Sean (Call me Chone) Smith is putting together his own WAR (Wins Above Replacement) system for the Retrosheet years, and he has found that there are five players who are in the “gray area” of Hall of Fame worthiness (high ranking, but not yet in the Hall). They are Tim Raines, Lou Whitaker, Reggie Smith, […]

Naturally, there’s been a lot written about the Seattle/Cleveland/Mets deal, and I can’t do better than Keith Law’s overview. The bottom line for Mets’ fans is that they acquired a great ‘nother closer in Putz (if healthy, he’s better than K-Rod) and it may be that the key player they traded away was minor league […]

Rich Lederer asks a great question: if Joe Gordon can make it into the Hall (I would have picked several players ahead of him—but they didn’t ask me), shouldn’t Bobby Grich? I’ll be honest about this: Bobby Grich is one of my all-time favorite ballplayers. Every time I saw him play, I had the distinct […]

David Pinto has posted one of my favorite things on the Internet: fielding graphs for each major league player. What’s more, David has graphs for the last three consecutive years, plus 2004. You can “see” the strengths and weaknesses of individual fielders in a way that goes far beyond your typical “one number fits all” […]

Fangraphs keeps getting better and better: Starting today, they are publishing UZR data based on BIS data. The first player I checked was Ichiro, which UZR (which has always been calculated using data from STATS Inc.) has always hated. According to Fangraphs, Ichiro has been +7.3 runs per 150 games in right field throughout his […]

Dave Cameron, who’s been an advocate of fielding stats and insight for a long time, has a fine post up at Fangraphs about fielding and inferential statistics. Bottom line, even the best fielding stats are inferential—and they always will be. The problem with fielding stats that we can count (and don’t have to infer) is […]

As noted by others, Major League Baseball issued a press release today, announcing that salaries only increased 3.6% last year. But here’s the thing to keep in mind: there was a major shift toward young players last year. In fact, as I wrote in the THT Annual, it was the biggest downward change in major […]

Joe Posnanski just received his Hall of Fame ballot, and more than 4,000 words poured out of his febrile mind. If you ever wanted to know how every single Hall member got there, read this post.

Squawking Baseball’s Shawn Hoffman has penned a nice guest piece for Baseball Analysts, listing the reasons why baseball’s economics may not be so strong next year. Some revenue sources, like media contracts, are stable, while others, like ticket sales and consumer merchandise, um, aren’t. Despite Scott Boras’ protestations, this is having an impact on player […]

Bob D’Angelo of the Tampa Tribune has an online review of the Hardball Times Annual. As he says, “You can put this book down, come back and turn to another page — and still be delighted with what you discover.” Yes, I consider it a very insightful review.