Dave Littlefield had an opportunity to make an immediate impact after being hired as the Pirates’ general manager last June. He could have traded Jason Kendall and Brian Giles to contending teams for a bushel of top prospects and started a new era in Pittsburgh baseball. He didn’t do that, of course, and now the…
Sometime towards the end of production on Baseball Prospectus 2002, a regular correspondent dropped me an e-mail:
Who won the 2001 DiSar Awards?
Sometime towards the end of production on Baseball Prospectus 2002, a regular correspondent dropped me an e-mail: Who won the 2001 DiSar Awards? Now, seeing as the DiSars are generally wrapped up around the All-Star break, I figured I must have announced the winners some time last summer. I jumped into our archives…and was horrified…
One of the things I’m really looking forward to this year is the American League West. The two best teams in baseball played here last season, and both the A’s and Mariners can be expected to break 90 wins in 2002. Add in the much-improved Texas Rangers, and there’s the potential for a three-team race among very good teams that will provide suspense even with the wild card guaranteeing two of them spots in the postseason.
I want to start this by thanking everyone who showed up Saturday afternoon for the first SoCal Pizza Feed. It was a great thrill to meet so many BP supporters, and I hope all of you enjoyed it as much as Dave and I did. — I’ve been spending a lot of time writing about…
I want to start this by thanking everyone who showed up Saturday afternoon for the first SoCal Pizza Feed. It was a great thrill to meet so many BP supporters, and I hope all of you enjoyed it as much as Dave and I did. — I’ve been spending a lot of time writing about…
Allard Baird has been an all-too-frequent target of my wrath since this column started several months ago, and he’s deserved it. While Baird has shown a greater willingness to gamble and to entertain new ideas than his predecessor, Herk Robinson, the bottom line is that in less than two years as general manager, Baird has…
Sunday, February 25, 2001. That was the day the Toronto Blue Jays were eliminated from the 2001 American League race. In my mind, anyway. That day I was online reading the Toronto Sun and came across this tidbit courtesy of new Blue Jays’ skipper Buck Martinez: "We don’t give a damn, we’re a team of…
Many people have written to me about the article comparing the Japanese leagues to the American majors. Before looking at DTs of Japanese players, I’d like to address a few points common to many of those e-mails: Confusion over statistics. The statistic used in the article was Equivalent Average, not batting average. EqA values may…
Welcome to the first "Doctoring the Numbers" of the year. Traditionally, DTN is a an in-season column, but I’m setting that aside this week. I write these columns as a gut reaction to something I’ve recently encountered–an interesting statistic, an compelling quote, or a thought-provoking assertion. Two weeks ago, Rob Neyer made a statement that,…
Set aside all the economic and competitive reasons a salary cap is stupid. There’s another reason you, as a baseball fan, should be against any kind of cap: it’s boring. If you love your sport, you’ll oppose salary caps for it. Why should any fan care about whether their team has a "veteran exception" that…
A few weeks ago, I started what I hoped would be a series on baseball’s economic issues. As you can see, it’s been a while between articles. It has taken me three weeks to put together a coherent salary-cap column, because there are so many issues that come into play when trying to write about…
