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The Thinking Fan's Baseball Site

SportsJones talks to Baseball Prospectus about Peter Gammons, fantasy baseball, and why players should often be ignored

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In August 1996, the authors of Baseball Prospectus put up a Web site, and the world has been a little smarter ever since. After reading BaseballProspectus.com avidly for most of that time, the editors of SportsJones decided to find out a little more about one of our favorite baseball sites. So we politely asked Joe Sheehan, the site’s managing editor, to spend just a little more time at his keyboard for the ultimate BaseballProspectus.com interview.

Here are the results:

SportsJones: How is Baseball Prospectus different from other sites on the Web?

Sheehan: The first difference someone new to the site would notice is that we don't report news. We don't have box scores and wire stories and conventional statistics. What we do better than anyone is baseball analysis, everything from players to teams to transactions. That analysis comes from what we believe is an informed-outsider position.

That viewpoint is also what makes us different from the mainstream sports sites. We don't, as a rule, talk much about intangibles or chemistry or personalities, preferring instead to focus on on-field performance. We don't claim those things do not exist, but that they are impossible to know in advance, and therefore have little value in analysis. For the most part, I believe chemistry is an after-the-fact justification for unexpectedly good or bad performance, and that its actual effect on teams is minimal at best. That's the kind of basic premise that makes BP different.

We also have BP-centric statistics, like Clay Davenport's Equivalent Average and Michael Wolverton's Support-Neutral measures, that you can't find elsewhere. These measures have a large following, and are considered to be among the best ways of evaluating player performance.

SportsJones: What do you offer readers that daily newspapers and mainstream sports magazines do not?

Sheehan: We offer a level of analysis that you simply don't find in mass-market publications. That's not a slap at those publications, but the Web is a marvelous tool for the kind of work that may not appeal to all baseball fans. Hard-copy publications have to aim for a large audience and they have very real space limitations. We have neither of those restrictions, and can do things like let Voros McCracken run a few thousand words about Defense-Independent Pitching Statistics. Baseball Weekly doesn't have that luxury.

We're probably a bit more willing to make strong statements, both positive and negative, than the mainstream media. We have received more attention for the negative, but our … OK, my … enthusiasm for the Minnesota Twins or our belief in Alex Gonzalez have been advanced just as strongly as anything we've said about Garret Anderson.

SportsJones: What would you say is the current purpose of the site?

Sheehan: To provide high-quality baseball content to a broad audience.

SportsJones: What was the evolutionary process, if any, from the Bill James Abstracts to the concept for BP to the book and site?

Sheehan: There's not much direct connection, actually. After Bill James published his last Abstract, a few people claimed to be heir to that throne, and some still do. Most of the comparisons between James's work and BP have come from others, not from us.

SportsJones: For a long time the site seemed to be largely a marketing tool for the book, but it’s gone far beyond that to become a regular source of information and commentary. Tell us about the evolution of the site.

Sheehan: I don't know that it was ever just a marketing tool. Even in the early days, we had non-book-related content, and columns from some of the writers. I'd say the site was important to the growth of the book because while "book season" lasted three months, the site was a year-round presence. That said, we didn't maximize its value for a while, and we're still learning how to do so.

I took over the site about two years ago, and at the time, my goal was simply to firm up the content flow, get us to a point where we were updating the site daily. We reached that goal last year, and maintained a good content flow through the season. We slipped again in the offseason, as our resources were poured into the book, but we're back to a steady content stream, and we'll be ramping up again as baseball does.

This season, I want to be the premier baseball-specific site on the Web. I want every Web-enabled baseball fan to read us every single day. He or she can find out from ESPN.com that the Cubs made a trade or that the Marlins are playing some pretty good baseball. I want him and her to come to us to find out why.

Next page: A better way to think about baseball

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