to Speak Sabermetrics to a Mainstream Audience.
Don’t Overload Your Audience. There are some people out there that enjoy slogging through articles that feature paragraph after paragraph of statistics and numbers, but they certainly aren’t in the majority. In fact, there are lots of people out there that are math-phobic and are immediately turned off once you start spouting lots of different statistics. These readers shouldn’t be your target audience, since it’s likely you’ll never reach them no matter how hard you try, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still try and make your articles as simple as possible.
When I talk with friends, I normally pick one or two sabermetrics statistics to focus on. While you could easily include 10 statistics when discussing Joe Mauer’s value, why overload you audience with 10 statistics when only one or two will get the job done? Also, there are ways to use a statistic without delving into the specifics: “Mauer has a high walk rate, walking as often as he strikes out, which helps him reach base in 40% of his plate appearances.” That’s a lot easier to reach than, “Mauer has a career 12.1% BB%, which is higher than his career 11.4% K%, and his career OBP is a robust .406.”
This has been the most difficult part of the Summer Vacation series. I want to provide a reliable, high-information format that doesn't make first-timers go blind from all the charts and terms they don't immediately recognize. I almost want to just put a "If the charts don't make sense, just skip to the words" disclaimer at the top.
Can I interest you in a lengthy piece about "brainy, numbers-crunching Jewish fans"?
Two purely human interest stories: Oregon awards letters to a bunch of females who earned them a long time ago, and a 52-year old boxer turns pro and wants a belt.
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