Rany Jazayerli (born June 14, 1975) is a
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
-area
dermatologist
Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the skin.''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.'' Random House, Inc. 2001. Page 537. . It is a speciality with both medical and surgical aspects. A dermatologist is a specialist medi ...
and co-founder of and writer for
Baseball Prospectus
Baseball Prospectus (BP) is an organization that publishes a website, BaseballProspectus.com, devoted to the sabermetric analysis of baseball. BP has a staff of regular columnists and provides advanced statistics as well as player and team perf ...
. He developed the statistical concept of Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP), which relates to high
pitch count
In baseball statistics, pitch count is the number of pitches thrown by a pitcher in a game.
Pitch counts are especially a concern for young pitchers, pitchers recovering from injury, or pitchers who have a history of injuries. The pitcher wants ...
s in baseball.
Jazayerli is a graduate of
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...
and
University of Michigan Medicine. He is a board-certified dermatologist and a Fellow of the
American Academy of Dermatology
The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) is a non-profit professional organization of dermatologists in the United States and Canada, based in Rosemont, Illinois, near Chicago. It was founded in 1938 and has more than ''21,000'' members. The Acad ...
.
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
Sabermetrics (originally SABRmetrics) is the original or blanket term for sports analytics in the US, the empirical analysis of baseball, especially the development of advanced metrics based on baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. ...
perspective. He is the creator of the sabermetric measure of "Pitcher Abuse Points." 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 PAP
3, 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). Jazayerli has published seminal research on the relative merits of the 4-man and 5-man
pitching rotation. 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
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
player draft.
He and
Rob Neyer of
ESPN
ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...
co-authored a blog called “Rob & Rany on the Royals,” in which they both would lament the performance of the
Kansas City Royals
The Kansas City Royals are an American professional baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Royals compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central Division. The team ...
major league franchise. He now writes his own blog, "Rany on the Royals". Since 2011 he has been a contributing writer to ''
Grantland
''Grantland'' was a sports and pop-culture blog owned and operated by ESPN. The blog was started in 2011 by veteran writer and sports journalist Bill Simmons, who remained as editor-in-chief until May 2015. ''Grantland'' was named after famed ...
''.
He has also contributed essays on politics to ''
FiveThirtyEight
''FiveThirtyEight'', also rendered as ''538'', was an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States.
The website, which took its name from the number of electors in the U ...
''.
Jazayerli has written political opinion pieces, especially on topics of interest to
American Muslims
Islam is the third-largest religion in the United States, religion in the United States (1.34%) after Christianity in the United States, Christianity (67%) and Judaism in the United States, Judaism (2.4%). The 2020 United States Religion Cens ...
, for ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'', ''
The Ringer'' and his own website, Rany on the Royals. Shortly after the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
, the
murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi,
Mark Anthony Stroman's shooting spree in
Dallas
Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
and several other
hate crimes against Muslims in the United States, Jazayerli wrote a “plea for tolerance” on
ESPN.com
ESPN.com is the official website of ESPN. It is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures, a division of ESPN Inc.
History
Since launching in April 1995 as ESPNET.SportsZone.com (ESPNET SportsZone), the website has developed numerous sections including ...
’s "Page 2."
In 2017, he wrote a letter to his dermatology patients explaining his opposition to the
Trump travel ban
As President of the United States, Donald Trump has taken several executive order, executive actions restricting entry into the United States by certain foreign nationals. His First presidency of Donald Trump, first-term travel bans predominan ...
.
Personal life
Jazayerli was born in Michigan to
Syrian
Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend ...
immigrant parents and is
Muslim
Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
.
His father had a medical degree from the
University of Damascus and practiced
cardiology
Cardiology () is the study of the heart. Cardiology is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery di ...
.
He moved with his family to
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita ( ) is the List of cities in Kansas, most populous city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 397, ...
when he was ten days old and grew up a fan of the
Kansas City Royals
The Kansas City Royals are an American professional baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Royals compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central Division. The team ...
. In 1984, his father took a job in Saudi Arabia and Jazayerli began splitting time between Saudi Arabia and Wichita. He would return home to Wichita every summer until he was married in 1997, at which point he relocated to Illinois.
Notes
External links
Rany on the Royals
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jazayerli, Rany
Baseball statisticians
Jazayerli, Rany
Jazayerli, Rany
1975 births
American writers of Syrian descent
American people of Syrian descent
Muslims from Kansas
Living people
American dermatologists
Baseball writers
Writers from Wichita, Kansas
Sportswriters from Kansas
American expatriates in Saudi Arabia
American political writers
Physicians from Kansas