The radical re-boot of MarinerBrainstorm.com wasn't supposed to go on for months, but once I was up at the 35,000-foot level, I just decided to stay there until I had something that I thought was:

• right (that would help, wouldn't it?);
• accessible (knowing that many cut and run at the word "coefficient," for example); and
• useful for the [relatively intense] fan.

And I ended up deciding to build Phase II before publishing Phase I, upon which it is based.   And do it for pitchers as well.

And that's what took so long.

Anyway, I have developed what I hope is a useful and fun way to get a sharper focus on the Holy-ish Grail, which is getting a handle on the non-random elements of performance (what I'm calling the "statistical fundamentals").

It's called the the Flowchart Profiler, and we'll eventually get the whole thing out there and start using it to profile players and teams.

But in order to build that, I had to complete the Batted Ball Project, which is a long look at how batted balls contribute (or not) to offense.

We use data from almost 1.9 million plate appearances from 2002 (when batted-ball data are first available) to the present, and we conclude the biggest deal is ...

• consistently hitting the ball hard in the air.

Or you can read the introduction and all six parts, starting here.