I'm back, and ready to write!

After a brief (okay, prolonged) absence, I am back and hoping to update this blog fairly regularly now. Luckily for me, it looks as if baseball is going to give me a lot to discuss and dissect, in addition to the multitude of moves that have already occurred during this off-season.

I hope to take an in-depth look at the Cleveland Indians, my favorite team, but I am more of a BASEBALL fan than a CLEVELAND fan. As such, I will often detour to discuss recent transactions made by other teams, or other random thoughts, anecdotes, and ideas that enter in to my head.

As you will likely see upon reading my ramblings, I take a very sabermetric approach to my studies of baseball. This is not to say that I believe statistics are the be-all and end-all of baseball analysis---they're absolutely not. I'm sure that one of my later entries will revolve around my frustration about the misinterpretation of the sabermetric Bible, "Moneyball," as well as the portrayal that sabermetric geeks like myself often receive (I have no problem with the term "geek"---I most certainly am one---but my beliefs about and attitudes towards baseball are often misrepresented.)

As a final note to my new "first entry" (the only reason I did not create a new blog is because I could not think of an appropriately clever name that is better than "Tribe Scribe"---I'm sure in time I will do so, and then I will likely create a new blog. Suggestions are welcomed.), I would like to give you some details of my background. As there is no way for me to "prove" these details, I will take a page out of Jack Bauer's book and say that you're just going to have to trust me.

I am currently a college student, studying at Tufts University and currently spending a year abroad in London. I have worked and interned for the Cleveland Indians and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, although not (yet) in a baseball operations department. At Tufts, I founded the nation's first (we think) baseball-analysis club, called BAT (Baseball Analysis at Tufts, clever name I know). In our first year, we brought in such speakers as New York Times columnist and Baseball America writer (and ESPN contributor) Alan Schwarz; Boston sportswriters Chris Snow, Gordon Edes, and John Tomase; ESPN contributor and Providence Journal reporter Sean McAdam, and more. We also we fortunate enough to have the god-father of (and the man who coined the term) sabermetrics, Bill James, come to Tufts as well.

I, along with a fellow Tufts student, conducted a research project about then-Braves and current-Orioles pitching coach Leo Mazzone, investigating whether or not his reputation as a premier pitching coach was justified. The short version of our findings (which were highlighted later in the New York Times) is that indeed Mazzone significantly improved Braves’ pitchers during his tenure with Atlanta (lest you think his brilliance has more to do with having quality pitchers and less to do with his teachings, we adjusted for age of pitchers, and compared pitchers only to themselves, thereby negating any advantage Mazzone might have had for working with top-flight pitchers such as Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine). We conducted the same analysis on other pitching coaches with similar reputations---Johnny Sain (Mazzone’s teacher), Dave Duncan, Mel Stottlemyre, and Rick Peterson. Interestingly, none of these man’s performance was even close to that of Mazzone’s, and only Stottlemyre could boast even a small improvement for his pitchers.

I was also fortunate enough to present our findings at the 2005 SABR Convention in Toronto, where I met such “celebrities” as Bill James, Rob Neyer, and Gary Gillette. If you are interested in reading more about, please click here or here.

I hope you enjoy my blog, and please feel free to leave comments or e-mail me, at peterabendix@gmail.com.