An Announcement
Dave · March 11, 2009 at 6:12 pm · Filed Under Mariners
So, this column isn’t really baseball related, but I thought you might all enjoy it anyway.
Yes, this is a regular thing. Yes, I’ll be writing about baseball for them this summer.
Yes, I’m excited.
Congratulations, Dave.
Congrats, Dave! That is pretty frickin awesome.
And hey, we understand you’re stretched pretty thin right now, so if you have to slack off a bit here and there we’ll forgive you. It’s quality over quantity anyway, and your work is definitely quality.
Hear, hear. Pretty sure the Mariners blogosphere is hands down the best in baseball.
Ack, Dave is now a puppet of Rupert Murdoch!
I kid (and of course, so are The Simpsons)
Congratulations Dave, this is a fantastic addition to your resume and a wonderful opportunity for you to spread the gospel to the real people who don’t live in their parents’ basements.
Considering the WSJ is one of the few examples on the net of a news outlet that is successful while charging for access, I think it’s already saving — or destroying — print media without him.
Dave – the luck factor you reference appears to be based somewhat along the same lines as the Pythagorean Theorem for projecting baseball records. Do you think that the smaller sample sizes (32 games in hoops vs 162 in MLB) and wider point swings (20 point blowouts in hoops vs 1-2 run games in MLB) would make it much less reliable from a statisctical persepective?
Congratulations!!! Well deserved!!!
The luck factor is also based on the standard deviation of those point totals, so it’s more complicated than the standard pythag. Presumably that eliminates some noise.
The question is, can we do that for baseball?
Yikes. I am terrified to ask this. What does the Gaussian Method say about our Huskies? You ducked it gracefully above, but c’mon! This is hard on the ticker!
Pomeroy’s ratings, found here, have UW as the 14th best team in the country, and say that they haven’t really been lucky at all in terms of wins and losses.
You’re the greatest, Dave. Congratulations!
Dave, Congrats on joining the dark side. (I kid.)
now that’s a fun chart.
Apparently Gonzaga has been somewhat unlucky in their losses, and is ranked pretty highly. fun to see how this plays out over the next 4 weeks.
good work dave!
You’ve already been accused of East Coast Media Bias in the comments section of that article. That didn’t take long.
Has Auburn been lucky or are they just generally lucky to be playing in the SEC this year (and will they be lucky come selection sunday)?
Dave,
Does the WSJ gig give you “credential” press status and access to the secret vault of the locker-room? After all, you can’t understand baseball unless you see Silva in a jock strap.
Congrats, well deserved!
How ’bout that?!
From Main Street to Wall Street (Journal).
Congratulations. And the comments section is already cracking me up. Now write something about how awesome U-Dub is… pretty please?
Woo hoo!
Awesome scale off-the-charts. Congratulations, Dave. The world needs every good writer it can get.
As a long time reader I want to add my congratulations. Well done and I hope this brings even more opportunities your way.
Ten more years until Dave gets to vote for the Hall of Fame!
Let me be the first to say it: congratulations 🙂
Five comments so far. All very obviously from MSU fans. All… not very nice things said about Dave.
Congrats Dave, and it should be interesting to see the baseball coverage you bring to the mainstream readers (though, I suppose WSJ readers may not exactly be mainstream).
In every sport, defense is the one constant. Offenses can go through stretches of atrophy, but typically, a good defense stays a good defense, as long as all of the players are healthy. I’ve watched plenty of college basketball in my life, and defense wins championships. Plain and simple. And MSU’s defense, when healthy, is mind-blowing.
I’m not sure if I particularly agree with the sentiment that a conference that will likely get 8 of its 11 teams in the tournament is akin to third grade height contests, but I’m ecstatic for Dave nonetheless. Can’t wait for the baseball-related content.
That’s a nice small college basketball article. It looks like the column will be about looking at a variety of sports from a stats-oriented perspective? As they might say in that baseball powerhouse Australia, good on ya mate, for not limiting yourself to baseball. But if indeed you’ll be writing about sports in general, the statistical world has exploded in size and it’s very difficult to keep up with it all. I can’t even keep up with all the stuff in pro basketball alone, much less the even larger amount of stuff going on in baseball, and there’ve been similar statistical revolutions in football. Not sure about hockey or soccer.
Hey, I’m eating lunch here!
My statement about this saving print media was intentionally hyperbolic in an attempt to illustrate how highly I think of Dave’s writing.
Seeing my favorite sports writer (that’s you, Dave) get a WSJ gig is like watching my favorite pitcher (King Felix) shut out the Yankees. Congradulations! I’d also love to see this new WSJ gig set you on the path to BBWAA membership, Dave. But if the WSJ got you some good media credentials, how would you want to use them? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the sense that you’re happy as a clam living where you are and have little desire to do traditional sports media-type things (at-the-ballpark interviewing and reporting, for example). What (and this is for everyone) are the biggest deficiencies in baseball reporting today that a few new reporters pulled from the sabermetric community could remedy? Are media credentials a good avenue for fixing these?
So then who should I pick in my bracket Dave? 😉 Congrats!
I must add my congratulations as well. I hope that your analytical skills and writing abilities take you to even greater heights.
Wow, that’s awesome news Dave. Congratulations. I’m so happy for you.
Congrats. I had no idea you were so versatile.
Way to go, Dave.
This is great news! Congrats on the new gig.
It’ll be fun to read your take on sports other than baseball.
Seriously, where do you find the time? Newlywed, Fangraphs and here, and now the WSJ?
Wow, congrats Dave. Now, despite all those who think bloggers live in their parents’ basement, it is pretty obvious that blogging is a meritocracy. The best writers, in the long term, are recognized as such. It’s pretty cool to see you get this gig and drive that point home. Though how you haven’t been offered an analyst’s position in a Major League front office by now is beyond me.
One thing about Pomeroy is that he doesn’t deal in raw point margins; he deals in efficiency margins, based off of adjusted points per possession. It’s still a bit flawed, in that we know teams can either artificially run up the score late or draw close(r) late, but it’s a surprisingly accurate measure of the strength of a team.
If you look back at previous years, Pomeroy’s ratings — which are designed to be predictive — have predicted outcomes in the NCAA Tournament far better than any other metric measure.
Oh, and if you’re looking for an edge in your bracket, read this and look here.