The Reds (34-36) and Jays (40-33) find themselves in the same place despite very different records. While the Jays are 7 games over .500, they still lag five games behind the Red Sox in the challenging AL East. Rather than trying to gain some ground on the Red Sox directly, they will be playing the…
One of my favorite essays on any topic is Nate Silver‘s “Is Barry Bonds Better Than Babe Ruth?” from Baseball Between the Numbers. Rather than rehashing the same tired arguments about how much harder it was to hit a home run in Ruth’s time or how much better the competition against Bonds was almost a…
Every year when the PECOTA projections come out, I like to sort through some of the statistical leader boards to see which players PECOTA likes for the upcoming year. One of my favorite categories is ERA because it gives me an idea of how well certain pitchers may do within the context of their teams….
Back in 2003, just after Toronto GM J.P. Ricciardi had cut over 20 million from Toronto’s payroll and was still managing to moneyball his way to an 86 win season, some members of the Toronto press foolishly accused him of racism. The accusations, which concerned the racial make-up of the team, were so crudely conceived…
If you had the first pick of your draft this year and you took Jose Reyes over Hanley Ramirez, you probably (definitely) aren’t very happy right now. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right choice at the time. You made a choice to take a whole lot of speed with a nice splash of…
When MLB.com asked Carlos Zambrano to point to one thing he did during his no-hitter that he’d want to repeat in the postseason, he said, “Strike, first pitch, strike, and challenge the hitters.” It is fascinating that Big Z responded this way because he had one of the lowest first pitch strike rates in the…
Bio: I love lounging around on summer days and watching baseball, but I also love to read great baseball work as well as do my own analysis and writing. In fact, I’d say I spend a solid 72% of my days thinking about baseball (don’t ask about the other 28%). My obsession has resulted in…