That is, relative to position, and with the warning that these are imprecise ratings, not the final word, and that multi-year data, if available, must be used to determine who really is a good or bad fielder, preferably supplemented with scouting information. These ratings measure range and reliability only, and do not include an outfielder’s […]

Continuing with my series on 2010 impact prospects today we will take a look at San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey. Posey was a first round pick (fifth overall) out of Florida State in 2008. After appearing in only 10 games after signing late in ’08, he began the 2009 season in Advanced-A and excelled […]

Apparently, the Indians hired a new manager: Manny Acta, formerly of the Nationals. First thought: This is both a testament to what the Indians think of him and how little they think of the Nationals’ major league talent. It isn’t every day a manager with a .385 winning percentage with his first team gets hired […]

At least according to TotalZone. I ran these ratings from a different datasource than usual. Specifically, someone sent me files with data from MLBAM. Later in the offseason I’ll compare it to the results from the source of all the other TotalZone ratings, the retrosheet files. Anyway, the top 15 runs saved for 2009: 1. […]

Last time, I took a look at one of the bigger enigmas in baseball, John Lannan of the Nationals. To rehash, since 2007, he has thrown nearly 400 innings with a 3.90 ERA. However, based on his peripheral statistics, you would expect his ERA to be in the mid to high fours. The main reason […]

Baseball Prospectus has a metric called Wins Above Replacement Player, which (ideally) should be a pretty straightforward proposition. But let’s look at a few things. I have a collection of sortable WARP1 reports from October 9th, covering 1996-2009. How does it match up what’s currently on the site? Currently, BPro says Vlad was worth 59.1 […]

Congrats to the Philadelphia Phillies, who just won consecutive pennants for the first time in their history. That brings up the question: what are the most recent back-to-back pennants for all 30 teams? Well, obviously not all 30 teams have done it, but which ones have? Before checking, can you name: – The only two […]

Every college student knows about the wonders of Sporcle. For the uninitiated, it’s essentially millions of different quizzes about anything and everything you could think of. For example, you could be asked to name every Adam Sandler movie or the 20 most populated cities in Iowa (with a time limit of course). A reader named […]

I’m almost done typesetting the statistics section of the 2010 Hardball Times Annual—over 150 pages of stats and graphs, including Defensive Runs Saved from John Dewan and other cool stuff you can’t hardly get anywhere else—and I have to get something off my chest. Isn’t it weird that all the Rangers’ position players with long […]

Continuing with my look at impact prospects for the 2010 season today we will take a look at Cleveland Indians catcher Carlos Santana. Santana came to the Indians organization in 2008 as part of a deal that sent Casey Blake to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The departure of Victor Martinez all but assures that there […]