Rich Rifkin

From Wiki Gonzalez

Rich Rifkin was a contributor to Baseball Primer, Baseball Prospectus, and other baseball sites from 2001 to 2003. He became famous for his dissertation-length analytical articles and educational lead-ins to Primer threads, contrasting with the usual one-liners and quips of other contributors.

His favorite team was the Oakland Athletics. He also developed the Hoyt Scale in 2001 for evaluating relief pitchers.

By 2004 he stopped writing for either site and vanished without a trace. Some think he was working as a reporter for a northern California newspaper at that time.

In March of that year, Dan Werr wrote a fictional story "explaining" the disappearance of Rich Rifkin. At that time, he wrote to Rich's old e-mail address to get approval for the concept. The address still worked and garnered a reply from Rifkin--suggesting that, in reality, he was never that hard to find. He explained that he was simply prioritizing other things.

Rich finally returned to Baseball Think Factory in early 2006 as a poster, using the handle of "RichRifkin".

References

• Digging in the AstroDirt: March 17, 2004 (http://web.archive.org/web/20041028150154/http%3a//www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/main/article/danwerr_2004-03-16_0/) - Dan Werr fictional story
• Primer thread describing the Hoyt Scale (http://web.archive.org/web/20040220171505/http%3a//www.baseballprimer.com/clutch/archives/00001105.shtml#14) (July 14, 2001)