Tom Tango
Tom Tango and "TangoTiger" are aliases used online by a baseball sabermetrics and ice hockey statistics analyst. He runs the Tango on Baseball sabermetrics website and is also a contributor to ESPN's baseball blog TMI (The Max Info).[1]
In 2006, Tango's book The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, which was co-written with Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin, was published featuring a foreword by Pete Palmer. In The Book he and his coauthors analyzed many advanced baseball questions, like how to optimize a lineup or when to issue an intentional base on balls. They also introduced the wOBA metric to measure overall offensive contributions.[2]
Tango maintains the "Marcel the Monkey Forecasting System," a player projection system which uses three years of weighted player statistics with statistical regression and player age adjustment.[3]
He is best known for developing the FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) statistic, which attempts to more accurately assess the quality of a pitcher's performance than other statistics, such as ERA. 2009 American League Cy Young Award winner Zack Greinke specifically mentioned FIP as his favorite statistic. "That's pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible".[4]
Tango works as a consultant for several National Hockey League teams, and has worked for Major League Baseball. Tango has worked for the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays as a statistical analysis consultant.[better source needed][5][6] As of 2013, he works exclusively for the Chicago Cubs in a similar role.[7]
Born and raised in Canada, he resides in New Jersey with his family and has insisted on keeping his true name secret.
Books
- Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin. The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007. ISBN 1-59797-129-4.
References
- ↑ TMI.
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- ↑ Tyler Kepner, "Use of Statistics Helps Greinke to A.L. Cy Young", The New York Times, 18 November 2009.
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- ↑ http://www.bleachernation.com/2013/01/29/the-cubs-front-office-brain-trust-grows-by-one-tom-tango
- Citations
- Justin Sopp, "Q&A with SaberWizard Tom Tango", Beyond the Box Score, 24 August 2011
External links
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- Tangotiger (official)
- The Book—Playing The Percentages In Baseball (official)
- Interview at Baseball Digest Daily - Part I
- Interview at Baseball Digest Daily - Part II
- Tom M. Tango at Library of Congress Authorities, with 2 catalog records
