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Vol. III, Issue #3 - November 2015
  

** SOM Baseball World News **
      ( a new periodic column for 2015 where we share special news
linked to the SOM Baseball Game and MLB .... stay tuned!! )


Notes from the Wolfman
:
- Welcome once again as we have a few interesting and special announcements happening recently that we think warrrant your attention to be included as important news in the Strat-o-matic Baseball & MLB Worlds. In this issue, we again heard from John Dewan, owner of Baseball Info Solutions.  Well there is a free weekly newsletter that John shares through Acta Sports, called "John Dewan's Stat of the Week", it comes as an email.  Well each year, they vote for the best fielders in Baseball by position, they call it the "2015 Fielding Bible Awards", which links to a book John has done by the same title.  So thought I would share the results of these awards.  And finally, we have a very very special announcement from our good friend Bruce Bundy, related to his yearly SOM Baseball Projection Sheets.  Most of you know already that we announced at the end of October, Mr. Bundy was beginning to release parts of his projection sheets. Well just in time for this newsletter, he has made a special decision that might greatly affect your performace in your leagues for next year, so you need to read this announcement below.  Enjoy these updates and remember if any of our members have any special news they would like to share that would be of interest for everyone, please feel free to contact us privately.
 


FLASH: "John Dewan's Stat of the Week - The 2015 Fielding Bible Awards"
(Editor's Note - compare these awards to the actual winners announced recently for the Gold Gloves given out for the National & American league players.)

 

The 2015 Fielding Bible Awards

October 30, 2015

THE 2015 FIELDING BIBLE AWARDS have been officially announced, and the discussion has to start with center fielder Kevin Kiermaier. In his first full season in the majors, Kiermaier saved the Rays an incredible 42 runs in center field, the most by a player in a season since Baseball Info Solutions first measured Defensive Runs Saved in 2003. Previously, that record was held by Andrelton Simmons, who saved the Braves 41 runs at shortstop in 2013. Unsurprisingly, Simmons also won a Fielding Bible Award this season. Both were unanimous winners, as was Jason Heyward in right field.

Simmons and Heyward were two of the four total repeat winners this season. Simmons has unanimously won the Award in each of his three full seasons in the majors and is the best defensive player in baseball today. Former teammate Heyward won his third Award in right field, though this year it was as a member of the Cardinals. Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and Astros pitcher Dallas Keuchel each won their second Awards.

The first-time winners include Ian Kinsler at second base, Nolan Arenado at third base, Starling Marte in left field, Kiermaier in center field, Buster Posey at catcher, and Ender Inciarte at multi-position.

A panel of 12 analysts, listed below, examined the 2015 seasons of every defensive player in Major League Baseball and then used the same voting technique as the MVP voting. First place votes received 10 points, second place 9 points, third place 8 points, etc. A perfect score was 120.

One important distinction that differentiates THE FIELDING BIBLE AWARDS from most other baseball awards, such as the Gold Gloves, is that there is only one winner at each position instead of separate winners for each league. The goal of THE FIELDING BIBLE AWARDS is to stand up and say: "Here is the best fielder at this position in Major League Baseball last season." Another key feature of the system is that it also recognizes the runners-up for each position. A complete record of the voting can be found in The Bill James Handbook 2016.

Here are the results of THE 2015 FIELDING BIBLE AWARDS:

Position Winner Points
First Base Paul Goldschmidt 118
Second Base Ian Kinsler 106
Third Base Nolan Arenado 116
Shortstop Andrelton Simmons 120
Left Field Starling Marte 116
Center Field Kevin Kiermaier 120
Right Field Jason Heyward 120
Catcher Buster Posey 116
Pitcher Dallas Keuchel 115
Multi-Position Ender Inciarte 94

The Panel

Bill James is a baseball writer and analyst and the Senior Baseball Operations Advisor for the Boston Red Sox.

The BIS Video Scouts at Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) study every game of the season, multiple times, charting a huge list of valuable game details.

As the MLB Network on-air host of Clubhouse Confidential and MLB Now, Brian Kenny brings an analytical perspective on the game of baseball to a national television audience. He also won a 2003 Sports Emmy Award as host of ESPN's Baseball Tonight.

Dave Cameron is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

Doug Glanville played nine seasons in Major League Baseball and was well known for his excellent outfield defense. Currently, he is a baseball analyst at ESPN on Baseball Tonight, SportsCenter, Wednesday Night Baseball, and ESPN.com, as well as a regular contributor to The New York Times, and he is the author of the book The Game from Where I Stand.

The man who created Strat-O-Matic Baseball, Hal Richman.

Named the best sports columnist in America in 2012 by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame, Joe Posnanski is the National Columnist at NBC Sports.

For over twenty-five years, BIS owner John Dewan has collected, analyzed, and published in-depth baseball statistics and analysis. He has authored or co-authored four volumes of The Fielding Bible.

Mark Simon has been a researcher for ESPN Stats & Information since 2002 and currently helps oversee the Stats & Information blog and Twitter (@espnstatsinfo). He is a regular contributor on baseball (often writing on defense) for ESPNNY.com and ESPN.com, and is the author of Numbers Don't Lie: The Biggest Numbers in Yankees History (published by Triumph Books in June 2016).

Peter Gammons serves as on-air and online analyst for MLB Network, MLB.com and NESN (New England Sports Network). He is the 56th recipient of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing given by the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America).

Rob Neyer has been a working writer for 25 years, and FOXSports.com's Senior Baseball Editor for some of those years. When he's not writing, he's thinking about not writing. Rob will live in Portland, Oregon for as long as they let him.

The Tom Tango Fan Poll represents the results of a poll taken at the website, Tango on Baseball (www.tangotiger.net). Besides hosting the website, Tom writes research articles devoted to sabermetrics and is the co-author of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.

Our three tie-breakers are Ben Jedlovec, President of Baseball Info Solutions and co-author of The Fielding Bible—Volume IIII and The Fielding Bible—Volume IV, Dan Casey,, veteran Video Scout and Senior Operations Analyst at BIS, and Sean Forman, the founder of Baseball-Reference.com.


Complete results and voting on THE 2015 FIELDING BIBLE AWARDS are presented in The Bill James Handbook 2016, published on or before November 1 every year. For more information on THE FIELDING BIBLE AWARDS, visit www.fieldingbible.com.

The Bill James Handbook 2016
(Note: if you put in the code SOMB for your order of this book, you get our 10% member discount)

The prize of our winter hibernation.
—Peter Gammons

The most essential
annual published
for the baseball fan.

—Rob Neyer

Simply put, The Bill James Handbook 2016 is the best and most complete annual baseball reference guide available today. Avid stat fans look forward to it every year, and casual baseball fans enjoy its comprehensive content. This book contains a myriad of stats on every hit, pitch and catch in Major League Baseball's 2015 season.

New and key features include:

  • New! Stolen Base Attempt Times
  • New! Painting the Corners
  • Updated Starting Pitcher Rankings
  • New! 2016 Bill James Hitter and Pitcher Projections
  • The Fielding Bible Awards
  • Q and A on Shifts

Paperback, $28.95
(Member price is $26.06 which includes a 10% discount when you use the code "SOMB")



Copyright © 2015 by John Dewan.
Permission to reprint or broadcast this information is granted only if used in conjunction with the following citation: "Used with permission from John Dewan's Stat of the Week®,
www.statoftheweek.com."


If you are not already subscribing to John Dewan's Stat of the Week® and would like to start receiving it e-mailed free to your inbox each week, click here to go to our Registration page. Make sure to check the Stat of the Week box before clicking "Sign Up."
 


 



FLASH: "Bruce Bundy makes an important announcement related to his 2015 SOM Baseball Projection Sheets!" Check this out ...

Prior to the release of this newsletter, Mr. Bundy released two versions of what he called the Hitter's SOM Baseball Projection Sheets (the 1st edition of the sheets).  Now, as we go to press, we just received the Pitcher's SOM Baseball Projection Sheets from Mr. Bundy to complete the full packages of goodies he is offering to our members.  For those of our members who are new or not heard of Bruce Bundy and these sheets before, you should check out the page shown below where we interview Mr. Bundy and he explains how he developed these sheets (which are spreadsheets).  But simply put, the Projection Sheets provide a powerful view of how the new 2016 SOM Baseball Cards will look like, that will be released next February, which Mr. Bundy is able to calculate via some very sophisticated formulas that he uses and has dveloped.

Before we send you to the 2015 SOM Baseball Projection Sheet page, here is the special announcement we are authorized to make, as the distributor of the projection sheets:

"Mr. Bundy has decided to cut in half the price of the sheets to only $4.95", an unbelievable low price for such valuable information. Plus, plus, you also are not going to receive just one Hitter's Projection Sheet (but 3, sorted in different ways) and also four Pitcher's Project Sheets, again with various views of the pitchers to make it easier for you to use. 

As there are future updates to the sheets, you will be contacted via email but essentially the most vital and important information you need to know about the new cards coming out is here in the current version of the sheets.

To read more about the Bundy 2015 SOM Baseball Projection Sheets and how to get your copies, please visit:

http://www.ultimatestratbaseball.com/Bundys-SOMProjectionSheets-November2015.htm

Hurry, before Bruce Bundy changes his mind and brings the price back up to what he offered the sheets for last month ....
 

Note: -- if you have a new story you think our readers might enjoy linked to Strat-o-matic please feel free to email us your story by contacting Wolfman at: wolfman@ultimatestatbaseball.com

 


 

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Contained inside this exciting issue of Ultimate Strat Baseball Newsletter:
(to view the various interviews, articles, columns and special sections click on the links {underlined} and
this will take you to the appropriate webpage)
 

  RETURN TO NEWSLETTER MAIN PAGE

  ARTICLE with JOHN DEWAN, owner of Baseball Info Solution, chapter for a book about Bill James.

  MLB STORY with BILLY SAMPLE, Talks about "Bat Flipping" and Willie Montanez while a Ranger.

  ARTICLE with CHUCK TINKLER, another special article by Chuck, one of our members about a real Strat Master he met in his early days of playing Strat-o-matic

  SOM BASEBALL LEAGUE REPORT with WOLFMAN SHAPIRO -- the editor of "The Ultimate Strat Newsletter" and 2012 CBA Champion, the "Wolfman" puts out a call to commissioners of various Strat-o-matic Baseball Leagues that he finds on the internet and three leagues respond to be interviewed and tell their stories!  To view any individual interview, click on the links below or start with Part I and finish with an in-page link to Part II for the two interviews, more interviews given in the December issue coming:

INTERVIEW with Kurt Meunier, FVSL, P-I (F2F League in Wisconsin)

INTERVIEW with Robert Latorre, 60's Decade Keepers League, P-II, (CDROM-email)

  REPORT with TOM NAHIGIAN (1961 cards), Personal friend of the Wolfman, known in Guzzo's book as "The Collector", returns and we take a peak at some of the early strat cards printed from 1961.

  STRAT WISE with MARC WASSERMAN -- commissioner of the Cyber Baseball Association (CBA) renames his column to "Strat Wise" as he expands his sharing and reporting of our Strat-o-matic Baseball Community.  In this first part of his new column he talks about the recent MLB World Series and discusses the content of some of the special videos we have on our Ultimate Strat Baseball Video Channel on Youtube.

  ARTICLE with WOLFMAN SHAPIRO -- the editor of "The Ultimate Strat Newsletter" and 2012 CBA Champion, the "Wolfman" goes back into the far past and pulls out one of his first articles to the Strat-o-matic Review from 1973, when he really was becoming known as the "Wolfman" (the Skokie Wolfman) as he challenged one of the first female strat gamers, Donna Chevrette to a play against him via play-by-mail.  This is series used the MLB All Star players from 1971, with the Wolfman taking the National All Stars and Chevrette taking the American.  The series became known in the Review as "The Battle of the Sexes".  After this series was played, and a victor uncovered, the combats switched teams and played a second series (which is an article by Donna Chevrette) that will be reported in our December issue.

  RECOMMEND ON-LINE SOM RESOURCES -- On-line Strat-o-matic and Baseball related websites
that offer amazing information, special tools and products to improve your game play that we strongly recommend. In most cases, we have had personal contact with these sources who agree with the principle to work together and help promote each other.

  BOOKS TO DIE FOR and Become a BASEBALL GURU -- This page is specifically about special books we are finding that either will expand your insights about the game of Baseball, help you in the creation of your current league teams or with your replays and learn more about the Strat-o-matic Baseball Game and Game Company's history.  We have a special arrangement with Acta Sports, who is a publisher of a number of great baseball books (including Bill James Handbooks) to offer for our members a 10% discount. We will continue to add more books to this page in the future as we uncover other gems our members should know about.


 




Contact Us for Questions or Submissions
:

Wolfman Shapiro
co-Founder/Editor, the Ultimate Strat Baseball Newsletter

email: wolfman@ultimatestratbaseball.com
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twitter: @StratBaseball4U

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