Star Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has begun writing his own blog, 38 Pitches. Unlike most celebrity athletes, Schilling is often very frank, insightful, and controversial in his public statements. His first few blog posts follow that pattern, and he has even enabled comments.
In just a few days, Schilling has already posted a lot of interesting stuff for baseball fans, sabermetrics aficionados, and diehard Red Sox supporters. I’m not going to even try to summarize it all. If you’re at all interested in baseball, you should check out Schilling’s blog for yourself.
But one particularly interesting point for me is that Schilling seems to agree with the Moneyball approach to gauging hitters, which focuses on the value of on base percentage (OBP) and running up pitch counts:
Q-What stat do you focus on for hitters?
A-The ones I will always pay attention to are pitches per AB, swing % in counts, OBP, stuff like that. AVG, RBI’s, Runs mean zilch to me when it comes to putting a pitch specific game plan together.
Schilling writes that he intends to file regular game report posts throughout the Red Sox season. So stay tuned!