Sam Fuld was playing whiffle ball when he was three years old and figuring out batting averages and ERAs at age five. Growing up in New Hampshire, a book of baseball stats served, according to his mother, "like a security blanket".
He majored in economics at Stanford and, after reading Moneyball, he applied for an internship at Stats Inc.
I was one of their reporters, which meant that I looked at game video and plotted the "TVL" -- type, velocity and location -- of every pitch. They have this grid where you click on exactly where the ball crosses the plate. Play the tape, pause and repeat. ...
There's so many statistics out there that I thought "There's no stats on foul balls," so I picked a few players and started tracking them, thinking I'd find something. ... There's a U-Haul that takes your stuff from spring training to the minor league sites, and my bag with the notebook of all my [foul ball] stats was stolen.
3 comments:
Can JoS sponsor his B-Ref page???
Stayed tuned for those clever broadcaster comments: when he makes an error, "he thinks too much" - if he has a bad year, he should spend less time on the internet (or get his head of out a book) - his hero is Billy Beane, who wrote Moneyball - and perhaps yet another misunderstanding of what a "Moneyball player" is.
Seeing Fuld's name gives me the opportunity to post an article that has been sitting around since August 2009!
I love when that happens.
And, he's from New Hampshire too. This is too perfect. Theo HAS to trade for this guy!
Sam grew up not far away from me and a coworker of my father's knows him and his family. We always kept an eye out for Sam Fuld whenever we watched the Cubs.
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