MLB Debuts, by Season and Franchise
As the truncated 2020 regular season wraps up, it’s a good time to take a look at some of the trends that this unprecedented seasonal format has given way to. Among all these changes...
A Quick Zack Wheeler Update
Late last year, Zack Wheeler got paid. For many, the thought that Wheeler was worth 118 million dollars was a stretch. That’s no knock on the pitcher either: Wheeler had combined for 60 starts...
Launch Angles, Still Rising
The concept of launch angle has successfully embedded itself in the minds and lexicons of baseball players, coaches, and fans over the past decade. Several high-profile players have acted as ambassadors to the so-called...
The Five-Inning Start is On The Rise
This post piggybacks on a really interesting piece from Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs, who, a couple days ago, examined in depth the changing workloads of starting pitchers in 2020. Between a truncated “Summer Camp”,...
Universal DH and The Defensive Spectrum
Among the rule changes implemented for the abbreviated 2020 MLB season, the introduction of a universal DH is a particularly polarizing one. For now, the universal DH will take effect for 2020 alone, but...
Baseball is Getting Younger, but Not Uniformly So
It probably does not come as a great surprise to hear that, on average, MLB players are getting younger. There are a handful of possible reasons for that trend. Significantly, younger players are paid...
The Modal Slash Line, 2010-2019
What follows was inspired by an interesting podcast episode by NPR’s Planet Money, which outlined one potential process for identifying “The Modal American.” The podcast’s creators suggested that, while people often refer to the...
MVP Votes and WAR Leaderboards, Converging Lists
Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, has become a pervasive statistic in baseball in recent years. The concept of evaluating a baseball player through the lens of wins, and in the context of his theoretical...
(Rolling) Average Performances of Recent MVPs
Earlier in June, Craig Edwards of FanGraphs wrote a really interesting piece about Mike Trout, and a hypothetical world in which Trout played just 50 games every year. This came on the heels of...
Seeking Strikeouts, Pitchers Have Left The Zone
If you are one to find yourself reading obscure baseball blogs, such as this one, you’re likely aware that strikeouts are on the rise in MLB. Pitcher value has increasingly been tied to strikeout...
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