All Entries in the "Sabermetrics" Category
Sabermetrics and the Hall of Fame: How Choosing the Elite has Evolved
The standards by which the elite are chosen for election into Cooperstown are evolving. This transition can mostly be attributed to the growing popularity and acceptance of Sabermetrics. The decision to vote Ron Santo into the sacred Hall is a prime example of the shift from traditional thinking. While greatness on the diamond has [...]
Why You’re Wrong About Yu Darvish
For many years, American baseball fans with an eye towards the Japanese Major Leagues have been rolling out the red carpet for the Nippon-Ham Fighters‘ 6-foot-5 fireballer Yu Darvish. The NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) has a strange relationship with MLB regarding their players crossing the Pacific to play stateside. NPB players can sign with [...]
Sabermetrics 101: Gaining the Fantasy Baseball Edge
Most people who play fantasy baseball participate in leagues which count basic statistical categories. Although actual league formats may differ (head-to-head, rotisserie, points leagues being among the most popular), the categories in which your teams compete are generally the same. Most fantasy baseball leagues will consider the following categories for batters: Runs, Home Runs, RBI, Batting Average and [...]
Taking a Look at Pitch Efficiency
Last time we looked at runs scored, hitting categories, and managerial efficiency. Today, we are doing the same with runs scored, pitching categories, and managerial efficiency. Naturally, we are first looking to see how teams did in the various categories. Instead of boring you with numbers, we will go with their rankings in the different [...]
Follow the Batted Ball
One of the things those of us in stats all want to do is to go from step A to step F without explaining the steps in between. The main goal in this section is to avoid skipping steps. In the introductory article I mentioned batted ball statistics. Before I move onto those statistics I [...]
The Power of Plate Discipline
It’s always entertaining when old ideas and new ideas collide. Ask any fan from a bygone era and they will lament the inability of modern hitters to protect the plate with two strikes. They wax poetic about the power hitters of yore and their ability to hit for power and avoid the strikeout. So, preach [...]
Luck Factor and the NL bullpen
We finally get to the last of our luck factor series. For those of you that have been following this all along I give a wholehearted thanks. If you are just joining us you might want to back track and read the first one. It should be archived in the sabermetrics section of [...]
Luck Factor in the Senior Circuit (NL): Starting Pitchers
Hopefully, you are following along with the luck factor series. This will be number five in that series. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I will try to give you a quick hook before we dive into the numbers. Fantasy baseball players have many of the same concerns as general managers. When you look [...]
Luck Factor Continued: AL Starting Pitchers
As John Lennon once said, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” I love baseball, but baseball doesn’t pay the bills. This happens to be the busy season at work, so I had to sit on all of the luck factor data I had generated. I know all of you [...]
The “New” Power Hitter
If you think of the great power hitters of all time—Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron—the names that come to mind were more than power hitters, since they were all around fantastic batters. The traditional definition of a slugger did not necessarily include hitting home runs, but rather, hitting the ball solidly and [...]
Luck Factor: AL Lineups
Honestly I feel a whole lot better about studying the American League. It has nothing to do with superior play or the designated hitter. It has everything to do with the fact that I am a dedicated Astros fan. I run an Astros blog at Breathingorangefire.com and have been a fan of [...]
An Introduction to the Luck Factor in Baseball
There is a schism in baseball between those that we might call traditionalists and those we would call sabermetricians. Traditionalists believe in intangibles. They believe in character, chemistry, and pure athletic skills. Unexplained events are actually explained by clutch performance or what some people call “choking”, Moreover, we shouldn’t try to define it or quantify [...]
Jackie Robinson: A Look at His Hall of Fame Career
Could he be elected to the Hall of Fame had he not broken the color barrier? Jackie Roosevelt Robinson was ahead of his time. Emerging almost 20 years before the Civil Rights movement, Robinson is known to African-Americans as a pioneer. He played second base in the Negro Leagues until age 25, when Branch Rickey, [...]
“SABR DAY” TO BE CELEBRATED ACROSS THE USA ON JANUARY 30
On Saturday, January 30, 2010, members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) will come together to celebrate SABR and all things baseball. Chapters and members across the US and Canada will gather for everything from Hot Stove discussions to research presentations to guest talks by former players to a Dice Base Ball Tournament [...]
Wins and Loses: A Decline in Value?
Image via Wikipedia Congratulations to Tim Lincecum for winning the 2009 NL Cy Young award, just a couple short days after Zack Greinke‘s victory for the AL counterpart. But an even bigger congratulations is in order. A congratulations to the BBWAA voters. Just what am I getting at, you ask? As we’re all aware of, [...]
Is Jorge Posada Hall of Fame Bound?
Image via Wikipedia Jorge Posada has played for the Yankees since 1995, and started since 1998. He is a popular player, and as he approaches the end of his career, some noise is being made about electing him to the Hall of Fame. But does he deserve it? Is Jorge Posada a future Hall of [...]
The Biggest WAR Bargains of 2009: Part 2
Image by Keith Allison via Flickr Last week I covered the top 5 position player bargains of the year – and despite the fact that they were great talents, had for cheap, they were still, mainly, pretty big names. This week, for part two, I’ll try to dive into 5 of the lesser known bargains. [...]
The Biggest WAR Bargains of 2009: Part 1
Image by Keith Allison via Flickr Currently in the MLB, the average player value, per win, is about $4.5 million. So, if a player’s WAR (Wins Above Replacement) in a season was 2.0, that player would have been worth about $9 million. Naturally, there are going to be a lot of players getting paid much [...]
Why Tim Lincecum will be your 2009 NL Cy Young winner
Image by Getty Images via Daylife After a year in which Cardinals starting pitchers Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright dominated the headlines, pitched their team to a division title and were expected to fight for some off-season hardware, it was the Giants’ Tim Lincecum who picked up the first post-season win amongst the trio. When [...]
The Most Valuable Player in Baseball Might Surprise You
When you think of the best, most valuable players in baseball, what names come to mind? Albert Pujols, probably. Or maybe Chase Utley, Derek Jeter, Evan Longoria? There are plenty of big names out there that the average fans look at as the best players. This year, though, it wasn’t any of those guys. In [...]
Sabermetrics and the Cy Young Award
I think we’re all aware of which stats voters use to determine Cy Young winners. For the most part, it’s stats like ERA, wins, K’s, losses, and WHIP. There are a number of reasons why using only those stats doesn’t come close to telling the whole story – each of them is seriously flawed. Let’s [...]
Deserving Gold Glove Winners – A.L.
Image via Wikipedia Catcher: Catcher’s defense is by far the toughest to quantify, as there really isn’t a metric for it, and you pretty much have to go exclusively by stats like runners thrown out, passed balls, and dare I say, fielding percentage. Deserving Winner: Jason Varitek Reasoning: Highest RF/9 (range factor per game) among [...]
The Gold Glove Award Selection Process Needs Impoving
Image via Wikipedia It’s fairly unclear as to what voters take into consideration when choosing winners of the gold glove award – the one stat that has consistently been used to determine a players fielding ability, has been fielding percentage. Fielding percentage basically takes the player’s total number of chances converted into outs (assists/put outs), [...]
Sabermetrics 101: VORP
For those of you who are sabermetrically challenged, here is an introductory look into this basic stat. Here is the textbook description of VORP thanks to Baseball Prospectus.com. VORP stands for Value Over Replacement Player, which is broken down as the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would [...]
Big Papi Comes Up Big in June
Image via Wikipedia So now that David Ortiz has found his stroke again, all the murmurs will start. This will certainly mirror the talk that surrounded Jason Giambi a couple of years ago. You all remember, don’t you? Giambi admitted to doing performance-enhancing drugs before the 2004 season, and followed that up with an 80 [...]
A Case for Sabermetrics
Image via Wikipedia In the past few months I have been gathering monthly author for Baseball Reflections so that I could write on a more relaxed basis and produce more detailed work. This article is the first postto that effect. A version of it was previously posted over at RBI Magazine back on March 12th. [...]
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