Cyril Morong has posted some information about “clutch hitting” over the years. He finds that clutch hitting (which he calculates as the difference between batting in close and late situations vs. not close and late situations) has gotten “worse” over time. That is, batters are doing worse in clutch situations; pitchers are doing better. This […]

Ichiro Suzuki was ejected in the fifth inning of today’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays after demonstratively arguing a called strike three. In addition to comments to the umpire, Suzuki drew a line on the ground with his bat to show Brian Runge where he thought the pitch had gone. I grabbed some still […]

I’m working away on the Hardball Times Annual 2010 (have I mentioned that lately?) and I’d appreciate your feedback on something. Past Annuals have included a graph of each team’s runs scored and allowed, as well as games won, on an average ten-game basis. It’s supposed to be an easy way to visualize the season. […]

This is a repeat of an earlier post. Hopefully, the comments will work this time. Usually when one of us here at THT Live links to a post it’s because there is something provocative in the writing of the post that we’d like to either point out or elaborate on. This isn’t really one of […]

About once or twice a week during the baseball season, I spend more time than is decent at Claudia’s in Portland, watching more baseball than is decent while drinking more beers than is decent. Because you’re a sports fan, you’ve very probably been to a bar like Claudia’s. Here’s what it has in it: beer, […]

If you’re like me, you rarely click on links to MLB and minor league player blogs. Even in the cases where the players write for themselves, entries are often nothing more than longer versions of your typical post-game interview boilerplate. Not so with Royals prospect Disco Hayes. (Not everyone would categorize Hayes as a “prospect,” […]

Remember Brian Johnson? There’s really no particular reason you should. He was a semi-regular catcher during his eight-year major league career, bouncing between six different teams. There must have been an aura to Johnson, however, because flowers apparently bloomed everywhere he went. {exp:list_maker}Johnson first broke in with the 1994 Padres, who were a lousy 47-70 […]

In an article on ESPN.com yesterday, Jerry Crasnick talked about the current situation between NCAA athletes, their representation, and, to a lesser extent, Major League Baseball. For the uninitiated, here’s a brief summary of the system: NCAA athletes in any sport are not allowed to have any representation, i.e. an agent. What almost every player […]

I’m going to list two groups of players, and all you have to do is go ahead and look them over: Group A: Corey Patterson Eric Munson Luis Montanez Dewon Brazelton Christopher Gruler Kyle Sleeth Philip Humber Jeff Clement Evan Longoria Josh Vitters Group B: Dave Kelton Brian Sanches Bobby Hill Jon Switzer Joey Votto […]

While doing some background reading for my 2010 Hardball Times Annual article, I ran across an interesting article about the development of the FoxTrax hockey puck in 1995 and 1996. The system was developed by Fox Sports to allow their TV broadcast to superimpose a blue glow around the hockey puck and add a comet […]