With the Dodgers nearly backing into the playoffs and the Yankees still waiting to find out whether they’ll play a streaking opponent or a slumping one in the first round, today at Baseball Prospectus I took a look at the link between late-season momentum and postseason success: Against long odds, the final week of the …
Continue reading ‘Momentum Is the Next Day’s Starting Pitcher’ »
As the 2009 season heads into its final weekend, the editors at ESPN Insider invited me to create a list of sabermetrically-themed highlights and lowlights. The piece runs here and here. A few of the high points were obvious, centered around the accomplishments of Joe Mauer (who’s on his way to becoming the 16th player …
In today’s Prospectus Hit and Run piece, I revisit an early-season look at the Rangers’ improvement in Defensive Efficiency (the rate at which a team’s defense turns batted balls into outs), itself a follow-up of sorts to the record-setting improvement pulled off by last year’s Rays. They’re no threat to break that record, but they’ve …
Continue reading ‘The Impact of Elvis, and Other Defensive Improvements’ »
As noted last week, I spend a lot of my time at BP 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. Having taken on the Pythagorean overachievers in last week’s …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Has it been that long since I posted here? Shame on me once again, but I’ve had my reasons… • Back on Wednesday I examined the potential Hall of Fame fates of Vlad Guerrero and other contemporary right fielders, including Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield, Bobby Abreu, Ichiro Suzuki, Sammy Sosa and Larry Walker. There’s not a …