For those who couldn’t attend SABR 39 in Washington, DC, here’s a brief recap.

Photos used in this page and others from the convention are available at: The SABR Office Flickr stream.

Tom Ruane

Tom Ruane

Tom Ruane, a Poughkeepsie, New York resident, is this year’s winner of the Society for American Baseball Research’s (SABR) highest honor, The Bob Davids Awards. This award honors members whose contributions to SABR and baseball reflect the ingenuity, integrity, and self-sacrifice of the founder and past president of SABR, L. Robert “Bob” Davids. Voluntary activities in the area of administration and research are among those contributions considered.

A SABR member since 1991, Ruane has continuously broadened his interests and is a valuable and active member of 11 research committees. His service to SABR has included membership on the Nominating Committee and as a judge at several SABR conventions. The breadth of Tom’s sophisticated research can be seen in the many articles he has written for the research portion of the Retrosheet website. Tom has also contributed to the Baseball Research Journal, Baseball By The Numbers and Nine. Tom is also a member of the Retrosheet Board of Directors and is responsible for the wonderfully interconnected links in box scores and player and team statistics.

Tim Herlich

Tim Herlich

Tim Herlich of Seattle, Washington, and Susan Ballentine of Richmond, Virginia, respectively received awards for the best oral presentation and best poster presentation.

Herlich won the Doug Pappas Award for Best Oral Presentation for “21*,” a tribute to Washington player Tom Cheney’s forgotten 21-strikeout game. Herlich’s presentation detailed that record-setting performance and reviewed Cheney’s careers, appealing for proper recognition for this baseball record and record holder. Born in Darby, PA and raised on Long Island, Herlich is now a long-time resident of Seattle and is president of the Northwest SABR chapter.

Ballentine won the USA Today Sports Weekly prize for the best poster presentation at the convention for “Rethinking Bill James’ Pythagorean Expectation.” In her presentation, Ballentine reached beyond James’s Pythagorean, which requires only two team stats and one calculator formula, and built multiple regression models. Rather than using offensive stats to predict Runs Scored or defensive data to predict Runs Allowed, her approach was to use stats from both sides of the game as potential predictors of winning percentage. Ballentine is a 12th grader at the Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies in Richmond, VA.

The scoring of oral presentations was exceptionally close, and the judges listed three honorable mentions. Those were:

• Jen McGovern -- The Promotion of Baseball Players in a Global Market: Major Disparities in the Minor Leagues
• Monica Nucciarone -- An Overview of Alexander Cartwright’s Life and the Claims for his Baseball Fame
• Geri Strecker -- The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field: Biography of a Ballpark

Jen McGovern

Jen McGovern

Monica Nucciarone

Monica Nucciarone

Press coverage

For articles about the convention or interviews with presenters or attendees, check out some of the links below:

New York Times: No Casual Fans at World Series of Baseball Trivia, by Alan Schwarz

Washington Times: Baseball researchers throw D.C. stats-fest, by Tim Lemke and Baseball trivial pursuit, by Dick Heller

Baseball America: SABR Convention For The Baseball-Obsessed Visits Washington, by Matt Eddy

Some online journals & blogs:
Hardball Times
Baseball Think Factory
Seamheads
Why I Like Baseball
Jaybird's Jottings

SABR on the radio…

David Laurila interviewed SABR Executive Director John Zajc and former Negro League player Pedro Sierra on Baseball Prospectus Radio.

Phil Wood and Tim Donner of Talkin' Baseball interviewed member Chris Jaffee discussing his SABR 39 research presentation on managers and Charles Comisky and member Curt Smith discussing his new biography of Vin Scully at Talkin' Baseball. (the page loads very slowly). Watch for an upcoming interview with member Mike Emeigh on the evolution of the modern bullpen.