Last August, I noticed that the Yankees were hitting fly balls at a much higher rate . I chalked it up to the giddiness of Yankee hitters at a smaller ballpark, saying: It could be that the lefties are trying to get as many big swings as possible thanks to the hitter-friendly dimensions, and to […]

Phillies 11, Mets 5: Look, there are about 17 different ways in which Johan Santana’s awful night could be described, but I think the fact that he walked Jamie Moyer with the bases loaded in the fourth pretty much tells you all you need to know. The Victorino grand slam that immediately followed was less […]

Johnny Damon got off to a bit of a slow start for his new Tiger team, but he’s now one of the hottest hitters in baseball. According to Bill James Online, his temperature is the second-hottest (101 degrees) in the majors, tied with Kosuke Fukudome and Paul Konerko. Damon has gone 6-for-9 in his last […]

I’ve done them on baseballprojection.com, though it was quite a chore, more than I expected. It takes enough effort to get the data from the MLBAM gameday files into a form that I can use for projections, plus time to try and make sure I’ve got players with their new teams. I doubt I’ll be […]

Back in January, the Texas Rangers signed Colby Lewis to a two-year, $5 million deal, with a $3.25 million club option for the 2012 season. Originally taken by the Rangers in the supplemental first round of the 1999 draft, Lewis disappointed and drifted in the years to follow, compiling -0.9 Wins Above Replacement in the […]

File this one in the “stunningly obvious” drawer. According to Bill James Online, Robinson Cano is the hottest hitter in the majors, with a 117 degree fever. Close behind is, you guessed it, Paul Konerko at 103 degrees and, yup, Colby Rasmus at 101 degrees. Okay, some of you may be surprised about Rasmus, but […]

Rays 11, Royals 1: The Rays are good the Royals are bad and you all know that, so there’s no sense in dwelling on it here. Let’s take things in a different direction: My wife and I took the kids to the Columbus Clippers-Charlotte Knights game last night, which the Clippers won 9-7.  My daughter […]

There’s a mini-discussion going on in the Twitterverse/blogosphere surrounding the usefulness of the “win” as a statistic. Here are some of the opinions: Daily News columnist Jesse Spector: The win is accessible – a single number whose meaning is known on some level by everyone from the casual fan to the diehard. The more you […]

We know that BABIP for hitters is a combination of a whole bunch of things, but I just wanted to take a quick look at the polar ends of the category thus far in 2010: Leaders: 1) Austin Jackson (.491) 2) Scott Podsednik (.422) 3) Michael Bourn (.420) 4) Franklin Gutierrez (.415) 5) Shin-Soo Choo […]

Bill James likes to keep a tally of hot hitters at Bill James Online. It’s a simple system, based on a running tally of the run value of hits in a player’s most recent string of plate appearances. Players tend to average around 72 degrees; sometimes they drop to 50 degrees and other times jump […]