We sat down with Rob Arthur, Ben Diamond, Greg Matthews, and Travis Sawchik to talk about the MLB playoffs. We touched on playoff formats (past, present, and future?) and then moved on to talk about roster construction and optimization for the playoffs. After that, Harry and Kendall talk about the things they learned this week. 

Links: 


Alternate Reality Playoff Races by Ben Diamond
Let’s Improve the Wild-Card Round by Travis Sawchik
The Yankees Are Built to Bullpen the Wild Card Game by Travis Sawchik
Baseball’s ‘Hot Hand’ Is Real by Rob Arthur and Greg Matthews
TWIL Harry: Beans & Bagels You never know where you're going to meet up with Bill James
TWIL Kendall: Tyler Flowers Good catcher or best catcher? 


Episode 9: Playoff Formats and Rosters w/ Rob Arthur, Ben Diamond, Greg Matthews, and Travis Sawchik

Kendall Guillemette and Harry Pavlidis discuss baseball statistics, as well as look for the stories and people behind the stats.

Sports

We talk about the Great Home Run Surge of 2019, the Rabbit Ball, Slippier in the Air Ball, the call up of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Alex Rodriguez on YouTube. 

Links: 


Moonshot: The Baseball Is Juiced (Again) by Robert Arthur
Moonshot: Exit Velocity Is Higher Than Ever
 by Robert Arthur
Moonshot: The Rabbit Ball is Flying in Triple-A Too by Robert Arthur
The Call-Up: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. by Jarrett Seidler and Kevin Jebens
Circle Change: Who’s Hitting the Extra Dingers? by Zach Crizer
Kendall's writing for the Prospectus Notebook
ARod on YouTube


Episode 36: Dingers, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and ARod

We talked with Jared Diamond about recent MLB rules changes. Specifically related to one of our favorite subjects, two-way players. We address how teams will have to designate players as, pitchers, hitters, or two-way and what effect those rules will have on the game. We also get a peak into Jared's upcoming book. 

Harry and Kendall also dig into some of the upcoming changes that MLB will be testing out in the Atlantic League. 

Episode 35: New MLB Rules with Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal

We chatted with the creators and maintainers of four major projection systems, ZiPS (Dan Szymborski), Steamer (Jared Cross), THE BAT (Derek Carty) and Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA (Harry Pavlidis) about how their systems are created, how the past is used to project future performance and how projecting young players without much track record can be tricky. 

Music is "Open Your Face" by Parker Projection. 

Episode 34: Projection Roundtable with the creators of ZiPS, Steamer, THE BAT and Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA

Deep dive into DRC+ and PECOTA with Jonathan Judge and Rob McQuown of Baseball Prospectus. 


Stats Chat
DRC Updates and Improvements
DRC+ and Observables
All DRC+ coverage
Projected Standings based on PECOTA
How to watch Serie del Caribe 2019


Episode 33: PECOTA 2019 with Jonathan Judge and Rob McQuown

Shohei Ohtani revisited, baseball Hall of Fame bar lowering and how it affects who gets in, lining up optimal player development and what happens when you launch a new statistic. 

Available at Baseball Prospectus

Episode 9: Playoff Formats and Rosters w/ Rob Arthur, Ben Diamond, Greg Matthews, and Travis Sawchik

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