Rany Jazayerli (born June 14, 1975), a Chicago-area dermatologist, is a co-founder of and writer for Baseball Prospectus. He developed the statistical concept of Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP), which relates to high pitch counts in baseball.

Jazayerli is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan School of Medicine. He is a board-certified dermatologist and a Fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Works

Since 1996 Jazayerli has co-authored many of the annual Baseball Prospectus volumes. He also writes occasional “Doctoring the Numbers” columns for BaseballProspectus.com in which he investigates topics from a sabermetric perspective. He is the creator of the sabermetric measure of "Pitcher Abuse Points."[1] Jazayerli has published seminal research on the relative merits of the 4-man and 5-man pitching rotation.[2] His most important recent major research contribution is a series of twelve articles published on BaseballProspectus.com in 2005-2006 reporting a massive study of the changing patterns of the Major League Baseball player draft.[3]

He and Rob Neyer of ESPN co-authored a blog called “Rob & Rany on the Royals,” in which they both would lament the performance of the Kansas City Royals major league franchise. He now writes his own blog, "Rany on the Royals,". Since 2011 he has been a contributing writer to Grantland.

He has also contributed essays on politics to FiveThirtyEight.com.[4]

Plea for tolerance

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Jazayerli wrote a “Plea for Tolerance” on ESPN.com’s “Page 2”. In his plea, Jazayerli observed: “I have been a baseball writer for over six years, and hardly a day goes by that I don't count my blessings for the opportunity to write about the most uniquely American pastime. But today I can't afford to think about our Great American Game, because I'm too busy thinking about what it means to be an American. You see, I am a Muslim. I am an Arab-American. And right now I am scared to death that in a country I have loved all my life — in the only country I have ever called my own — I am no longer truly free. I feel imprisoned by the hatred of others, those blind to the difference between a sick, demented terrorist and a peace-loving American . . . . Today, I hope that the accomplishments of Muslim and Arab athletes in this country, both on and off the field, will help remind us of the basic humanity in people of all backgrounds. I hope that people might reflect on the charisma and genius of a Muhammad Ali, or the grace of a Hakeem Olajuwon, and understand that just as Muslim athletes are committed to the same goals, on and off the field, as their fellow athletes, so too are Muslims in this country as innately American as anyone else.”

Notes

  1. ↑ Rany Jazayerli, "Baseball Prospectus Basics: How We Measure Pitcher Usage," BaseballProspectus.com (March 3, 2004). The term Pitcher Abuse Points – PAP – was coined by Jazayerli in an article published on the Baseball Prospectus (BP) website in 1998, and the statistic was regularly reported and discussed on the website. In 2001, Keith Woolner came up with an alternative measure, termed PAP3, which has served as the basic pitcher use statistic reported on the BP website since then. For a summary, see Keith Woolner, "Doctoring the Numbers: PAP³ FAQ," BaseballProspectus.com (June 6, 2002).
  2. ↑ For the last of three articles, with links to the previous two, see Rany Jazayerli, "Doctoring The Numbers: The Five-Man Rotation, Part 3," BaseballProspectus.com (August 30, 2002).
  3. ↑ For the final article see "Doctoring The Numbers: The Draft, Part 12," BaseballProspectus.com (June 5, 2006).
  4. ↑ Rany Jazayerli, "A Perspective on Mazen Asbahi," FiveThirtyEight.com, August 8, 2008; and Rany Jazayerli, "Will Bin Laden Strike Again?" FiveThirtyEight.com, October 10, 2008.
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