Best Baseball Websites?
Von Fourche
What are the best baseball websites on the net? Baseball news, stats,
and other things? I always check the sports section at usatoday.com for
baseball (and other sports) news. Lately I've been reading yahoo
sports/baseball for baseball news.
How about a list of the best online sites?
Thanks!
Tim M
(Neyer) has been moved to the subscription section. The CNN/SI site is
OK too.
For reference of history and stats, baseball-reference.com is downright
awesome.
For more advanced stats and cutting edge research, Baseball Prospectus
is king. They require a subscription for most of their articles,
though most of their stats are still free.
For discussion of the day's topics, Baseball Primer is a lot of fun,
the posters there are very knowledgeable, and it has less trolls than
this place.
However in Primer you can't start a new thread, you can only try to
shout your way to attention in the daily lounge, or hijack an existing
thread (ahem, Mets fans). If you have a specific question or topic in
mind, RSB is the place for it.
Those are my favorites, would like to hear of others.
Laura Bush murdered her boy friend
Got that right, dood.
Mischa Gelman
> What are the best baseball websites on the net? Baseball news, stats,
> and other things?
The ones I read regularly are:
Nippon Pro Baseball site
www.geocities.com/s_borisov/jb2005/index.html - Box scores for every NPB
game and links to articles
www.japanesebaseball.com - Michael Westbay's site. The forums usually
have very good ongoing discussions
www.japanbaseballdaily.com - The best English-language source for stats
for NPB
Stats
www.baseball-reference.com - The best for MLB stats
www.baseball-almanac.com - The best online source for records and trivia
www.baseballlibrary.com - A great source for what happened on any given
day in baseball history
http://auricle.net/html/all_players.html - excellent biographies for a
few dozen players
--
Take care...lest you eat and are contented and build fine homes in which
to live, and your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold
increase and your heart grows proud and forgets Hashem, your G-d...and
you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me
this wealth' (Deut. 8:11-17)
Kenny1111
The first poster wasn't really serious, I don't think, but since you
replied seriously, here are some other sites. There's
www.hardballtimes.com, which is good for analysis, and then a number of
blogs that are very good:
www.all-baseball.com (variety of issues)
www.baseballtoaster.com (variety of issues)
www.baseballanalysts.com (variety, including some focus on prospects)
www.futilityinfielder.com (Yankees, some Dodgers, and general baseball)
yankeefan.blogspot.com (Yankees)
www.aarongleeman.com (Twins)
I'm a Yankees fan so I know a bit more about Yankees' blogs than others,
but if you go to some of the more general ones there are specific blogs
for a bunch of teams (Cubs, Dodgers, Whitesox I think to name a few).
All of these blogs are in general much better than anything you'll ever
get from a newspaper or news site in my opinion.
Von Fourche
"Mischa Gelman" <mge...@city-net.com> wrote in message
news:42381701$0$3456$4d5e...@reader.city-net.com...
> Von Fourche wrote:
> > What are the best baseball websites on the net? Baseball news,
stats,
> > and other things?
>
> The ones I read regularly are:
> Nippon Pro Baseball site
> www.geocities.com/s_borisov/jb2005/index.html - Box scores for every NPB
> game and links to articles
> www.japanesebaseball.com - Michael Westbay's site. The forums usually
> have very good ongoing discussions
> www.japanbaseballdaily.com - The best English-language source for stats
> for NPB
> Stats
I've been hoping to find some decent sites that deal with Japanese baseball.
Thanks!
Mischa Gelman
> What are the best baseball websites on the net? Baseball news, stats,
> and other things?
The ones I read regularly are:
Nippon Pro Baseball site
www.geocities.com/s_borisov/jb2005/index.html - Box scores for every NPB
game and links to articles
www.japanesebaseball.com - Michael Westbay's site. The forums usually
have very good ongoing discussions
www.japanbaseballdaily.com - The best English-language source for stats
for NPB
Stats
rrh...@acme.com
Tim M wrote:
> For reference of history and stats, baseball-reference.com is
downright
> awesome.
It can be a bit spotty for some 19th century stuff. Not straight-up
statistics. Those are as good as we are likely to see. But stuff like
team nicknames incorporate some assumptions which aren't really valid
for the 19th century. But in general this is a great site. I probably
use it more than any other single site.
Richard R. Hershberger
Bob Roman
>Tim M wrote:
>> For reference of history and stats, baseball-reference.com is
>> downright awesome.
>
>It can be a bit spotty for some 19th century stuff.
> stuff like
>team nicknames incorporate some assumptions which aren't really valid
>for the 19th century.
Could you give some examples?
Bob Roman
rrh...@acme.com
Sure. It tells us that in 1881 the Boston National League club played
as the 'Red Caps'. This is pretty much entirely untrue. The National
League at that time mandated stodgy names. Their official name was
something like the 'Boston Base Ball Club' (perhaps with a
'Professional' in there). Inasmuch as the team "played as" anything,
it was the 'Bostons'. This was by far the most common way they were
referred to in the newspapers. I don't doubt that they wore red caps,
and it would not surprise me to find some journalist called them the
'Red Caps' (though I haven't come across any examples, and I have been
reading a lot of baseball journalism from exactly that year for a
research project). But journalists called them lots of things. This
is 19th century journalism we're talking about, and sports journalism
at that. My favorite example is from the Philadelphia Inquirer
headline about the Boston team being in town, calling them the
"Yankees". That was startling. The point is, why does 'Red Caps' get
elevated? I have no idea.
Many of these 'played as' names are at least quasi-bogus. Was the
Philadelphia National League team called the 'Quakers' in the 1880s?
Sometimes. They were also called the 'Phillies' sometimes. The New
York American Association team was officially the 'Metropolitans' but
this was frequently shorted to 'Mets'. So which did they "play as"?
(The Philadelphia American Association team, on the other hand, really
was called the 'Athletics', both officially and colloquially: not, so
far as I know, the A's.)
Then there are questions of team continuity. These can be legitimately
dodgy, if not downright metaphysical. A case can be made that the 1882
Troy NL team and the 1883 New York NL team are the same, but then again
an argument can be made that they are not. The 1884 Washington Union
Association team and the 1886 Washington NL team probably are the same,
but that intervening year of non-major status is more than many people
can wrap their minds around.
I tend to give the site a pass on these questions of contintuity, but
there really ought to be a few asterisks strewn about. But the 'played
as' bit is in many instances clearly bogus. It is based on an
assumption about how teams are named that is simply anachronistic.
Not that it isn't a terrific website for the vast majority of purposes.
Richard R. Hershberger
Bob Roman
>I tend to give the site a pass on these questions of contintuity, but
>there really ought to be a few asterisks strewn about. But the 'played
>as' bit is in many instances clearly bogus. It is based on an
>assumption about how teams are named that is simply anachronistic.
Thanks.
Bob Roman
Gerry Myerson
rrh...@acme.com wrote:
> Tim M wrote:
>
> > For reference of history and stats, baseball-reference.com is
> downright
> > awesome.
>
> It can be a bit spotty for some 19th century stuff. Not straight-up
> statistics. Those are as good as we are likely to see. But stuff like
> team nicknames incorporate some assumptions which aren't really valid
> for the 19th century.
In my experience, they are very responsive to corrections & suggestions.
Have you written to them to suggest improvements?
--
Gerry Myerson (ge...@maths.mq.edi.ai) (i -> u for email)
rrh...@acme.com
You are welcome. I am always prepared to descend into 19th century
baseball geekitude at the barest opportunity.
Richard R. Hershberger
rrh...@acme.com
No, but that is a fair suggestion. But I suspect that a correction of
'Mugsy Malone was born in Shaker Heights, not Cleveland' would be one
thing, while 'the underlying assumptions upon which your model is based
are flawed' would be another. But in fairness I should give them the
opportunity to make that decision. I'll write something up when I get
the time.
Richard R. Hershberger
Roger Moore
>No, but that is a fair suggestion. But I suspect that a correction of
>'Mugsy Malone was born in Shaker Heights, not Cleveland' would be one
>thing, while 'the underlying assumptions upon which your model is based
>are flawed' would be another. But in fairness I should give them the
>opportunity to make that decision. I'll write something up when I get
>the time.
I wrote a comment on this point, but my news server seems to have flipped
out about when I sent it and it hasn't been distributed (and I've had an
additional thought or two) so here goes:
I think that there's a fairly big problem of historical reconstruction
from the pre-encyclopedia days. It isn't just team names; there are also
some very obvious flaws in things like player heights and weights,
nicknames, and similar non-statistical information. For one reason or
another they're just not considered to be serious areas of research, so
old errors and misconceptions are perpetuated instead of being corrected
as statistical errors would be.
The best idea I can come up with for team nicknames is to have two
categories: an official team nickname (which might be blank) and a list
of unofficial nicknames (which might also be blank). That would make it
possible to clarify that some early teams didn't even have a nickname,
allow mention of strong alternate nicknames (like Nationals/Senators or
Pirates/Bucs), and also give a place where unofficial nicknames attached
to teams in specific time periods- like "The Big Red Machine", "Harvey's
Wallbangers", or "Murderers' Row".
--
Roger Moore | Master of Meaningless Trivia | (r...@alumni.caltech.edu)
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the
people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by
violent and sudden usurpations. -- James Madison
Roger Moore
>Many of these 'played as' names are at least quasi-bogus. Was the
>Philadelphia National League team called the 'Quakers' in the 1880s?
>Sometimes. They were also called the 'Phillies' sometimes.
I think that's a valid criticism, but it's hardly one that can be laid
exclusively on bb-ref. I get the impression that somebody who was writing
an early encyclopedia tried to figure out the nickname for every team.
The problem is that he got it wrong in at least two ways- both in the
belief that the teams all had more-or-less standard nicknames and by
picking the wrongs one for some of the teams. Unfortunately, this mistake
seems to have been perpetuated by other sources to the point that the
incorrect names have become standardized and it's hard to convince anyone
to correct them.
I think that the most reasonable approach would be to have two lists, one
of official nicknames and one of unofficial nicknames. Teams that didn't
have official nickanmes would just leave the official nickname blank,
while the unoffical list would have space for several different unofficial
monikers. An entry for the early Philadelphia NL team could say that they
had no official nickname but were often called the Phillies or Quakers,
while one for the 1909 Washington AL team could mention that while the
official name was Nationals they were also called the Nats or Senators.
Raymond DiPerna
Without question, the best site I've seen on the web for baseball
commentary is this one:
http://www.baseblogging.typepad.com
Of course, it's my own website so I'm a bit partial :-)
I just started it with a friend of mine; we write separate blog
entries.
I'm still in the process of mapping the domain name of the site. Soon
it will simply be www.baseblogging.com
Ray
sean-...@baseball-reference.com
> > In my experience, they are very responsive to corrections &
> suggestions.
> > Have you written to them to suggest improvements?
>
> No, but that is a fair suggestion. But I suspect that a correction
of
> 'Mugsy Malone was born in Shaker Heights, not Cleveland' would be one
> thing, while 'the underlying assumptions upon which your model is
based
> are flawed' would be another. But in fairness I should give them the
> opportunity to make that decision. I'll write something up when I
get
> the time.
>
> Richard R. Hershberger
This is way after the fact, and I apologize for not seeing the thread
earlier, but I want to assure people that my primary goal is for
baseball-reference to be fast, accurate, and easy to use.
I'll go on record as admitting that the team nicknames are incorrect,
but until I have a definitive answer as to what to call them, I'm
leaning towards not changing them. I've also started the
baseball-databank.org in an effort to provide an open source db where
all of this corrected and expanded data can reside and be used by
interested researchers. I'll accept and implement any substantiated
correction.
I will also go on record as saying that (unfortunately) I can be very
slow in implementing corrections and upgrades because I'm just one guy
doing this on the side. I do log everything and I have a db with about
300 corrections and suggestions that I want to implement.
If you want to make certain that I see a reply, please cc me.
JPM III
that one. But don't just take my word for it. The network is full of blogs
for most (if not all) major league teams, other baseball topics, plus blogs
for other sports topics and teams.
Also:
www.livejournal.com/community/baseball
Not as good, but fun if you've got a livejournal account.
Von Fourche wrote in
news:gkKZd.11753$cN6....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net: