Two days ago, Fangraphs added the BIS +/- fielding statistics to its pages. Over the past couple days, Twitter was the scene of a conversation comparing +/- Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) to Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), also available at Fangraphs, based on the same underlying BIS batted ball data set. The conversation was between Colin […]

Padres 17, Braves 2:  Er, um, yeah. I’m going to pretend that this was just an 8-2 game or something like it, because really, once Bobby Cox decided to let Jo-Jo Reyes mop up the game was already lost and the actual stats mere details. But enough about the Braves deplorable performance. Let’s talk about […]

The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have garnered a lot of attention for their slow games, particularly their three-hour, 46-minute affair on opening day. I’ve been thinking about this since then, but Joe Posnanski’s post today gave me the push I need to crunch the numbers. He compared the average times for intra-division […]

The first week of major league baseball is all about hope. There is hope that your team will perform well this season. There is hope that your favorite player will put up big numbers this season. There is hope that the struggling prospect will finally put it all together and become a useful major league […]

Brewers 8, Cardinals 7: I’m in the tri-state area today meeting NBC folks, planning for the future, talking about the State of the Blog, but mostly just convincing them that they’re entrusting their baseball coverage to a real person and not an android or one kid standing on another kid’s shoulders wearing a long overcoat […]

FanGraphs has now added the Plus/Minus system into their already impressive array of baseball metrics, making their site even more impressive. Now that it’s freely accessible, we can export the data rather easily and dissect it as we please. So, let’s cut it up a bit and take a look at how it compares to […]

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim manager Mike Scioscia knows a thing or two about catching. Scioscia crouched behind the dish for the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1980-1992, and by all accounts, he was a skilled defender. According to Sean Smith’s Historical WAR data, Scioscia saved 38 runs compared to an average catcher during the course […]

Blue Jays 3, Rangers 1: On the scale of unexpected and dramatic comebacks, Vernon Wells starting the season with four homers in three games falls somewhere south of Bruce Wayne donning the cape and cowl after a decade in retirement in The Dark Knight Returns, but somewhere north of Steely Dan releasing “Two Against Nature” […]

About a decade ago, I had a chance to talk to Jim Pagliaroni over the phone. It was right about the time that Catfish Hunter died from the effects of ALS. Hunter’s family and friends had started the Catfish Hunter Foundation, and Pagliaroni was chosen to serve as one of its directors. I found Pagliaroni […]

One of the things I like about being a student is that I have access to a seemingly unlimited amount of classical texts, and every once in a while I’ll stumble across a gem of a quote that really catches my attention. Very rarely, however, do I find the quote applicable to baseball. I was […]