Ted Williams once said, "baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer". Batting Average has long been used as a way to compare production of hitters. Over the years people have come up with stats like OPS+ and wRC+ which... Continue Reading →
Platoon to the Moon!!!
The great Ty Cobb once said, “If a man pretends to be a major leaguer, he should stay in the lineup no matter who is pitching.” This is coming from someone who was 1 of 2 guys to ever have over 4,000 MLB hits. For the rest of the 99.99% who don’t have the highest... Continue Reading →
Zach Davies: What Changed?
In 2020, Zach Davies’ changeup was ranked #2/469 changeups based on run value. In 2021 though, his changeup was dead last in the rankings at #590/590! Many questions come to mind when you see such a drastic transformation like this. Did his changeup metrics like his movement differ from 2020-2021? Table 1 Table 1 displays... Continue Reading →
Divisional Diversity: 4 90-win teams, 2 100-win teams, 0 90-win teams
Three divisions in 2021 are on pace to achieve unique feats. The AL East can potentially end up with 4 teams having 90+ wins, the NL West is almost certain to have 2 teams with 100+ wins, and the NL East is very likely to have 0 teams reach 90 wins. AL East: Final win... Continue Reading →
Snuffy Stirnweiss
Throughout the history of baseball, there have only been 2 players to lead their league in OPS and defensive WAR in the same season. One of them is Willie Mays (in 1954) which should come as no shock to anyone. The other...was Snuffy Stirnweiss (in 1945). When we think of the year 1945, the ending... Continue Reading →
You’re Outta Here!!!
You can’t write an article about MLB ejections without mentioning John McGraw. After 1900, he remained the all-time leader in ejections (137) for over 100 years until he was finally passed by Bobby Cox in 2007. For over 50 of those years, no other person even reached 100 ejections until Leo Durocher reached that milestone... Continue Reading →
How Different Counts Affect Fastball Velocity
Have you ever noticed that good pitchers seem to reach back for a little extra velo when they need it? This blog post will look at the top 20 starting pitchers by average fastball velocity. I chose starting pitchers because they have to pace themselves throughout a game more than relievers so I expected to... Continue Reading →
Gators in Cleveland: Comparing Pitchers through Euclidean Distance
In the recent MLB draft, Cleveland drafted three pitchers from the University of Florida. These Gators are; Tommy Mace (69th), Jack Leftwich (216th), and Franco Aleman (306th). Here is the data for each of their pitches: After reading Rylan Domingues’ most recent article: Mathematically Discovering Jack Leiter’s MLB Pitch Comps, I reached out to learn... Continue Reading →
Improving Pythagorean Winning %
The Pythagorean Win Percentage for baseball was created by Bill James to correlate a team's winning percentage to their expected win percentage. His initial equation was: Over the years this has held up with slight changes in the exponent to get a higher correlation between expected wins and actual wins. Currently, on Baseball Reference the... Continue Reading →
Sidearm Pitchers with Reverse Splits this year???
As a right-handed submarine pitcher, you hear countless times that you will be more effective against righties and will struggle against left-handed hitters. The past data agrees with this, as do most (if not all) coaches and past players. So why are submarine/sidearm pitchers having more success against opposite handed hitters than same-sided hitters this... Continue Reading →
The Curse of the Triple Play
Why was I screaming at my TV in agony as the Yankees turned their first triple play of the year on May 21st to get them out of a jam against the White Sox? This may seem like a weird reaction from a lifelong Yankees fan...unless you knew about the Curse of the Triple Play.... Continue Reading →
Where did their Spin go?
Usually when a pitcher adds more spin to his fastball you see a relatively similar increase in velocity; however, these 5 pitchers go against this pattern drastically. I looked at 5 pitchers’ fastballs who have lost 100 or more RPM this year compared to their 2020 data, while also showing an increase in velocity. These... Continue Reading →
Coors Field’s Impact on Pitch Movement
Coors Field has long been synonymous with offensive slugfests which give pitchers nightmares. In addition to this, we know that the higher altitude in Denver is what affects the baseballs' trajectory as they are both thrown and hit. Often the "thin air" is brought up as what allows the baseballs to travel further in Coors... Continue Reading →
Moving Forward with “Win Score”
If you are unfamiliar with the term "Win Score" please check out the: Introducing "Win Score" article. The equation for Win Score as stated in that article is: Win Score = [(League average runs-(ERA+FIP)/2)*5 + .75(innings) + .5(strikeouts)]/Games Pitched. The point of Win Score is to replace the current "win" statistic as it is outdated... Continue Reading →
Introducing “Win Score”
Pitchers in Group 1 have a record of 0-10 with a 2.69 (ERA+FIP/2) vs. pitchers in Group 2, with a record of 7-0 with a 5.08 (ERA+FIP/2)... Historically, the “Win” has been a steady metric that has been simple to understand and commonly used to judge how good a pitcher was. Over time we have... Continue Reading →