The Hardball Times Annual 2011 is now shipping. If you bought it from ACTA, you will receive it in a couple of days. If you bought it from Amazon, you will receive it in a couple of weeks. If you didn’t buy it, you won’t receive it. Do you really want to spend the rest […]

I’m a big fan of Weighted On-Base Average, or wOBA. And if you love baseball statistics, chances are pretty good that you’ve heard of it, or have used it before. But how do you calculate those darn coefficients? Well, you can get there in about five steps: 1. Find the run value of each event […]

Some players are just likeable. Ed Kirkpatrick, who lost a long battle with throat cancer on Monday at the age of 66, was one of those guys. How could you not love a ballplayer nicknamed “Spanky?” Kirkpatrick settled for a journeyman career in the 1960s and ’70s, but at one time he appeared headed for […]

As the AL Cy Young announcement approaches, here’s a quick look at everyone’s favorite candidate from the northwest…. Felix Hernandez was excellent this year, Cy Young excellent. He led the league in innings pitched, ERA, games started and hits per nine, and struck out 232 batters. He pitched against the Yankees three times and the […]

In The Hardball Times Annual 2009, I built a model for predicting the winners of the MVP and Cy Young Awards. My model(s) have historically done pretty well (note: in-sample testing), getting the winner right around two-thirds of the time (a little worse for the MVP and a little better for the Cy Young). Last […]

There’s a pretty neat discussion on the Internet airwaves today regarding baseball economics and the value of players on the free agent market. It began with JC Bradbury’s post about the proper way to evaluate salaries and performance (be sure to read the comments) and continued with more discussion on the Book Blog. I used […]

Back when Paul DePodesta was a baseball rock star, he appeared in business conferences and magazines talking about his philosophy of management. Most of those interviews are no longer on the web, but that’s why we have the Wayback Machine. Doing a little search, I was able to find a copy of the presentation he […]

The Marlins made two moves over the past few days, sending Andrew Miller to Boston for Dustin Richardson and Cameron Maybin to San Diego for two more pitchers The Maybin move made more headlines and netted two intriguing arms for Florida in Ryan Webb and Edward Mujica. Miami will be Mujica’s third destination, having started […]

Free agency predictions and notes from your friends at THT This year’s free agent class is a relatively polarizing one. There are a few top names readily available at each position, but the depth is extraordinarily shallow. When the best available third basemen is Adrian Beltre and the second best available third basemen is a […]

The Hardball Times Annual 2011 will be shipped later this week, but we’ve got a little preview for you in the meantime. Our postseason coverage was a highlight of last year’s Annual (it wasn’t in the book, but purchasers could download it for free), in which Sky Andrecheck presented an extension of his Championship Index […]