I’m putting up a post tonight that I intend to be the first in a series of posts so I thought a little background was in order.  My girl friend, even before we ever started dating, liked baseball in the same way that most girls do.  She liked going to the games, in her words “mostly for the beer and hot dogs.”  She had played softball in her youth and understood the basic rules of the game, but anything more advanced than balls, strikes and outs went right over her head.  I, on the other hand, love everything about baseball and try my hardest to understand all the intricacies and statistics of the game.  Naturally, I talk about this stuff a lot, especially when we are at a game together, and naturally she doesn’t understand some of it, so I try my best to explain it to her.  Out of those conversations, I had an idea to write a series of posts explaining some advanced statistical concepts as I would explain them if I was talking to my girl friend.  The goal is to have a set of primers that can be used to help explain these concepts to anyone unfamiliar with them, breaking everything down into its component parts, and then building back up to a level of basic understanding.  In light of my post the other day about Zach Duke’s performance before and after August 1st, I thought FIP would be a good place to start and that will be posted shortly.  I’ll try to keep this post updated with a list as I add more to the series, although don’t expect a new post every day, or even every week.  I’ll write them as a I feel like it, and hopefully, overtime, develop a rather complete set of primers/tutorials.  As always, I welcome any feedback, good or bad, and you can leave that in the comments or by emailing me.

FIP