What is Birdland Metrics?
As a native of the Baltimore area, I'm a huge Orioles fan. Like many of you, as a kid I ate peanuts in 95-degree weather out at Camden Yards on those steamy August evenings, belted John Denver's famous "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" in between innings, and listened to the cracks of the bat from players like Brady Anderson, Cal Ripken, Manny Machado, and Adam Jones. I, too, survived the down decades of rebuilds and postseason misses in the 2000s and 2010s, and have become re-energized during the Mike Elias era.
This site welcomes all Orioles fans, whether you are someone who jumped on the bandwagon recently, or a die-hard that watches every game, I hope to create content for you that'll keep you intrigued. As a data scientist by trade, the content will naturally be geared more towards baseball data enthusiasts. However, for fans that were lucky enough to witness those dominant Orioles teams of the 70s and 80s, I plan to dive deep into historical data and players, generating some interesting comparisons to today's starters.
There are much larger sites and publications out there that cover the Orioles, but they often do it while playing into the narrative of larger media markets. Why not have a site devoted specifically to Orioles baseball, that doesn't just talk about the everyday happenings of the team, but analyzes trends, benchmarks, and puts this news into broader Orioles context.
What you can expect
Birdland Metrics is a one-person operation (run solely by me). My lovely wife and I are happily married with two small children, so my posting schedule will likely be impacted by my availability around bottle feedings and toddler tantrums. However, I hope to find some consistency and build a community with readers and enthusiasts that want to discuss the data behind Baltimore Orioles baseball.
A majority of my posts will utilize the plethora of publicly available baseball data we have at our disposal, and taking this data to provide key Orioles insights. I may diverge from this from time-to-time, but ultimately keeping it true to my hometown team is a key driver of starting this project.
I'll do my best to react to news, games, and performance with a data-focused lens and explore the impact of these events on the team. However, striving for quality over quantity is my ultimate goal. Deep dives take time, and rather than posting quick pieces to communicate recent events, I'll take more time to generate in-depth findings and critiques. My goal is for readers to come away from an article thinking, "I learned something valuable", rather than "I am caught up on the latest Orioles news."
For those that are new to baseball data, I'll also create explainers and content that cater to helping you better understand particular data terminology. For instance, one of my first posts explains the model I built to calculate win projections, playoff odds, and other predictive indicators.
As a hobbyist, and someone doing this very much in my free time, it's important to note up front that I will make mistakes. I do not have myriad fact-checkers and a robust team of analysts available. However, I welcome the feedback and hope to learn more from all of you.
Collaborations and Guest-Authoring
With that being said, if you are interested in working on the site with me, please do reach out at zach@birdlandmetrics.com. I'm open to any and all conversations about getting involved in this project. As mentioned, my time is currently quite limited, so having others available to help keep up with a consistent posting schedule would be great. If you have any interest in generating content for this site, or would like to talk about ideas you have related to Orioles baseball and data, please do reach out.
I'll end by saying, thank you for landing here. Without your interest, this project isn't possible. I hope content here will bring you back, and keep you involved in a fun, new Orioles baseball community. In the meantime, enjoy what is currently on the site and don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter (form is below) -- which will be full of week-to-week updates about the site and Orioles baseball. Cheers!
