Stats-crunching finds a new hero

According to Nate Silver, you should keep a serious eye on the Cleveland Indians and Detroit Tigers in 2009.

And if you've been paying any attention to politics in the tumultuous year of 2008, you probably already know that Silver is a guy worth listening to.

Silver is a household name to the growing sect of baseball fans known as sabermetricians. He is one of the managing partners of the statistic-bible called Baseball Prospectus.

He developed the PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) system of projecting players' future performance, the QERA, a defense-independent pitching statistic, and he writes a well-received Web column urging baseball fans to look beyond conventional statistics that he believes are now far behind the times.

And on Nov. 4, 2008, Silver stunned the political world when his political projection site, FiveThirtyEight.com, nailed Barack Obama's victory over John McCain in the presidential election better than any poll could ever dream of.

FiveThirtyEight.com, named for the total amount of electoral college votes during the presidential election, predicted that Obama would win by 6.1 percentage points (he won by 7.0) and was correct in 49 of the 50 individual states plus the District of Columbia.

Silver says the business of statistical prognostication in baseball and politics aren't as far apart as you might think.

"A lot of what we do at Baseball Prospectus is try and debunk or improve upon conventional wisdom," Silver says. "You see things about clutch hitting or batting average vs. on-base percentage, and we're trying to build a better mousetrap. Discussions in papers or on radio is not as well-informed as to what really goes into winning baseball games.

"And having experienced that for a lot of years, a lot of same conclusions really hold in politics. CNN or Fox or any other networks' discussions are not really that well-informed. Conventional wisdom has people overreacting to randomness in polls. I wanted to create a better-informed discussion."

He did it the same way he calculates baseball stats, through meticulous research of past performance and a few things he learned on the way to Election Day.

"We started out taking average of state polls," Silver says. "But we did one thing differently from other sites. We weighted polls based on which pollsters have been better in the past. All we did at first was take those polls, average the 50 states, and simulate different scenarios.

"But as we got more into it, it got more involved with demographics and started to guess a little more how the polls would go."

Silver has been fascinated by numbers -- and baseball -- for all 30 of his years.

Growing up in Michigan, he fell in love with the Detroit Tigers when they won the 1984 World Series, and he began playing fantasy baseball as a teenager. He graduated with honors in economics from the University of Chicago, and he has been helping revolutionize the statistic-based approach to baseball ever since.

He acknowledges that while many modern baseball minds have embraced new-school work pioneers such as Bill James and the theories that he and his Prospectus colleagues have been working on for decades, many "old-school" baseball minds who rely solely on the reports of scouts in the field have rejected it.

He says it's not quite like that in politics.

"Campaigns are pretty sophisticated," Silver says. "They know how to use data. In the Obama campaign, for example, a quarter of the employees were working on data. It was a quantitatively oriented campaign. And it's not just Democrats. Karl Rove is a big data geek. And that's the one thing winning campaigns share.

"So you don't really have the tension like you've seen in the conflicts between stats and scouts."

But well-run baseball teams have to have a balance, Silver admits.

"You look at the Red Sox or Rays, and they both have scouts and input from stats guys," Silver says. "They're using resources, which is what well-run political campaigns do. The good campaigns understand that to begin with. The poorly run ones don't."

Silver's dead-on projections for the 2008 election have earned him numerous TV appearances, including MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and "The Rachel Maddow Show," Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" and CNN's "American Morning," plus an upcoming multi-book deal with a major publisher.

But he's not resting on his laurels right now.

"I'm working on the PECOTA forecasts for next year," Silver says. "We have to get our book to the publisher by Christmas."

In the meantime, Silver says he's happy to be back talking baseball.

"One thing that's nice about baseball is that you don't run into people who are necessarily ideological," Silver says.

"And I guess baseball is a little more fun than politics, too."

Dan Plesac joins MLB Network

The roster for MLB Network is getting bigger and stronger, with Major League depth at every position.

On Friday, it was announced that veteran Comcast Sportsnet Chicago studio analyst and former Major League pitcher Dan Plesac has been added to the already-star-studded clubhouse full of on-air talent, which includes Matt Vasgersian, Al Leiter, Harold Reynolds, Joe Magrane, Trenni Kusnierek and Hazel Mae.

Plesac will join the of "MLB Tonight," the live, nightly studio show that will be the signature program of the new network, and "Hot Stove," a live, nightly offseason studio show. All of the on-air personalities will appear on both shows, as well as other programming across MLB Network, which will launch on January 1, 2009, in approximately 50 million homes as the largest network debut in cable history.

"With extensive experience in the Major Leagues and at Comcast SportsNet Chicago to draw upon, Dan's thoughtful analysis will be a great addition to our current roster of on-air talent," said Tony Petitti, President and CEO of MLB Network.

Plesac, who previously served as a studio analyst on Comcast Sportsnet Chicago for the Chicago Cubs live pre-game and post-game shows and made weekly appearances on "Chicago Tribune Live," covering the Cubs and White Sox, will now be a part of the MLB Network exclusively.

While in the Major Leagues, Plesac was a three-time American League All-Star reliever for the Milwaukee Brewers. The durable left-hander posted a 3.64 ERA and collected 158 saves in his 18-year Major League career, and his 1,064 games pitched ranks sixth in baseball history.

He also pitched for the Cubs (1993-94), the Pittsburgh Pirates (1995-96), the Toronto Blue Jays (1997-1999, 2001-2002), the Arizona Diamondbacks (1999-2000) and the Philadelphia Phillies (2002-2003).

From Yankees bat boy to best-seller

Ray Negron's life with the New York Yankees started on the magical day in 1973 when he was caught spray-painting the team's famed "NY" insignia onto the outside wall of Yankee Stadium.

The tagline of that occurrence reads like a can't-miss blockbuster movie: Young graffiti artist with heart of gold and untapped potential apprehended by new team owner George Steinbrenner, hired as bat boy, and eventually becomes team executive and one of the closest confidants of "The Boss."

Negron has had plenty of interest for a book and film on that exact concept, but he's got his own Hollywood dreams that are close to coming true.

Negron's three best-selling children's books, all about the Yankees and all published by HarperCollins, have been combined into one film script, the soon-to-be-in-production "Keeper of the Pinstripes."

Negron's got actor Josh Lucas already on board as well as former Yankees players Bernie Williams and Darryl Strawberry. The movie, which will feature scenes at the recently closed old Yankee Stadium, will be directed by former "One On One" actor Robby Benson and could start filming as early as April.

"I feel the books and the movie are something kids can really relate to and love," says Negron, whose stories weave classic kids' lessons of tolerance, good will and education in with fantastic stories of time travel and rare meetings with long-departed Yankee legends.

"That's the key here. That's the importance of it. I don't want anybody ever to forget the real Yankee Stadium.

"The new one is going to be wonderful for the next generation, but at the same time, the spirits of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Thurman Munson and Bobby Murcer, I don't want them to ever forget that."

Negron hasn't forgotten his Yankee roots.

After being plucked by Steinbrenner and put to work, Negron climbed up the baseball ladder, serving as a loyal batboy in the glory years of the late 1970s. He became a good enough shortstop at Springfield Gardens High, in Queens, N.Y., that he was a second-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates and minor leaguer before landing gigs with the Cleveland Indians and Texas Rangers as team counselor.

These days, Negron works for the Yankees as a personal consultant to Steinbrenner and also serves as director of community relations for the equipment company Spalding.

Negron's also a member of the Screen Actors Guild, having appeared in numerous television commercials and motion pictures, including "The Cotton Club," which starred Richard Gere.

Gere, a New York resident and Yankees fan Negron has been friends with for 25 years, is set to play the voice of Gehrig in an animated movie project Negron's also working on.

"I took my last tour around Yankee Stadium with Richard," Negron says. "I showed him every nook and cranny of that stadium, and to see him shake and have tears in his eyes as he saw parts of the park, that was a thrill for me. To know that today, he's still talking about that, it's very special. Even at the fantasy camp, he was telling all the campers."

Negron has many stories to tell, too, and he says he started doing it in written form after a tragic event hit the Yankees -- and baseball -- community in 1979.

"I started writing when Thurman Munson died," he says. "It was a way to get over the emotion of what we were all going through. And I've always written throughout the years."

But when Negron was offered a major publishing deal for his Steinbrenner-graffiti story -- which was to be called "The Boss and the Batboy," he rejected it.

"Emotionally I didn't want to do a Steinbrenner book," he says. "But I said, 'Hey, I have a children's book that you might like.' The publisher laughed and said, 'OK, let's check it out.' She read it and loved it and I got a three-book deal."

The third and latest book in the series, "One Last Time: Goodbye to Yankee Stadium," is the one Negron says he's the most proud of. It's also going to be a major focus of the upcoming film.

"It's all the spirits coming back for one last game," Negron says.

And don't think for a minute that Steinbrenner won't be a big part of the story.

"I'll always be grateful to him," Negron says. "I idolize the guy because of the personal relationship I've had with him. He took me in and I got to know the real person. I have always been grateful for that and have always enjoyed his support. He showed me in his own way how to be a man and how to be strong."

Negron now passes on the same life lessons to his four children and to the many readers of his books, and, if everything goes as planned, he'll have a much bigger audience "some time between Christmas 2009 and Opening Day 2010," as he says.

"It's all a wonderful thrill, no question about it," Negron says. "The fact that I came out with three books, and to have these dreams and share them with the world and hopefully motivate all people into giving it their best shot, that's the key. Not money or anything like that.

"That's how I live my life."