In a bit of a surprise, the Cincinnati Reds have brought back Ramon Hernandez on a one-year, $3 million contract to function as their starting catcher. The reason I say it was a surprise is because popular notion has been that the team is looking to slash payroll. In such a situation, the more adept […]

Since the beginning of September, Professor Andy Andres has been teaching the 2009 version of Sabermetrics 101 at Tufts University. The class, which is available through Tufts’ Experimental College (which specializes in offering classes in somewhat esoteric areas) is described as follows: This course will teach the fundamentals of the emerging science of Sabermetrics, the […]

The Hardball Times Annual 2010 is now shipping. If you ordered it from ACTA, you will receive it very soon (if you haven’t already). If you ordered it from Amazon, you’ll get in a couple of weeks. I warned you… I learned yesterday that the Annual was printed by the same printer that printed the […]

One of the more intriguing two-way prospects in the minor leagues is Red Sox shortstop and pitcher Casey Kelly. Kelly, just 20 years of age, was a first round pick in 2008 out of Sarasota High School. He made his debut in 2008 as a shortstop and in 130 at-bats between Rookie-A and Low-A he […]

Michael Jong, of Marlin Maniac and Beyond the Boxscore, has written quite the nice set of articles outlining some of the major concepts of modern day Sabermetrics at FanHuddle: Glossary: part one, two and three. Runs created The value of walks The “international currency” of baseball (runs) Linear weights He also has several in depth […]

Using 2006-2008 data, I ran a regression using UZR’s ARM rating per 150 games as my dependent variable against the three Z-Scored arm ratings on Tangotiger’s Fans’ Scouting Report-accuracy, strength, and release-and using the number of ballots as my weights. Fans can explain about 10% of the variance in an outfielder’s ARM runs per 150 […]

This is my first post here at THT after spending a year and a half blogging for my favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s good to be on board. With the end of the World Series, every baseball fan’s second favorite pastime is rumor-mongering about who’s heading where and for how much or whom. […]

The Milwaukee Brewers were smart to decline starting pitcher Braden Looper’s $6.5 million mutual option, freeing up a significant amount of money to plug various holes. Looper led baseball in home runs, checking in at 194.2 innings of a 5.22 ERA. I don’t think serving up all those home runs are sustainable, so it’s likely […]

Ya know, when I sat down to write this piece for my blog, I thought it would be a nice, little short thing – kinda like one of my typical THT Live posts. It turned out to be akin to one of my columns here, not a Live post. In response to a newspaper column […]

Jim Salisbury of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes that the Phillies have Placido Polanco on their wishlist to play third base. While Salisbury doesn’t comment on whether Polanco is actually coveted ahead of Adrian Beltre or Mark DeRosa or simply a fallback, I remain horrified that this would be under consideration at all. The argument for […]