On what has been one of the busiest trade deadlines in a long, long time, another team has made a big time move to try an make a playoff run this year. This time, the White Sox have acquired Jake Peavy for 4 other players. First let’s focus Peavy. At 28 years old, he has […]

Just before the trade deadline passed a few hours ago, the Red Sox and Indians completed a trade which will send catcher Victor Martinez to the Red Sox in exchange for pitchers Justin Masterson, Nick Hagadone, and Bryan Price. Masterson is the best-known pitcher in the deal, having made quite an impact last season but […]

Boston has come to terms with Cleveland in a deal that sends Victor Martinez to the Red Sox in return for Justin Masterson and a pair of pitching prospects. Martinez fills a big void in Boston’s lineup. His numbers on the year, .286/.368/.464, are nearly identical to his career averages. He also provides some flexibility […]

Greetings from the Great Baseball Nerd Round-Up of 2009: SABR 39 in Washington DC. Really, really weird thing just happened to me. I just finished giving a presentation “The Baseball Philosophy of Charles Comiskey” – (it went pretty well, which was weird enough in itself) – when something quite unexpected happen. I was approached by […]

The trade deadline is one of the most exciting parts of the season. The reason I enjoy it so much is that there is so much to analyze, so much to think about. How good are the Red Sox if they land Adrian Gonzalez? Does George Sherill have a marked effect on the Dodgers chances […]

Stew Thornley has been compiling information on baseball errors, and he’s posted his findings, year by year. Here is the rate of errors per game and per ball in play for the last five decades: Decade E/G E/BIP 1960’s 1.76 3.15% 1970’s 1.76 3.05% 1980’s 1.63 2.86% 1990’s 1.46 2.60% 2000’s 1.31 2.35% So what’s […]

Bruce Markusen’s interview today with Mary Appel—author of a new book about Thurman Munson—inspired me to look up Munson in a new model I developed for the Batted Ball Reports. I came up with a system for predicting a player’s career Win Shares at any point in his career. When Munson died at the age […]

Blog Critics has the most reasoned anti-James response I’ve read—by “anti-James,” I mean a response that disagrees with James’ recent article about steroids and the Hall of Fame. This well-written riposte is a stark contrast to the mad spewing we’ve seen from some in the mainstream media. There is no easy answer to this dilemma, […]

Sherrill (Keith Allison) The Dodgers may have the third-best bullpen in all of baseball, but that hasn’t stopped them from making a move for the best left-handed reliever on the market, George Sherrill, for two prospects: 3B Josh Bell and RHP Steve Johnson. The Dodgers’ bullpen statistics notwithstanding, the team actually needed a big boost […]

Amongst the flurry of trades over the past couple of days you may not have noticed that Chris Tillman, of the Batlimore Orioles, made his major league debut on Wednesday. Otherwise known as, “the guy who was in that really stupid trade that Bill Bavasi made to get Erik Bedard“, Tillman was one of the […]