Three things: • A hearty congratulations to Pete Abraham, who is leaving The Journal News for The Boston Globe and in doing so will move from covering the Yankees to the hated Red Sox. As any Yankee fan with an Internet connection knows, Pete’s been THE go-to beat reporter for all things Yankees for the past …
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” — Maxwell Scott, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance That Satchel Paige was one of the greatest baseball players of all time isn’t exactly a controversial topic these days. Even casual fans are probably familiar with the colorful Paige’s aphorisms (“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining …
I missed this bit of news while I was gone got wind of it this morning, just hours before getting a note from host Chris Villani. Sadly, the ESPN station which carried my Boston radio hits has gone off the air, with the staff laid off. Villani has already landed some other work at WWZN …
I spend a lot of my time at Baseball Prospectus exploring the margin between teams’ expected performance as based upon variants of Bill James’ Pythagorean formula and their actual performance, looking for reasons why it happens and cues as to what it portends. In Tuesday’s edition of Hit and Run, I explore the Angels’ penchant …
In today’s Baseball Prospectus/ESPN Insider double cheeseburger special, I grapple with the American League’s persistent advantage over the National League in interleague play. The AL has gotten the upper hand in each of the past six years and has won at a .566 clip over the past five, or .560 over the past three. To …
One of the post-9/11 Yankee Stadium policies that made attending a game so annoying during the park’s twilight years was their ban on bags and backpacks: Accompanying the regular renditions of “God Bless America” were heightened security procedures that subjected patrons to no small litany of hassles while doing little to make them more secure. …
This past week, I toiled in my laboratory attempting to build an MVP predictor (ESPN Insider part 1 / part 2) based upon past results, one that might lend some insight into who would win this year. As the recent scrum between supporters of the candidacies of Joe Mauer and Mark Teixeira reminds us, nearly …
As is my custom, every summer I take BP reader inside the sausage factory that is the Hit List. Usually it’s done during the All-Star week, but for some reason I waited with this year’s model: It happens every week: a reader sees his favorite team trailing one of its division rivals in the Hit …
Last week’s Boston hit, talking about the BP Playoff Odds, the “Secret Sauce,” Billy Wagner, the AL Wild Card race, and of course the Red Sox catching situation. Always with the catching…
Lots of links to catch up with, as it was a four-article week for me at Baseball Prospectus, so I’ll break it into two posts. First up, I revisited the strength of schedule methodology I used a couple times earlier this year for a two-part look at the contenders’ remaining schedules, using the Hit List …