Major League Baseball has announced that it intends to cancel the Hall of Fame game, an annual exhibition that has taken place in Cooperstown for years. As someone who attended many Hall of Fame games in his youth, this makes me sad. The HOF game presents a chance for fans to get up close and […]

In a recent Freakonomics blog post, Steven Levitt wondered whether “our sabermetric friends have done any research on whether firing a manager mid-season helps a baseball team?” Since Dr. Levitt is a mini-hero of mine, and since I suppose that in turn I might count myself as one of those “sabermetric friends” (though I have […]

I’ll do a full wrap later, but here is the liveblog archive of the event: Rob Neyer just walked by When do you tear down a stadium? Projections and steroids Title defense Nobody gives a… Who would you start a league with? Intangibles

Rick Carlisle, former NBA player and coach, is telling Bill James that there are some things that you just can’t measure. You can’t measure a player’s heart, he says. We hear that all the time. In the previous panel, however, somebody asked Bill what teams should be measuring and quantifying that they aren’t now. He […]

We hear this question all the time. But at the Baseball Analytics panel of the Sloan Sports Conference, this question was posed to some serious baseball insiders: author Vince Genarro, Diamondbacks, Diamond Mind creator Tom Tippett, scout Joe Bohringer, and sabermetric legend Bill James. Who did they pick, considering age and contract status? Vince and […]

Peter Gammons just related a fun story. Apparently, Bill Parcells and Mark Shapiro met at Scott Pioli’s wedding (who was marrying Parcells’s daughter). At the time, Shapiro was farm director for the Indians. Parcells asked him how things were going. Shapiro started talking about about his players and their injuries when Parcells interrupted him and […]

Well, I guess I was right about Bill James. After munching on sandwiches with Keith Woolner – a perfectly delightful human being – and a short chat with Rob Neyer, I filed into the auditorium for the Title Defense panel when who else but Bill James should walk by. He’s going to be on panelist […]

Still at the Sloan Sports Conference, I’m watching a panel on gaming. Andy Andres, Mark Kortekaas of of CBS Sports, and Jeff Ma of PROTRADE are mostly talking about fantasy sports. Andy, who does data analysis at BaseballHQ, was asked about how steroid affect projections. What did he say? “You just never know.” Andy thinks […]

I’m still here at the Sloan Sports Conference, and I’m watching a panel discuss venue and stadium management. All the panelists have been involved with the financing and construction of various sports stadia and arenas. One issue that was discussed was when a stadium needed to be replaced. The answer, of course, was that you […]

I’m here at the Sloan Sports Conference, and the keynote speech (Wyc Grousbeck, CEO of the Celtics) is about to begin. I’m sitting next to David Pinto of Baseball Musings (he’s liveblogging the event). I was at this conference last year, and it was a blast. This year is no different. Last night, I spent […]