The minor league season begins in earnest tomorrow, and Obstructed View is going to do better than ever at covering it. DJ had been coverin the minor leagues here in the past and due to no fault of his own, dmick89 and myself have taken it over. Truthfully, dmick89 finds little else to talk about, so he felt he need …
DiPS Game Score
I've been tinkering around with a pitching statistic for starters, and I think I'm ready to share it. It's a new take on an old stat called Game Score. Game Score was developed by Bill James to give a single number to a pitching performance that should tell you how they did. I like the stat; it bases everything around …
Obstructed View Season Predictions
Our long national nightmare is finally over! The Cubs play today at 1:35 ET, and at around 5:00 ET I will be drunk and the Cubs will be a game out of first place. Now that the season is here, I rounded up all of our contributors and asked around for predictions. Without further ado, let me present them! …
Verlander. Got. Paid.
First, the details. Verlander signed a 5-year, $140 million dollar extension today. It will pay him $28 million dollars a year in 2015 through 2019. There is a 2020 option at $22 million that will vest automatically (but the terms of how that could vest are unknown at the moment). Verlander was already signed at $20 million for this year …
Luis Valbuena: Not Very Good
In a few days, the Cubs will open regular season play with Luis Valbuena at 3B. Compared to the other options the Cubs have, he isn't that bad. Compared to other 3B, it's really bad. The first thing I looked at when analyzing Valbuena's last season was to look at his BABIP. It was low last year, at .260. That …
Replacement Level Unification!
Thankfully, replacement level means the same thing now from BRef and FanGraphs. This is a great thing and makes things a lot nicer.
Your moment in Yahoo Sports! stupidity
Can you point out the error in this assessment of Ohio State's Final Four chances? I'll give you a hint in bold. Ohio State Region: West Who they beat: No. 15 Iona, No. 10 Iowa State Odds of getting to the Final Four: 8/1 Why they can do it: They're now the favorite in this region after other high seeds …
How bad was Josh Vitters last year?
Everyone knows that Josh Vitters was terrible at baseball in his limited time at the big league level in 2012. Just how bad was he? In RE24 (min. 75 PA), Josh Vitters was the 17th worst offensive player in all of baseball last year, just above…Mark Buerhle. If he had 200 PA instead of just 109, he would have ran …
Better Know a Statistic: (K-BB)/PA
I have a confession to make. When I first fell headlong into baseball analysis, I kind of took K/BB as my pet statistic. I loved how it was essentially "luckless": the only things the pitcher couldn't control was the discipline of the batter and the strike zone of the umpire, the two things he can only understand (but never master). …
Who Might Be Traded This Year?
A cursory glance at the Cubs' roster tells you a lot about the makeup of this team. They look be to a middling rotation, a middling bullpen, and a bottom-third offense. That's a good enough team to win 73-75 games (which would be a dozen or so win improvement); not the worst team in baseball, but not a good one …