Sports

Adjustments and Didi

For his first 25 games of the 2018 season — a span that ended on April 27 — Didi Gregorius was hitting .368/.459/.828 and was basically making a case for immortality. My pal Brian Kenny, who had the audacity not to include Gregorius umong his Top 10 shortstops, was spending roughly 95% of…

A Baseball Story

Here on Jackie Robinson’s birthday, wanted to repost this story I wrote a couple of years ago.

When Bobby Bragan was young, people used to call him “Nig.” He was of a darker complexion than most. He liked the nickname. Bobby Bragan grew up in Alabama. The only black people…

Hall of Fame Pet Project II

Yesterday, I put up a little post — really more of a teaser — to announce that I have decided to make Curt Schilling my new Hall of Fame pet project. I sense from some of the reaction to that piece that I missed my goal on that post, which was only to say:

The Public Ballots

The Baseball Writers Association of America gets hit pretty hard by fans, and, hey, we deserve that. We make plenty of…

My Hall of Fame Pet Project

I want to show you four pitching seasons. And if you could, I want you to tell me how many of them are Cy Young Award worthy in what you might consider a typical season.

Season 1: 22–6, 2.98 ERA, 157 ERA+, 3.11 FIP, 256 innings, 293 Ks, 37 walks, 37 HRs…

Even more on WAR

The last few days, my Twitter account and probably yours has been buzzing with countless thoughts on Wins Above Replacement. I must admit that I’ve not followed it as closely as I normally would — I’m into the heavy writing on my book on Houdini* and will likely descend deeper and deeper into that…

dWAR to end all WARs

Baseball Reference never stops improving, which is one of the reasons I love the place. The searches keep getting better…