I’ve been seeing a lot of people talking about how lucky the Red Sox are to have home field advantage in the World Series. Some people are saying that it’s unfair that a wild card team gets home field advantage in the World Series over the team with the best record in baseball just because […]

A number of readers wrote in to me following my “Interference” article pointing out that first base umpire Jeff Nelson called A-Rod safe at first after the failed tag by Bronson Arroyo in Game 7 on Wednesday night – despite A-Rod never coming close to touching first base. Initially, I agreed with my correspondents, but […]

The Cardinals beat the Astros tonight, 5-2, to advance to the World Series. If not for the historic comeback of the Red Sox, this series would have been just as noteworthy for its drama and excellent level of play. Case in point: the spectacular catch by Jim Edmonds in the second inning, robbing the Astros […]

On Bill Simmons’ reader email page, a Sox fan named Joshua Reidy wrote this before the game: This Yankees-Sox series has constantly reminded me of Rocky 2. Last seasons seven-game epic was much like the original Rocky (All we wanted to do was go the distance). This seasons series is much like Rocky 2, the […]

Because I have nothing better to do (actually, I have plenty better to do, but I love to procrastinate) I plugged pitch counts for every single pitcher in the Yankees/Red Sox series into Diamond Mind to see who is tired. You would probably think that after last night’s relatively easy night on the bullpens, several […]

One piece of information that I left out of my “Strike One” articles, and the kind of easy-to-spot thing you can look out for in the playoff games. Pitchers who start out with strike one walk the hitter just 3.9% of the time, while pitchers who start out with ball one walk the hitter 14.2% […]

I updated the Net Win Shares Value article with a slightly different (and better) approach, as suggested in a thread over at Baseball Primer. This new math will be used in our 2004 Baseball Annual, and it is also incorporated into our online calculator.

We’ve rolled out a new feature of the Hardball Times website today, as described in this article. It’s the Net Win Shares Value calculator, and it will calculate the value of any player’s 2004 contract, based on his salary and Win Shares. We also want to announce that we’ll be publishing a baseball book, to […]

It turns out the idea for the post-game on-field greeting in last night’s Dodger-Cardinal game was actually originated by the Cardinals’ Larry Walker, and approved by Cards manager Tony LaRussa. Giving credit where credit is due: bravo to Mr. Walker! Very classy move.

You see it in football. You see it in basketball. You see it in hockey. In all these sports, you see it all the time, routinely: at the end of a big game or a big series, the winning team and the losing team greet one another on the field/court/ice at the end of the […]