Rob Neyer
Encyclopedia
Rob Neyer is a baseball
author and writer for SB Nation
. He started his career working for Bill James
and STATS, and then joined ESPN.com
as a columnist from 1996 to January 2011 before becoming SB Nation's National Baseball Editor. A disciple of major sabermetrics
figure Bill James, his writing is an outlet for baseball fans to gain insight that statistics and historical analysis can offer.
area. He attended the University of Kansas
, where he picked up a passion for baseball after reading Peter Golenbock
's Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers
and the Bill James Baseball Abstract 1984. Uninterested in school, Neyer left college during his fourth year and took a job roofing houses.
Neyer was introduced to Bill James
by a casual friend, Mike Kopf, nine months after dropping out of college. He was soon hired as a research assistant. Neyer's first project with James was helping compile material for the book This Time Let's Not Eat the Bones, a collection of material from the Abstracts. After four years under the tutelage of James, Neyer took a job at STATS, Inc.
, before joining ESPNet SportsZone, ESPN.com's forerunner, in 1996.
He lives in Portland, Oregon
.
and the 10-person voting panel for the Fielding Bible Awards.
He is the author or co-author of six books: Baseball Dynasties
(2000) with Eddie Epstein, Feeding the Green Monster (2001), Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups (2003), The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers
(2004) with Bill James, Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders (2006), and Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends (2008).
Working through both historical research and statistical analysis, Neyer critiques conventional narratives in sports as a historian. In reference to his book Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends Neyer stated, "I'm not going to argue with Aristotle. Maybe poetry is more important--and most of the stories in the book do qualify as poetry--but I think there's a small place for history, too. And since I'm no poet, I'm happy to fill that small place when I can."
Bill James describes him as "the best of the new generation of sportswriters. He knows baseball history like a child knows his piggy bank. He knows how to pick it up and shake it and make what he needs fall out."
has attributed Rob Neyer as having introduced himself and most of his generation of baseball writers to sabermetrics. Neyer edited and helped Jonah Keri with his book The Extra 2 Percent and worked with Carson Cistulli
to develop his criteria for the NERD
formula.
Recently, as National Baseball Editor at SBNation, he has helped fellow editor Jeff Sullivan (originally of Lookoutlanding) reach a larger audience, as well as editor Grant Brisbee, writers like Jason Brannon, Will McDonald, or Dan Moore. Moore cites Neyer as "the reason I'm writing about the St. Louis Cardinals today."
on a book project, writing about the Red Sox
that season at Fenway Park
. However, his draft was harshly rejected by his New York publishing house that December. Neyer re-edited the submission and lost money by publishing the eventual Feeding the Green Monster as an e-book in spring 2001. (Neyer ruefully retold the fiasco, "Bestseller to E-book in One Easy Step," on his website.)
fans when he cited metrics such as win shares
and Clay Davenport
's Fielding Translations to argue that Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter's defense consistently rated among the worst fielders at his position. Subsequent studies and the development of advanced metrics for evaluating fielding capabilities continued to support Neyer's evaluation and showed Jeter to be consistently among the lower ranking American League shortstops in fielding prowess. However, managers and coaches disagreed, as Jeter won five Gold Glove awards
from 2004 to 2006 and 2009 to 2010.
Neyer addressed this controversy in a recent article entitled Derek Jeter Retooling His Swing After Down Season; Let's Hope It Works. Neyer justifies his previous articles saying that "everybody was saying Jeter was perfect, and if there's one thing I know too well it's that nobody's perfect" but then added "Derek Jeter is one of the five or six greatest shortstops ever, and I'm really going to miss him when he's gone. I don't mean gone, physically. I mean gone, as an outstanding player."
. Neyer subsequently took offense to positive reviews that he believed Kettmann’s friends and relatives had posted.
A Newsday newspaper reporter quickly identified Neyer publicly as the actual reviewer. On September 6, Neyer issued an article explaining his actions, "I had such a visceral reaction to Kettmann’s book that I felt compelled to do something" and so, under a "pen name" he decided to write a customer review on Amazon.com. "I didn’t even imagine that it could do anybody any good if I wrote as myself," Neyer rationalized.
Kettmann responded: "The thing that I find strange about all of this is that [Oakland A's general manager] Billy Beane
, someone who I thought Rob Neyer respects, read my book cover to cover and told me he loved it."
, members of which vote for National Baseball Hall of Fame candidates and several annual Major League Baseball
awards, including the Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award
s. Neyer and his colleague Keith Law
were refused due to the BBWAA's perception that they did not attend enough games in person. The following year, during the MLB winter meetings in Las Vegas
, Neyer and Law were admitted into the BBWAA.
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
author and writer for SB Nation
SB Nation
SB Nation is a sports network owned and operated by Vox Media with more than 300 separate web sites maintained primarily by part-time contract writers. They put together posts, facilitate dialogue and interact with commenters. At a kickoff event in February 2009, there were about 185 blogs...
. He started his career working for Bill James
Bill James
George William “Bill” James is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics...
and STATS, and then joined ESPN.com
ESPN.com
ESPN.com is the official website of ESPN and a division of ESPN Inc. Since launching in 1995 as ESPNet.SportsZone.com, the website has developed numerous sections including: Page 2, SportsNation, ESPN 3.com, ESPN Motion, My ESPN, ESPN Sports Travel, ESPN Video Games, ESPN Insider, ESPN.com's...
as a columnist from 1996 to January 2011 before becoming SB Nation's National Baseball Editor. A disciple of major sabermetrics
Sabermetrics
Sabermetrics is the specialized analysis of baseball through objective, empirical evidence, specifically baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research...
figure Bill James, his writing is an outlet for baseball fans to gain insight that statistics and historical analysis can offer.
Biography
Rob Neyer spent the early years of his childhood in the upper Midwest and later moved to the middle Midwest, close to the Kansas CityKansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
area. He attended the University of Kansas
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...
, where he picked up a passion for baseball after reading Peter Golenbock
Peter Golenbock
Peter Golenbock is a sports journalist and author. He is best known for the 1975 book Dynasty: The New York Yankees 1949–1964 about the Yankees of that era...
's Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers
Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers
Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers is a non-fiction baseball book by Peter Golenbock. It was published in 1984 and won the CASEY Award for the best baseball book of the year-Contents:...
and the Bill James Baseball Abstract 1984. Uninterested in school, Neyer left college during his fourth year and took a job roofing houses.
Neyer was introduced to Bill James
Bill James
George William “Bill” James is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics...
by a casual friend, Mike Kopf, nine months after dropping out of college. He was soon hired as a research assistant. Neyer's first project with James was helping compile material for the book This Time Let's Not Eat the Bones, a collection of material from the Abstracts. After four years under the tutelage of James, Neyer took a job at STATS, Inc.
STATS, Inc.
STATS LLC is a global sports statistics and information company – the company name originated as an acronym for "Sports Team Analysis and Tracking Systems". It was founded on April 30, 1981 by John Dewan, who became the company's CEO...
, before joining ESPNet SportsZone, ESPN.com's forerunner, in 1996.
He lives in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
.
Writing
Neyer wrote for ESPN for 15 years from 1996 to January 31, 2011. He joined SB Nation as its National Baseball Editor on February 1, 2011. In an interview, he said that he had had prior opportunities to leave ESPN.com but that nothing had felt right until this offer from SB Nation. Within the baseball writing community Neyer is a part of the Baseball Writers Association of AmericaBaseball Writers Association of America
The Baseball Writers' Association of America is a professional association for baseball journalists writing for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying Web sites. The BBWAA was founded on October 14, 1908, to improve working conditions for sportswriters in the early part of the 20th century...
and the 10-person voting panel for the Fielding Bible Awards.
He is the author or co-author of six books: Baseball Dynasties
Baseball Dynasties
Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time is a non-fiction baseball book, co-written by Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein. It was published in April 2000 by Norton, W. W...
(2000) with Eddie Epstein, Feeding the Green Monster (2001), Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups (2003), The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers
The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers
The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers is a non-fiction baseball reference book, written by Rob Neyer and Bill James and published by Simon & Schuster in June 2004...
(2004) with Bill James, Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders (2006), and Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends (2008).
Working through both historical research and statistical analysis, Neyer critiques conventional narratives in sports as a historian. In reference to his book Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends Neyer stated, "I'm not going to argue with Aristotle. Maybe poetry is more important--and most of the stories in the book do qualify as poetry--but I think there's a small place for history, too. And since I'm no poet, I'm happy to fill that small place when I can."
Bill James describes him as "the best of the new generation of sportswriters. He knows baseball history like a child knows his piggy bank. He knows how to pick it up and shake it and make what he needs fall out."
Mentorship
Dave CameronDave Cameron (baseball analyst)
Dave Cameron is the managing editor and a senior writer of FanGraphs and owner-operator of USS Mariner.-Biography:Cameron grew up in Seattle. In 1994 he started writing about baseball in Usenet newsgroups and reading Rob Neyer. He also played baseball...
has attributed Rob Neyer as having introduced himself and most of his generation of baseball writers to sabermetrics. Neyer edited and helped Jonah Keri with his book The Extra 2 Percent and worked with Carson Cistulli
Carson Cistulli
Carson Cistulli is an American poet, essayist and English professor. His works of poetry include Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated, Assorted Fictions, and A Century of Enthusiasm.- Early Years :...
to develop his criteria for the NERD
NERD (sabermetrics)
In baseball statistics, NERD is a quantitative measure of expected aesthetical value. NERD was originally created by Carson Cistulli and is part of his project of exploring the "art" of sabermetric research...
formula.
Recently, as National Baseball Editor at SBNation, he has helped fellow editor Jeff Sullivan (originally of Lookoutlanding) reach a larger audience, as well as editor Grant Brisbee, writers like Jason Brannon, Will McDonald, or Dan Moore. Moore cites Neyer as "the reason I'm writing about the St. Louis Cardinals today."
Feeding the Green Monster
In 2000, Neyer spent the summer in BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
on a book project, writing about the Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...
that season at Fenway Park
Fenway Park
Fenway Park is a baseball park near Kenmore Square in Boston, Massachusetts. Located at 4 Yawkey Way, it has served as the home ballpark of the Boston Red Sox baseball club since it opened in 1912, and is the oldest Major League Baseball stadium currently in use. It is one of two "classic"...
. However, his draft was harshly rejected by his New York publishing house that December. Neyer re-edited the submission and lost money by publishing the eventual Feeding the Green Monster as an e-book in spring 2001. (Neyer ruefully retold the fiasco, "Bestseller to E-book in One Easy Step," on his website.)
Derek Jeter
In February 2001, Neyer infuriated many New York YankeesNew York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...
fans when he cited metrics such as win shares
Win Shares
Win shares is the name of the metric Bill James describes in his 2002 book Win Shares.It considers statistics for baseball and basketball players, in the context of their team and in a sabermetric way, and assigns a single number to each player for his contributions for the year. A win share...
and Clay Davenport
Clay Davenport
Clay Davenport, a native of Hampton Roads, Virginia, now living in Baltimore, Maryland, is a baseball sabermetrician who co-founded Baseball Prospectus in 1996. He co-edited several of the Baseball Prospectus annual volumes and is a writer for BaseballProspectus.com...
's Fielding Translations to argue that Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter's defense consistently rated among the worst fielders at his position. Subsequent studies and the development of advanced metrics for evaluating fielding capabilities continued to support Neyer's evaluation and showed Jeter to be consistently among the lower ranking American League shortstops in fielding prowess. However, managers and coaches disagreed, as Jeter won five Gold Glove awards
Rawlings Gold Glove Award
The Rawlings Gold Glove Award, usually referred to as the Gold Glove, is the award given annually to the Major League Baseball players judged to have exhibited superior individual fielding performances at each fielding position in both the National League and the American League , as voted by the...
from 2004 to 2006 and 2009 to 2010.
Neyer addressed this controversy in a recent article entitled Derek Jeter Retooling His Swing After Down Season; Let's Hope It Works. Neyer justifies his previous articles saying that "everybody was saying Jeter was perfect, and if there's one thing I know too well it's that nobody's perfect" but then added "Derek Jeter is one of the five or six greatest shortstops ever, and I'm really going to miss him when he's gone. I don't mean gone, physically. I mean gone, as an outstanding player."
One Day at Fenway
In September 2004, Neyer used a pseudonym ("Ike Farrell") on Amazon.com to write a negative customer review of One Day at Fenway, a then-new baseball book by Steve KettmannSteve Kettmann
Steve Kettmann is a best-selling American author living in Berlin who writes a weekly column on politics for the Berliner Zeitung Berliner Zeitung newspaper, appearing every Wednesday. A 1999 Arthur F...
. Neyer subsequently took offense to positive reviews that he believed Kettmann’s friends and relatives had posted.
"How did this project go so terribly wrong?" Farrell/Neyer wrote. "Presumably the author wound up with plenty of source material, and so I can only assume that he [Kettmann] lacked either the talent or the time (or both) to shape the material into a decent piece of non-fiction."
A Newsday newspaper reporter quickly identified Neyer publicly as the actual reviewer. On September 6, Neyer issued an article explaining his actions, "I had such a visceral reaction to Kettmann’s book that I felt compelled to do something" and so, under a "pen name" he decided to write a customer review on Amazon.com. "I didn’t even imagine that it could do anybody any good if I wrote as myself," Neyer rationalized.
Kettmann responded: "The thing that I find strange about all of this is that [Oakland A's general manager] Billy Beane
Billy Beane
William Lamar "Billy" Beane III is a former Major League Baseball player and the current general manager and minority owner of the Oakland Athletics...
, someone who I thought Rob Neyer respects, read my book cover to cover and told me he loved it."
Baseball Writers Association of America
In December 2007, Neyer was declined admission to the Baseball Writers Association of AmericaBaseball Writers Association of America
The Baseball Writers' Association of America is a professional association for baseball journalists writing for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying Web sites. The BBWAA was founded on October 14, 1908, to improve working conditions for sportswriters in the early part of the 20th century...
, members of which vote for National Baseball Hall of Fame candidates and several annual Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
awards, including the Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award
Cy Young Award
The Cy Young Award is an honor given annually in baseball to the best pitchers in Major League Baseball , one each for the American League and National League . The award was first introduced in 1956 by Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick in honor of Hall of Fame pitcher Cy Young, who died in 1955...
s. Neyer and his colleague Keith Law
Keith Law
Keith Law is a senior baseball writer for ESPN.com and ESPN Scouts, Inc. He was formerly a writer for Baseball Prospectus and worked in the front office for the Toronto Blue Jays. He is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America....
were refused due to the BBWAA's perception that they did not attend enough games in person. The following year, during the MLB winter meetings in Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
, Neyer and Law were admitted into the BBWAA.
External links
- Rob Neyer's official web site
- Rob Neyer at TwitterTwitterTwitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
- Rob Neyer's SB Nation page
- Rob Neyer archive at ESPN.com
- Bronx Banter's interview with Rob Neyer (May 6, 2003)
- Rob Neyer on FanGraph's Audio (March 12, 2010)