Given all of the talk about the AL MVP, I was hoping that I could make my own quantitative, objective comparison of the raw value that both David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez have contributed to their respective teams this season. Unfortunately, I have failed (Gah!). Actually, my original intent was to calculate the [...]
Even though I don’t always agree with everything Jayson Stark has to say, I’d have to say he’s dead on in this recent column. If you’ve been paying attention to my site, you might recall that I made a case a while back arguing that Roger Clemens should overwhelmingly win the Cy Young this [...]
What was Jayson Stark thinking when he wrote this column? The main question that he addresses is whether Curt Schilling is going to successfully make the transition from “closer” to starter. Now, this is perhaps an interesting subject, but there are a couple things wrong with the way that he presents it. [...]
In the second segment of my case against closers, I’d like to present a statistic called WPA or Win Probability Added. I first read about WPA in the book Curve Ball by Jim Albert and Jay Bennett. It struck me then as one of the most intriguing and most ingenious methods to quantitatively [...]
As an astute participant in the ever-so-popular game of fantasy baseball, I tend to pay a lot of attention to players’ statistics and how well they correlate to their overall contributions to their teams. In my opinion (and the opinion of many other “stathead” baseball fans and analysts), the traditional fantasy categories are not [...]
Even though I am really not a big fan of Roger Clemens, I can’t help but admire what he has done “post-retirement” (and throughout his career). In particular, his performance this season has been nothing short of mind-boggling. What makes it so outrageous, though, is that his season is somehow flying under [...]
Since the widespread acceptance of “Moneyball” tactics in evaluating the performance of hitters, patience at the plate and a hitter’s more SABR-metric stats such as OBP and SLG have become good general indicators of a hitter’s value. However, check out this article from baseballanalysts.com. It provides some very good general insight as to [...]
I’m not sure how I haven’t come across this article earlier. In any case, you should read it. It’s an analysis of the number of no hitters that a pitcher has pitched in his career versus the statistical expected number that he should have pitched.
I’m back from Suissevale! As usual I had a good week there. Lots of beach, lots of swimming, lots of volleyball, and all that stuff you do on vacation at a lake made it a good time for all. Anyways, a lot has happened in the week that I was gone and [...]
I just finished watching a ridiculous Red Sox/Devil Rays game. The Red Sox eventually won it 10-9 in 10 innings but not after yet another shaky performance by the all mighty Curt Schilling. Now let’s first get a couple things straight. I think Curt Schilling is an incredible pitcher and undoubtedly a [...]
