Back in the Game
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
Why this Substack?
I used to write a lot of nerdy things about baseball at sites including Beyond the Box Score, Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus, ESPN, and The Hardball Times. Over time that faded, I found other interests and put more effort into a real job (of which I finally have one I really like!) But over the past couple years I’ve slowly been sucked back into the nerdery, thanks to Statcast data, Stuff+ metrics, the fun people on Twitter, and wanting (REALLY wanting) to win my fantasy baseball leagues. I ask a lot of questions and got the urge to try answering some of those questions, so here we are.
What will I write about?
The focus will be baseball, and the statistical analysis of baseball. But that can go in many directions and I could see the occasional post about other sports (recently I was pretty interested in evaluation of NFL draft picks), other data-related topics, or even general life stuff. I tend to take existing topics and explore them from a different angle, or find creative ways to slice and present existing data. Recently I’ve come to appreciate that I’m a question-asker. Solutions and execution are for rubes, I’ll just sit back and question everything.
What can you expect?
Great question. If this were 2005 I would have started a blog. Don’t expect a high or regular frequency of posts. But when something interests me enough to write about it, I’ll throw it on here and spam the link on Twitter. I don’t expect to ever charge for subscriptions. This is for fun and taking money makes things less fun for me. If you ever feel like “giving back”, simply sharing your favorite posts or getting involved in discussions around them is more than enough.
Gratuitous photo
Substack tells me I should use pictures to get your attention, so here’s one of a blacksmith-style puzzle I recently built for my nephew’s Survivor-themed birthday party.
