With the Cubs 5-1 win over the Cardinals yesterday, the Milwaukee Brewers won their first division title since the days of Harvey’s Wallbangers. Kudos to the Brewers front office for going all in for this season when it was clear their window was closing. Congratulations to everyone on that team. Except Ryan Braun. Hopefully Prince Fielder will bring a World …
Starlin Castro has 200 hits and Andy Dolan doesn't understand stats
Like it says, Castro got his 200th hit in the first inning. Not at all related to that, Andy Dolan is a great example of why someone who doesn’t understand something shouldn’t be talking about it. I’m not talking about brain surgery and Dolan shouldn’t talk about baseball stats.
Carl Crawford's 2011 Season
One of the running jokes around here is that I hate Carl Crawford. Really, I don’t. And I don’t take greater than usual glee in his disappointing season (at least, above seeing the Red Sox lose). It all stems from this article I wrote back in February complaining about the near-universal acclaim for the 7/$132m deal that he signed with …
An Unfair Game
There’s a movie coming out this week. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s based on a book that Bill James didn’t write. It goes by many names: Joe Morgan’s Book of Nightmares; The Joy of Stats; The Unbearable Lightness of Beane; Eat, Pray, OBP. Most people just know it as Moneyball. But it’s the subtitle that interests me as this …
Starlin Castro —-> 200 Hits
Starlin Castro got his 200th hit of the season today with his single in the 1st inning off of Chris Carpenter of the Cardinals. Congratulations to him and to Cubs fans who finally have something to cheer about this season.
BBC video on Boise Hawks and Far East players
This is pretty cool. h/t to fang
On Mariano Rivera's fWAR and rWAR
I know that ACT, myself and another person (sorry for not remembering who) had a discussion awhile back on Mariano Rivera‘s rWAR. I had asked Tango about it and he explained the difficulty we were having in getting the same numbers thatn Baseball Reference has. There’s a big difference between his fWAR and rWAR and Tango explains why. Obviously the …
Regarding the "save" statistic
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past 36 hours or so, you know that Mariano Rivera got his 602nd save yesterday. As a former and currently-sometime Yankees fan (they like to win and I like winning), and also having a six degrees of Kevin Bacon association with the Rivera family, this was really cool to follow. This …
Next year's Bryan LaHair
If you’ve followed the Cubs closely long enough you can’t help but notice that some Cubs fans (many? most?) fall in love with a certain prospect each year who is going to save the organization. The only problem is that these prospects aren’t really prospects. Micah Hoffpauir was a 28-year old rookie, but he had hit so well in AAA …