kickass media 2013

Ben Lindbergh, from the SABR Analytics conference, on how the Indians apply sabermetric principles to marketing:

King found that 80 percent of visitors to Jacobs Field buy tickets within three days of the game. If that’s the case, it might not make sense to start promoting a series well in advance of its start. Digital spending is easy to change on the fly, so the Indians (who use dynamic ticket pricing) can ramp up their advertising right before a series to maximize their return. King showed two graphs of projected advertising spending over time, overlaid on average ticket price for each series. On the graph for 2012, there was little overlap between the two—spending didn’t correspond closely to potential ticket revenue. On the 2013 graph, the two lined up almost perfectly.

All of this optimization adds up. In the past, King believes, the Indians have earned $1.05 for every $1.00 they’ve spent on promotions, and broken even on their media dollars. But now that they’ve fine-tuned their promotion schedule and media spending, they’re projecting massive gains for 2013: a return of $1.85–$2.50 for every dollar spent on promotions, and $1.15–$1.45 for every dollar spent on advertising. Imagine what that would mean for the Indians’ bottom line.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19854

this is kinda just applying business principles to marketing

that's another way to put it, yes. (cept it doesn't seem to be done across the baseball business)

what the nats are doing with their season ticket card is p cool

is this a thread to put things like the BABIP revelation revealed at SABR? cause this is AWESOME

er, wasn't at SABR but w/e

not sure where to put this:

http://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/MLB-puts-squeeze-on-sneaky-fans-with-app-4360795.php

Caleb Garling

Baseball offers many time-honored traditions for its fans, but perhaps none more exhilarating than the seat sneak.

To the uninitiated, it works like this: Buy a cheap ticket in the nosebleed section. Creep to a better spot, say, along the first-base line. Spy some unused seats. Wait. Sneak past an usher and enjoy the rest of the game for a healthy discount.

It's as old as peanuts and Cracker Jack - or at least dates back to 1862, when Union Grounds in Brooklyn, N.Y., was the first fully fenced ballpark and tickets cost a dime.

This season, though, that old tradition may meet its match in new technology. MLB Advanced Media - the Internet arm of Major League Baseball - announced last week that it will begin rolling out Mobile Seat Upgrade, a way for fans who want to upgrade during a game to buy better seats with just a tap of their smartphones.

Fans at Oakland's O.co Coliseum (where better seats are rarely in short supply) will be among the first four teams to have access to the technology, an add-on to MLB's At The Ballpark app. Other teams will add the feature as the season progresses.

The Giants haven't announced when it will come to nearly always sold-out AT&T Park, where fans can already make mobile ticket purchases before games with another app, called Passbook.

"This is designed to give fans a little more during the game," Steve Fanelli, Oakland A's executive director of ticket sales and operations, said of the upgrade app. "We're just trying to completely engage the consumer, from the purchase process and throughout, through their mobile. If we have inventory, we want to give them something new to try."

Fees still to be set
Released last year, At The Ballpark functions as a sort of social media app, allowing fans to "check in," note "likes" on Facebook or cash in on offers and rewards, like Groupon discounts. The app also provides all the logistics for a ballpark visit, like maps, parking and mobile ordering of concessions.

The seat-upgrade feature, tested last season in Atlanta, lets the individual teams determine the price to change seats. In the Atlanta test, those fees ranged from $5 to $55, with the average upgrade costing $16.

Along with the A's, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins will launch the service when the season opens.
While the A's ticketing office is still working out its pricing model, Fanelli anticipates that the amount fans will pay to upgrade will be less than the difference in face value prices, since they wouldn't get a full game at an upgraded seat.

Teams will also be able to get creative and essentially sell some seats twice. For example, if a season ticket holder signals that he or she isn't going to show up, those seats might be resold during the fourth inning. What the ticket holder gets out of that resale would be up to the club.

"Everything you are talking about is found revenue," said Tripp Rackley, CEO of Experience, the Atlanta company that built the app with MLB.

No copies allowed
For fans who purchase a mobile upgrade, there will be a little twist when they encounter the usher in their new section.

The upgraded ticket will appear only on the fan's mobile device; there is no new paper ticket. To prevent the sharing of screenshots of copied tickets, the upgraded ticket will include a "Validate" button to click in front of the usher to prove it's authentic.

At this point, the app works only one way - there is no way to downgrade seats and earn back the difference in price. And, so far anyway, there is no dreaded "convenience fee" for using the feature.

Should MLB succeed with the ticketing-upgrade feature, other leagues, and just about any ticketed event for that matter, will likely follow suit with their own features or apps. Experience's upgrade app has also been used for USC Trojan basketball games. Pogoseat, a startup with offices in San Francisco, has built similar app software and is working with the Golden State Warriors.

The At The Ballpark app has been a hit with tech-savvy fans. Along with its other features, it lists players' Twitter feeds and allows fans to cue players' intro music when they come to the plate or out of the bullpen.

Slow to join digital age
Baseball's continued embrace of apps may be welcome news to critics who believe MLB has been mostly hesitant to join the digital age. New stadiums may have the latest in high-tech scoreboards and sound systems to entertain fans on hand, but online, the league has famously patrolled YouTube for footage of vintage games and issued takedown notices.

Search for video of "The Catch," perhaps the most famous play in 49ers history, and you'll find myriad results. A search for video of any classic baseball moment, however, will come up virtually empty. Grant Brisbee, a columnist for online sports site SBNation, sarcastically notes that "MLB wants stuff like this taken down because they want you to go to MLB.com and not buy the vintage baseball games that they don't have for sale. Makes perfect sense."

Brisbee notes the YouTube embargo makes sense if the league is quietly uploading every game to MLB.com with the plan to charge for them. But since that hasn't been the case so far, its actions appear out of step regarding a technology the other major professional sports leagues have at least tolerated.

As far as the seat-upgrade app, its success may rely more on practical rather than philosophical issues. Like getting cell phone reception at some ballparks, something fans often struggle with at the game.

If a fan wants to upgrade but can't find a good signal, he might just go back to sneaking past the usher. And if he does, but still doesn't feel like paying a fee, now he'll know what seats will be open.

Major League Baseball owners, despite boasting $8 billion in annual revenue and climbing, are moving toward eliminating the pension plans of all personnel not wearing big league uniforms, sources told ESPNNewYork.com.

http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/9070691/mlb-owners-want-abolish-pensions-personnel-sources-say

endlessly charming.

Never thought I'd find Reinsdorf heroic, but good on him and fuck the rest of them.

this is an awesome article if you're really into the mechanics of base stealing

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9072118/jonah-keri-art-stealing-bases

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/minors/season-preview/2013/2614870.html

ballpark adjusted stats for minor league parks. steve shasta r.i.p.

I guess the BP daily podcast doesn't require subscription, cuz I listened to this w/out signing in. Today's is about what the "inevitable" (next year?) global draft will mean.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19928

"A growing number of fastball pitchers are throwing at speeds reached by only a handful of hurlers a decade ago. Why the velocity revolution hit warp speed, and what it means for baseball."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323419104578376793663086624.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-dodgers-giants-math-20130329,0,2525977.story

By Geoffrey Mohan

March 29, 2013, 1:30 p.m.

Deliver the champagne to Chavez Ravine and Anaheim. The Los Angeles Dodgers will edge out the San Francisco Giants by a game in the National League West division, while the Angels will tie the Oakland Athletics in the American League West.

If baseball is played on paper, that's what should happen, according to mathematician Bruce Bukiet of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Like the proverbial groundhog does each February, Bukiet emerges at the end of spring training season with his prognostications for America's national pastime.

An admitted baseball wonk, Bukiet has been running his "Moneyball" analyses for 13 years to forecast the record of each Major League Baseball team, much like Davidson College's Tim Chartier has his math students calculate the NCAA men's basketball tournament brackets.

The Dodgers should win 88 games, to San Francisco's 87, while the Angels and Athletics each should win 92, according to Bukiet's model.

Expect the Atlanta Braves to win 94 and clinch the NL East by one game over the Washington Nationals. The St. Louis Cardinals should win 90 and take the Central Division by three games, over the Cincinnati Reds. Bottom line: The World Series Champion Giants chill in their foggy home while the rest of those teams play ball in October.

The Detroit Tigers should have the best record in baseball, with 102 wins, and clinch the AL Central early, by 20 games over the Chicago White Sox. Bukiet makes no prediction about whether the Yankee-slaying Tigers will become meek Tiggers once the World Series comes around.

The tightest race will be in the AL East, with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees each winning 87 games.

Bukiet tags the Houston Astros with the worst record: .346, followed closely by the Marlins, Cubs, Twins, Rockies and Orioles.

Bukiet relies on the Markov Chain method, which ultimately gives him a 25-by-25 matrix for each player, showing his probability of changing a state of a game in one appearance at the plate.

What you know as an "at bat" is just a transition from one state of the game to another. If you have to do the math, there are the 25 "states" of the game during any half-inning. There either is, or is not, a runner at first, second or third, so that's two to the third power, or eight possibilities. There are either zero, one or two outs. Eight times three is 24. The end state, three outs, is the final state, for 25 states of the game.

Bukiet's best bragging rights are his back-to-back prediction championships at baseballphd.com in 2010 and 2011. Last year, though, he picked only two of the six division winners.

Not sure I believe that Houston will have a better winning percentage this year (even if it's only one win).

well they ARE moving to the inferior American League and into a division with puny LAA and weak-sauce TEX

thing is it's hard to lose 110+ games, gotta earn it

tall catchers are better at framing high pitches

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=20211

the obsession w/ framing is getting annoying

washington senators broadcaster bob wolff, now 92

undercuts this thread but

10:04 Jeff Sullivan: My honest recommendation would be to eliminate as much media coverage from your sporting experience as possible

@FernandoTatis17 13m
Chan Ho...if you are reading this...i hope you are well...today is the day i blasted two grandslams off of you...i am very lucky to face you

the obsession w/ framing is getting annoying

think so? The BP annual maintains that Miguel Montero's lousy framing cost Arizona pitchers about 15 runs last year.

i assume that's based on pitch f/x data saying the zone effectively shrinks with him catching?

how long have we had pitch f/x data, btw?

cameron mentioned in a chat this week that the main reason he doesn't trust the framing bonanza is that the supposed runs saved doesn't show up in catcher ERA. which is a much older statistic that no one ever really took seriously, even though it's basically trying to measure the same thing.

I think that's exactly the case mook.... all the BP articles on framing are free, Lindbergh sez, cuz pf/x data is.

since 2006 playoffs btw

i guess if the stats dudes are finding correlation i should come around, but -- i feel like this is a tv thing, like how lefty-on-lefty looks unhittable when the camera is in left-center.

from the outfield we see the catcher frame, but why would an ump care where the glove is, if he can even see it clearly from his angle? he sees the pitch, and the plate doesn't move. i'm more willing to buy that umps are influenced by the shoulder they tend to look over, but i just don't see the glove, or late movement of it, mattering.

(probably wrote this before at least once, but whatevs)

so Cohen & Hernandez in the Mets booth the other day seemed to be whining about the trend of teams taking more pitches, and apparently Verducci has too. They may be overlooking something.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2013/5/1/4288968/baseball-is-cyclical

I wonder if rising use/availability of statistical data are heavily weighted at the moment towards favoring pitching/defenses as well (i.e. spray chart data, pitch fx, etc). Knowing where a player is most likely to hit a ball and what kind of pitches/locations they are most likely struggle with seems like it would be pretty beneficial. Not sure if batters have gotten any sorts of similar boons. Also as pointed out in the article comments doesn't hurt that dudes seem to be throwing harder fastballs as well.

this is awesome

holy shit, didn't realize vernon wells made 24.6 million!

Posnanski compares Miller/Harvey to other rookie pitcher duos (he bends the definition a bit--Harvey's nine innings over rookie status):

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/05/11/the-awesomeness-of-miller-and-harvey/

I thought Vida Blue would have been part of an awesome pairing, but a) there were no other great rookie pitchers in '71, and b) Blue had pitched a bit in '69 and '70, and was 30 innings over the limit going into '71.

this is amazing

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/sports/bryce-harper-swing-of-beauty/#

The Original Forkball

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/5/16/4337542/robert-coello-forkball-knuckleball-history-pitch

Who Has The Most Total Runs in 2013?

And your MVPs thus far are... Votto and Machado.

http://www.actasports.com/statoftheweek/

Do they have a full player list anywhere that goes beyond that top 11 in Total Runs?

dunno

Baseball Reference has Machado and Pedroia at the top of the AL WAR list (but Votto/Harvey a half-game behind Kershaw).

getcher lifetime pass!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjkiebus/incredibly-rare-mlb-lifetime-passes

http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/06/08/why-baseball-games-take-long/wikaeRMGatBDGDefpbFE1H/story.html

"Andy Pettitte and the Van Doren Gene"--Charles, not Mamie.

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2013/06/andy-pettitte-and-van-doren-gene.html#more

(If you check the comments, you'll see there's a Bizarro World Eric H. out there posting on baseball blogs.)

Favourite comment: "Curt Schilling not only doesn't have the Van Doren gene - he has the Curt Schilling gene."

The recent history of walk-off wins and HRs

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/6/18/4440026/bob-costas-mets-kirk-nieuwenhuis-decline-of-western-civilization-chris-holmes-wasp-pool-mother

where hitters' eyes go at bat

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2013/06/12/really-good-baseball-players-dont-just-keep-their-eye-on-the-ball/

Does fatigue late in the season erode plate discipline?

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=20990

bob tewksbury shares his notebook entries on the chicago cubs, from 1992:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/tewksburys-notebook-notes-on-the-cubs-1992/

“On the top of the page, I wrote ’Phil Collins: In the Air Tonight.’ That would have been a song I listened to, to do some imagery with. I was doing a lot of visualization back then.”

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/7/11/4511432/home-run-record-barry-bonds-roger-maris-the-league-orwellian

ESPN's SweetSpot blog must be either history or undergoing a redesign--there's a handful of sponsored links (I hope the first and last time I ever type those words) up on the front page, and old columns can't be accessed. Hope it's a redesign; I like David Schoenfield a lot.

Table setters who can't find the silverware:

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/7/12/4518286/dusty-baker-zack-cozart-number-two-leadoff-hitters-on-base-percentage-fail

thought this article was really interesting re astronomically high pitch counts for japanese high school pitchers

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9452014/pitcher-tomohiro-anraku-future-japanese-baseball-espn-magazine

Stacking Matt Harvey's first calendar year against other pitching phenoms:

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=21365

I was most shocked to see John Montefusco, then Rick Reuschel.

This part reminds me of Lincecum:

Tsuyoshi Yoda, a former pitcher and Japan's pitching coach at the World Baseball Classic, explains the Japanese obsession with mechanics. For him, the pitcher -- Japanese pitchers in particular, he says, because they are smaller than Americans and can't rely solely on the strength of their arms -- must begin his delivery either with his feet or his hands. Yoda compares good mechanics to a row of dominoes. If everything is lined up properly, the last domino will be released. But if any single domino is out of alignment, the entire construction falls apart.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=15295

this is pretty cool:

http://itsaboutthemoney.net/archives/2013/08/12/the-all-homegrown-mlb/

it imagines the lineups for each team if they could only field players that they drafted and developed themselves.

If you're looking for some good beat writers:

http://deadspin.com/the-best-and-worst-baseball-beat-reporters-according-t-1111597704

https://twitter.com/msimonespn/status/366944486913343491/photo/1

http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/baseball-player-name-notes.shtml

Trent Hubbard born Trent Hubbard

Andy Coakley a.k.a. Jack Mc Allister In 1902

former ILX babysittee McLouth makes the All-Surprising team

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/8/21/4644346/most-surprising-players-in-baseball-worst-best-florimon

wow, that table at the end is pretty amazing!

Looking for injury indicators in Matt Harvey's game data:

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=21642

btw do you guys know about COMMANDf/x? (see link within)

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9603949/the-tragedy-derek-jeter-defense

Lindbergh bringin' it there

http://www.fieldingbible.com/jeter.asp

never read this intro essay by james, but it supports my belief (just based on watching him play for years) about jeter's defense ever since seeing his advanced defensive stats however many years ago: he really is excellent at fielding pop-ups and charging slow-rollers

This is good:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2013/08/explaining-cabrera-trout-and-war.html

And helpful. I'm like Joe's friend--the difference last year was clear, this year less clear.

(He needs to slow down, though, or hire a proofreader. Spotted at least three typos.)

about to read that piece but i'm fine with miggy winning MVP this year

i would like to read something that explains how park factors are determined. if comerica has been a pitcher's park forever but recently has been a hitter's park...do the tigers have the game's best offense (partly) because they play in what is apparently a hitters' park? or is it now considered a hitters park because, every game played there happens to feature the best hitter of the decade. there must be some sort of adjustment for how visiting teams do there vs in their own parks, but again, how is that influenced by how good the tigers pitching staff happens to be? if a hypothetical team had a staff of AAAA guys and a lineup full of all-stars, that team's place would have to be seen as a pretty good hitters' park, right?

i'm sure these are all addressed in the formula, i just want to know

it's not really hard to determine. it's just a comparison of hitting and pitching numbers at home vs road for both home and away teams. the club's level of talent has nothing to do with it. it would be a pretty useless stat if it that was the case. minute maid is still a hitter's park.

and comerica hasn't been a pitcher's park forever -- they just quietly moved their fences in a decade ago after gaining a reputation for being huge, and then they were really shitty for years so they never amassed any big home run totals. their pitchers still allowed a shit-ton of homers in those years.

btwn 2003 and 2005 they had 24 double digit homer seasons and not one player hit 30

btwn 2003 and 2005 they had 11 starters give up 20+ homers. 20 seasons of double digit homers and 3 with 30+. there were more strds then and they were terrible pitchers but that is really pathetic and not possible in a pitcher's park. they were still terrible in 2002 but they still allowed way fewer homers.

HR/9 in 02: 1.04
HR/9 in 03: 1.22

Trout-Cabrera, Cabrera-Trout, the two names ought to hyphenated at this point. Anything comparing the two of them is still catnip to the internets: that Posnanski piece had eight or nine comments when I turned in last night, it's up to 65 today. (Depending upon the subject, I'd estimate Posnanski's columns typically generate 20-30 comments--although one on Bonds the other day had 80+).

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/9/6/4699988/pitcher-stolen-bases-history

Hide your catchers, hide your wife.

i mean cool idea but god i hate sports writing sometimes

that was rough but he's actually pretty funny most of the time. at any rate it's better than

http://i.imgur.com/BdqXzR7.jpg

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2013/09/if-i-were-baseball-stats-king.html

Roger Angell, age 93, on Mo bye:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/09/mo-town.html

If you missed Jonathan Mahler's "baseball is irrelevant" wankery in the NYT Sunday, Neyer eviscerates it forthwith:

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/10/2/4795088/mlb-baseball-finances-television-ratings-attendance

haven't listened to this yet, but it sounds intersting:

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/02/228196553/at-49-jamie-moyers-pitching-career-goes-into-extra-innings

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9859539/view/full/the-1989-world-series-earthquake-oral-history

Eckersley: You're in the clubhouse. You're underneath all that. It's like iron screeching. Like there's a train coming through the door. You knew. The auxiliary lights hadn't even come on yet and I was yelling, "Earthquake!" Dave Parker shit his pants, man.

first, teams' market worth infographic:

http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-23/mlb-team-values.html

and the olde lies of Beelzebud:

According to the figures that Selig released -- and which USA Today published as if they were gospel, by the way -- almost every team lost millions and millions of dollars in 2001. With, apparently, no end to the red ink in sight.

I thought it was bullshit, and I wrote that it was bullshit -- except I didn't use that word, because I was working for the Big Mouse -- and Selig called my house to bitch me out for an hour.

http://www.baseballnation.com/hot-corner/2013/10/24/5022970/commissioner-bud-selig-mlb-franchise-values-contraction-twins-expos

anyone surprised the Mets are still worth $2 billion btw?

don't know where to put this but this right here is incredible

http://kotaku.com/youve-never-seen-animated-baseball-gifs-like-this-befo-1451309106

I love that '89 earthquake Steinbush quote to Fay Vincent: "I saw you on TV at that press conference. You weren't wearing a tie. A commissioner should always wear a tie. You looked like a bum."

Dave Henderson: We all hated Eckersley because he was basically a dick on the mound. I'd faced the guy for 10 years and he was a dick before. The only reason we let him live was because he was on our team.

La Russa: I told ownership and the front office that if we celebrated, it would be improper to celebrate the normal way with champagne.

Dave Henderson: I don't think there was a vote. Just a consensus. We didn't have a young team. Most of us had 10, 12 years in the major leagues.

Parker: Ihad a bottle of champagne in the locker room. I sat in the locker room drinking champagne by myself.

^^my man.

dammit

Parker: I had a bottle of champagne in the locker room. I sat in the locker room drinking champagne by myself.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/10/why-i-quit-major-league-baseball.html

When you’re standing at the plate and you hit a sharp foul ball to the backstop, the spot on the bat that made contact gets hot

Cardenas interviewed on the BP podcast

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22176

Pat Jordan profiles vintner Tom Seaver:

Tom took a plastic baggy out of his shirt pocket and emptied a bunch of pills on the table. He began popping one after another into his mouth. "Mostly vitamins," he said. "I have stage-three Lyme disease from a deer tick back in Connecticut, years ago. A few months ago, I thought my mind was going. I couldn't remember things." He thought he was suffering from the onset of dementia. He became fearful, withdrawn, for the first time in his life. He was afraid he'd get lost in the New York City streets he used to own. After some tests, it was almost a relief to find out that he had Lyme disease, which could be controlled by vitamins, medicine, diet -- no wine, a cruel irony. And mental stimulation.

That's another reason was I was there. To stimulate Tom, or, as he used to put it, to drive him mad with my incessant, intellectually abstract questions. "Tom, did you ever think about innocence?" I once asked. He looked at me. "I mean, if you lose it can you ever get it back?"

"Who thinks about such shit?" he said. "Innocence! You either have it, or you don't."

Ever since I left baseball, I've spent my life thinking about "such shit." Tom has spent his life doing physical work, pitching, gardening, sweating, his hands caked with dirt. It's how we're different. Oscar and Felix. Except in some ways, we're not different. I'm a blue-collar guy, too, but I'm doing a white-collar job. Tom's a blue-collar guy who has hidden his considerable intellect, as if embarrassed by it.

"My brain is almost working again," he said, as he swallowed the last of his pills. "But I still have short-term memory loss." I said, "Me too. We're getting old, Tom." He shrugged, said, "Maybe. Lyme disease makes me sleep a lot, too. I was tired all the time." Then he smiled. "But yesterday I worked 12 hours in the vineyard. That was a great day." I told him I never sleep. Two hours, then awake three hours. He said, "That's 'cause your brain is always working. You have to get it right. You want to sleep? Get Lyme disease."

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/64585192/

sometimes getting caught up with this thread is just amazing.