The Rays Tank: Matt Garza Retrospective, FanGraphs Updates, and An Intro To Pitch F/x

by Steve Slowinski on Oct 24, 2011 8:13 AM EDT in The Rays Tank

MLB Chatter

I'm curious, how many people out there are still paying attention to the World Series? It's shaping up to be a great one, as the Rangers and Cardinals are tied at two games each now, but I've had a really tough time keeping myself interested in the games. I feel like a horrible baseball fan.

But in case you are interested in the Series so far -- or you just like reading great stories -- Joe Poz has an article up on Pujols at the moment.

FanGraphs has put out a couple updates over the past couple weeks, improving their leaderboards, WAR graphs, and WPA game charts. The graphs are all now interactive, so I can't wait to use those babies this offseason.

If you've ever been interested in Pitch F/x data but had a tough time understanding it, the Hardball Times recently released one of their past stories in PDF form. It's an introduction to Pitch F/x written by Mike Fast, who's probably the biggest Pitch F/x expert out there at the moment. Read it, save it, whatever...it's a good resource to have on hand.

Bill James answered some questions with NPR recently, so I feel obligated to pass this link along. NPR and sabermetrics? That's a double win.

Rays Talk

Jason and I took some time to answer questions about the Rays for MLB Daily Dish -- the SB Nation baseball news and rumors blog. We answered some questions on the Matt Garza trade, trade candidates, prospect promotion...it's worth checking out.

This isn't Rays-related, but it is local: the St. Pete Times ran a bit this weekend on the Claude Neal lynching. I didn't know much about the incident before reading this, but it made for a fascinating story. Here's the Times preview for the piece:

The 1934 Claude Neal lynching in Marianna, Florida is one of the most notorious spectacle lynchings in history. An unidentified committee of six brutally tortured and killed Claude Neal before turning him over to the lynch mob. The St. Petersburg Times and Tampabay.com revisit this piece of Florida history with an investigative report about why the six vigilantes have remained unnamed.

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I can't get the stupid sidebar to load.

WHERE ARE YOU OTTOTD?

As you can always expect come from behind victory is when you least expect it.

by Buc Wild on Oct 24, 2011 10:26 AM EDT reply actions

Marianna is an intensly creepy place.

I didn’t know about this story, but during reconstruction it was a huge hotbed of KKK activity. There were literally hundreds (if I remember correctly) of lynchings both of the freed blacks and of Republic politicians. There’s a journal of one such politician that chronicles and describes each killing, but ends when he too is lynched.

I swear, you can still feel the skeletons in the closet when you go there. Thanks for passing it along.

by Whelk on Oct 24, 2011 2:42 PM EDT reply actions