Baseball

In the National League, the elongated double switch shows again why pitching statistics are quite poorly attributed.  A traditional double switch involves the manager inserting a position player into the game  for the current pitcher and a new pitcher for a position player--typically one who just made an out, so that the new pitcher won't be batting for nearly a full trip through the lineup.

Continue reading "More Thoughts on MLB Pitching Statistics"

He’s got 4 World Series rings: 1 with the Mets and 3 with the Yankees. His career was tainted with drug abuse. He’s Darryl Strawberry. He was a special guest on the show “Centerstage” with Michael Kaye on the Yes Network. He was a class act. Whatever questions Michael Kaye had about the negative things that happened in his life, he took full responsibility for it: drugs and tax evasion. You name it! Whatever he did wrong he took full responsibility for it, unlike Roger Clemens, who’s given denial after denial that he did steroids.

Continue reading "Straw Humble on Yes Network's "Centerstage""

Here'e another quirky entry into the "Win" category:  http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4318608.  If we used Team pitching statistics, that win would simply go to the Nationals pitching staff, which clearly it should have.

Continue reading "Another Reason Why MLB Needs Team ..."

As the Brewers wrap up a series against the Cardinals and Tony LaRussa's peculiar lineup strategy, I thought it might be worth thinking about what would make certain lineups advantageous.  LaRussa has been hitting the pitcher in the 8th spot, with a position player hitting behind him in the 9th slot, for several years now.  Why?

Continue reading "The Merits of the Pitcher Hitting 8th"

I got into a discussion with Sean yesterday about the post I made a couple of weeks ago concerning when a runner has officially taken possession of a base.  We consulted the rule book (online at baseball-almanac.com, a great site) and found no specific details about the situation.  (Though, admittedly, I did not carefully pore over every bit of it research-style, since we were simply having an entertaining discussion.)  While shifting through various alternative scenarios to try to tease out the answer, this fun one came up:

Continue reading "More Baseball Rules Discussion"

I thought it would be fitting for my first post to discuss a rules question I've thought about for baseball for quite a long time. Here's the situation: Runner on first, less than 2 outs.  The pitcher accidentally goes into the windup, and the runner takes off for second.  (Or the runner takes off, then the pitcher goes into the windup.)  There is a strange combination of blazing speed in the runner and very slow motion in the pitcher's windup.  The runner reaches second base before the pitch reaches the plate.  The batter hits a lazy fly to the outfield.

Continue reading "Rules of the game (MLB)"