The A’s outfield has been a bit of a mixed bag this year. Coco Crisp played his first game of the season last night, Craig Gentry has been poor all year and Sam Fuld has cooled… Read more »
COMMENTARY
MLB is currently the only major sports league in North America to not allow teams to swap draft picks. On top of this restriction, players can’t be traded until after the World Series in the year they are drafted (this was changed recently from one year after the draft date).
Have no fear, BttP ottoneu fans, last week was a fluke and I’m back with yet another recap. It’s been a rough 2 weeks since I last posted (getting “old” sucks) but I’m thrilled to… Read more »
Last month I took a stab at creating a way to evaluate front offices using the economic principle of gross domestic product. Out of that concept came the measure “gross domestic wins” (GDW), which uses… Read more »
It hasn’t been pretty on the mound for the Red Sox so far this year. The Sox have managed an 11-10 record through 21 games, but there have been some nights that the starting pitching… Read more »
The tone of this post was originally going to be my best attempt at concealed bragging that the 2015 version of the St. Louis Cardinals is their most complete team in a long time – and that includes the ’13 squad which won 97 games and the NL Pennant.
The Dodgers have been a team under a watchful eye for a couple of years now. They’re a team that over the last few years have changed owners, GMs, and players. Last season the bullpen… Read more »
If you dare venture onto Brock Holt’s MLB.com player page, his title reads “Brock Holt, #26, 3B.” Whether or not MLB.com prefers to simplify positionality, anyone who knows of Brock Holt knows that he is… Read more »
Through 15 games to start the 2015 season, there are no teams whose performance has been more different than the New York Mets and the Milwaukee Brewers. Coming into Thursday, the Mets own the best… Read more »
While waiting around for sample sizes to become large enough to perform quality statistical analysis, let’s take a minute to perform some basic “eye test” inspections of a few players. Statistical analysis is only one part… Read more »
Oh darling! Please believe me! I’ll never do you no harm. In 2013, Chris Johnson came to the Braves as an afterthought in the Justin Upton trade, but he soon drew plenty of attention to… Read more »
We did it, everybody! We survived the second week in Banished to the Pen’s ottoneu league. Weekly Standings KerouacNation underwent somewhat of an identity crisis in week two and is now known as the… Read more »
If there’s one thing about Bob Melvin that I thought I could count on this year, it would be relative predictability. My impression of Melvin has always been that he’s a fairly conservative manager when it… Read more »
Like a steam locomotive, rolling down the track, he’s gone, gone, nothing’s going to bring him back. As of this writing, the Detroit Tigers are the best base-stealing team in the American League and second… Read more »
It’s the bottom of the 7th inning, and with two outs, Brandon Phillips has just singled home a run off Cardinals’ righty Matt Belisle. With the score now 4-3 for the Reds, trivially, Mike Matheny,… Read more »
I’m sorry for the title. I just…sorry. Anyone who was watching the much ballyhooed pitching match up between the Washington Nationals Stephen Strasburg and the New York Mets Matt Harvey saw the surface results of… Read more »
When I was in college, I spent ten weeks in Japan on a quarter abroad trip. The school there encouraged the students to make friends outside of the cultural exchange club. Foolishly, I decided to… Read more »
Let me be blunt: reading a traditional box score sucks. Even if you’ve managed to combine your MLB.tv subscription with two screens worth of games on quad view, there’s no way that you can digest… Read more »
Opening Day is upon us, and if you try hard enough, you can imagine you can smell the freshly cut grass and various questionable culinary choices at your favorite ballpark. If you can’t imagine that… Read more »
On Sunday night, the Atlanta Braves did what many people thought they would do in July, or next off-season. They traded Craig Kimbrel. And for a short time, baseball Twitter lost their ever-loving minds. Perhaps… Read more »
The recent drop in offense in Major League Baseball has been well observed by the industry as shown from the average runs/game dropping from 4.6 to 4.2 from 2002 to 2014. The most notable change… Read more »
Nowadays all the rage seems to be about Tommy John surgeries, as it should be. The number of players who’ve had the surgery is rising at an alarming rate. Therefore many studies have been done… Read more »
Last week I tried to assemble a conceptual framework for evaluating general managers and front offices by applying a couple of economic principles to player acquisitions and departures. This week we will add a few more… Read more »
Under this proposed rule change, pitchers would no longer need to throw four balls to a batter if they want to intentionally walk them. The manager would simply need to give the umpire the “four finger salute”, displaying four fingers in the air to the umpire, and the umpire would then signal to the batter to take their free base.
When pitchers age, they lose velocity. Slowly but surely, the miles per hour shrink smaller and smaller, and the strikeouts follow suit. This is inevitable for not only major league pitchers like Yovani Gallardo, for… Read more »
With the Mets having acquired only Sean Gilmartin for their bullpen this offseason, they tripled the relief pitchers they have acquired bringing in two left-handed relievers, Jeremy Blevins from the Washington Nationals and Alex Torres… Read more »
The following is a conceptual framework for what I hope becomes a model to help us baseball lovers better evaluate certain aspects of baseball organizations such as general managers effectiveness and farm system efficiency.
Throughout most of its history, baseball in Montreal has been a struggle, not just on the field but also off it. In fact, just getting a suitable stadium for the team was a headache. The Expos had to play their first seven years in a Triple-A ballpark called Jarry Park, which could only seat 28,500 people. The stadium was less than ideal, it wasn’t a dome, and due to Montreal’s cold weather, many games in April and September had to be played on the road.
After taking a look at minimum and average salaries, I wanted to look at the average salary of the best major leaguers and see if the same trends applied to the top of the talent… Read more »
The past week plus has revealed a few cracks in the Nationals juggernaut, particularly when it comes to the injury front. While Yunel Escobar’s back, Anthony Rendon’s knee, and Drew Storen’s bizarre hamate bone injury all provide… Read more »
