Category Archives: Baseball

MY FAVORITE MVP INJUSTICE. My favorite MVP injustice is the American League MVP award for 1984. It should have gone to Alan Trammell, the Detroit Tiger shortstop. Instead, it went to the Tiger closer Willie Hernandez, who saved 32 games … Continue reading →

MVP—AN AWARD TREASURED BECAUSE NOBODY KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS (COMMENT). Once more, there has been a debate over which of two great players—Miguel Cabrera or Mike Trout—deserves to be the Most Valuable Player in the American League. In both 2012 … Continue reading →

NICHOLS AND MAY AND THE RHODE ISLAND ACCENT. Back in the sixties, when I was watching Boston Red Sox games, Naragansett Beer, brewed in Cranston, Rhode Island, had wonderful animated commercials between innings which were voiced by Mike Nichols and … Continue reading →

ADOPTING COLLEGE RULES ON BASEBALL COLLISIONS. I have argued in several posts, including here, that, in order to reduce collisions at home plate, catchers should not be allowed to block the plate. Rob Neyer takes the same position in this … Continue reading →

INSTANT REPLAY AND PHANTOM DOUBLE PLAYS. In this post from August, I speculated that when baseball adopts instant replay, it will change the “neighborhood play” on double plays at second base. This article by Jeff Passan features a video of … Continue reading →

NEW SUCCESS FOR MONEYBALL. MONEYBALL—the Michael Lewis book and the Brad Pitt movie—recounted how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics had applied statistical principles from sabermetrics to achieve baseball success even though Oakland had a much smaller … Continue reading →

A PREDICTION ON HOW INSTANT REPLAY WILL CHANGE BASEBALL. One of the reactions to increasing instant replay for baseball is that it will change certain conventional rulings by umpires. Most mentioned is the phantom touching of second base by the … Continue reading →

A SUGGESTION FOR SABERMATRICIANS—STANDARDIZING WAR. WAR is controversial—among sabermatricians as well as among members of the old guard. One reason is that WAR takes fielding measurements into account—and there is no agreement at all about how that should be done. … Continue reading →