TwitterAndrew Benintendi has hit at every possible opportunity. He batted .564 as a high school senior in Ohio, becoming the National High School Player of the Year. After a respectable but unspectacular start to his… Read more »
Posts by Darius Austin
There is no small degree of absurdity to predictions, particularly when it comes to providing a single win total for teams that play a 162-game schedule. This absurdity is frequently noted by Ben Lindbergh as… Read more »
One hundred and six million dollars. That’s how much the Colorado Rockies invested in free agent relievers this offseason. That’s over six times what they spent on position players. This extreme approach will, unavoidably, dominate… Read more »
On the heels of last year’s wildly successful (and chaotic) Cubs preview, Brandon Lee, Dan Epstein, and Darius Austin brought back the Facebook chat preview to discuss the 2018 Seattle Mariners. Darius: I think the… Read more »
Towards the end of the fourth Die Hard movie, an aging John McClane faces off against an F-35 Lightning fighter jet whilst driving a cumbersome truck. Naturally, McClane wins this battle. While the movie was an… Read more »
In 2016, baseball set a new record low for intentional walks per game. That broke the previous record, set in 2015, which had broken the previous record, set in 2014, which had…you get the idea…. Read more »
Brandon Lee and Alex Crisafulli talk about Mike Dunn, Mike Dunne, Stephen Piscotty, Yu Darvish, Cubs vs Rays, “this season” vs “last season,” favorite 2017 moments, and SNES sports games, then cap things off.
Every player who makes the major leagues is good at baseball. Sometimes, that’s not immediately apparent because of the presence of other players. Take Barry Bonds, for instance. Whatever else you might think about Bonds,… Read more »
For the third year running, our review of preseason predictions and projections is back, crushing all the hopes of those baseball writers who never wanted to make predictions in the first place and would rather… Read more »
There was a time when Andrew Cashner had the kind of potential that baseball fans can really dream on. He had a high-nineties fastball, great promise with his changeup and slider, and a high ground… Read more »
The podcast returns from a hiatus as Darius Austin, Daniel Epstein, and Brandon Lee discuss FiveThirtyEight’s fan survey and Statcast’s Sprint Speed metric, hold a draft of trade candidates, and review the Jeff Sullivan era… Read more »
The new Statcast Sprint Speed metric is now available to the public and the leaderboard is both fun to look at and about as revelatory as many trade rumour tweets. At the top is Billy… Read more »
Earlier this week, I examined the teams which had the biggest differences between their preseason predictions & projections and their performance to date. To follow up on those outliers, below is every team’s actual winning… Read more »
This is the third season of BttP’s prediction and projection tracking, and once again we’re bringing you our All-Star Break check-up on the teams that have most confounded the preseason expectations. Below are three teams… Read more »
This post originally appeared on UK-based baseball site Bat Flips and Nerds. The podcast referenced here is now also available over at Blog Talk Radio. For more UK-based baseball content, follow @batflips_nerds. It’s the question… Read more »
It helps to be fast to steal bases, but stolen bases certainly aren’t all about speed. So much of the steal is about reading the pitcher and knowing when to run. As Vince Coleman told… Read more »
Let’s talk about MLB’s ERA leader. He has an ERA of 1.01, a half-run better than any other pitcher. He’s striking out almost five batters for every walk. All but one of his seven starts… Read more »
Ryan Schimpf might be the most extreme fly-ball hitter the major leagues have ever seen. Can he really be a productive MLB regular?
For a few days this April, it seemed as though a combined no-hitter was perpetually in progress. The Marlins came close to one twice in a matter of days, with Dan Straily and Wei-Yin Chen leaving… Read more »
After months of ill-advised attempts to predict the future, the 2017 season is already here. We can soon get on with the business of actual baseball, and all those reluctant predictions by prognosticators – such… Read more »
“Mr Beck looked around with a wild light in his eye for somebody to hit. He couldn’t see any specific target so he threw perhaps the best fast ball he had thrown this season up… Read more »
The first part of our daily series of season previews. Brandon Lee and Darius Austin collaborated on this edition. What can we ask about the Padres? We know the rotation might be one of… Read more »
In the midst of a BttP staff discussion on the merits of Field of Dreams, I found myself on an IMDB list of ‘baseball movies’ (in the traditional sense, not the Sam Miller definition). The… Read more »
Effectively Wild listeners probably don’t need anyone to tell them that if you spend long enough with the Baseball-Reference Play Index (coupon code BP), you’re virtually guaranteed to uncover some kind of statistical curiosity or fun fact that you’d never been aware of.
The Winter Meetings began this week just outside of Washington, D.C., and the one team everyone will be watching is the Chicago White Sox, as it seems as though the market is waiting for the South Siders… Read more »
Eric Roseberry and Darius Austin talk about the 2016 season predictions review, early playoff action, attending the Boston-Cleveland ALDS opener, and following sports in the UK vs the US.
With the regular season over, it’s time for our second annual review of the preseason predictions and projections that we pitted against each other back in April. Last season, the Effectively Wild podcast preview guests… Read more »
Alec Denton joins Ryan Sullivan to look at the division winners and remaining contenders as the regular season comes to a close. Darius Austin joins in later as the group briefly dicusses Jose Fernandez. … Read more »
Yankees rookie catcher Gary Sanchez just played in his 20th major league game, in which he failed to homer. Come on, Gary, get it together. Nonetheless, Sanchez homered in six of his first 20 career… Read more »
While there’s still plenty of baseball left to be played, certain teams have significantly deviated from our preseason expectations. As I did at last year’s All-Star Break, I’ve picked out the three teams which are… Read more »
