Happy “anniversary” (of a sorts) to Yankees legend Whitey Ford. Today marks 30,000 days since his birth. By and large, Yankee legends don’t live that long. Ford is 82 years and almost two months. He’s seventh all-time in franchise WAR, with 55.3. Ahead of him are only two men who lived longer lives than Ford […]

Most mid-season homers are easily forgettable. It doesn’t matter how long or clutch they are, because we typically only remember the ones that take place in the most clutch of games. Carlton Fisk in Game Six. Kirk Gibson’s homer off Dennis Eckersley. Bobby Thomson’s Giants-Win-the-Pennant homer. Bill Mazeroski’s jubilant Bambi-beats-Goliath Game Seven walk-off. For a […]

If you weren’t shocked by Washington’s surprise signing of Jayson Werth last Sunday, then you probably are an inner-circle member of the Washington Nationals franchise. While many analysts (including some THT regulars) speculated that the Nationals would put forth every effort to land one of the elite free agents on the market, few saw Werth […]

If you have read the articles on the most exciting baseball games (Part One—Part Two) you were probably expecting something to appear on THT Live. Here it is: my present for you. Follow this link to a Google Spreadsheet that contains data for all the games played since 2006 (all of them should be available […]

Admittedly, this is an odd card for Ron Santo, the beloved Cub who passed away Thursday at the age of 70. Yet, it has always been my favorite Santo card, in part because of its dramatic landscape format and partly because it is the final Topps card that shows him in a Cubs uniform. Unlike […]

Through no fault of his, Part 2 of Geoff Young’s series on great pitchers duels went up the site today referring to Part 1… which hasn’t been published. It will be, on Friday.

Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter are coming at us as a pair. Sound familiar? If the “stars” of free-agency were aligned just a little closer together, say in timing of contract negotiations and free agency, we could all have a lot more fun. Imagine if both Pujols and Jeter were free agents at the same […]

Max has a great article up today on using Win Probability Added and Leverage Index to determine a game’s excitement. We took the “simple” approach in the Hardball Times Annual (have I mentioned that it’s now shipping?) and ranked all games according to the swings in Win Expectancy from play to play. In fact, THT […]

Last year I introduced DIRVA_PLUS, a pitching metric specifically designed to look at the actual past performance of pitchers. Unlike pitching metrics that are designed to measure a pitcher’s true talent to be used in projecting future performance, DIRVA_PLUS includes the effects of sequencing of events. It also makes an adjustment to adjust for the […]

Once the Baseball Writers Association of America announces its annual awards, we often hear voters explaining how they arrived at their choices. This year has been no exception. But what about the guidelines from the BBWAA? Does the organization give its members variables to use in voting for these annual awards? When it comes time […]