As a person who spends considerable time outside the box, I was intrigued when I came across yesterday’s ESPN headline for “Five radical game-changing proposals.” I am a big fan of articles that integrate the opinions of various writers, and this particular piece offered the thoughts of some of ESPN’s top contributors. So imagine my surprise [...]

Our review of Baseball Prospectus’ 2011 PECOTA projections continues with the hits and misses of the American League Central, a division that has seen all but one ballclub finish in the top two spots over the last two years, with the Kansas City stragglers on the prospect-laden fast track to contention.

Indians

Friends of the feathered [...]

The review of BP2k11 continues with the NL East, a division that is undergoing a dramatic shift in the fortunes of several franchises. The Marlins have started throwing money around like it’s 1997, the Mets are in rapid decline, the Braves have a young core and plenty of pitching to spare as they challenge the aging [...]

The sand trap of luck has sucked in a legion of baseball enthusiasts. Lured by deviant BABIP’s, even astute analysts continue to walk into the trap, and proceed to sink as they grasp for statistical explanations to pull themselves out of the muck. Luck has become the default scapegoat for anything that cannot be conveniently [...]

 
The projection game is dicey, with a multitude of systems competing for the accuracy crown, and the inevitability of outlier performances that are bound to make certain predictions look foolish in retrospect. The crew at Baseball Prospectus has undertaken this arduous task for over a decade, developing metrics and building a substantial database, culminating in [...]

Value.
It is a simple word, yet such a complicated concept. The meaning of the term is the source of considerable debate, especially as it relates to the game of baseball, where the subjective perception of value is forced to reconcile with the objectivity of performance stats. The numbers serve as an account of what transpires [...]

The alarm clock has rung, marking the dawn of the season of roster turnover, and some teams are wasting little daylight before addressing their off-season needs. The new faces extend to front offices all over the country, as no fewer than eight ballclubs are experiencing an overhaul with respect to upper-management. Those teams with key [...]

 
Game Seven of the World Series is an experience like no other. Every other elimination game involves one team having the chance to take a champagne shower, with the other just hoping to play another day, but Game Seven means do-or-die for every player on the field. It is guaranteed to be the penultimate day [...]

“Sequencing” is another one of those terms in the pitching lexicon that has multiple definitions. In Raising Aces, I have often used the mechanical definition of sequencing to describe the order in which a pitcher executes the various links of the kinetic chain. This element is intertwined with mechanical timing, in the sense that a [...]

 
Here we are on the cusp of the World Series, and though I should be filling up the word count with a lengthy diatribe on the Cards and Rangers, instead I find myself in a state of reflection. The playoffs are a challenge for a baseball writer bent on originality, as an excess of content [...]