In The Baseball Book 1992, Bill James condensed each team into a box. Each box comprised a summary of the team’s 1991 season, a general prognosis for 1992, a look at the teams’ best prospects and a bunch of other nuggets, most of them for fun. For each team, though, he designated one player as…
Revisiting baseball predictions is a tricky prospect. If the predictions are based on a specific methodology, then revisiting them is necessary: doing so helps to modify and improve the methodology. Otherwise, the pundit is just whistling in the dark. Most baseball predictions, of course, aren’t that systematic in their origin. A writer looks at rosters…
Remember the days when 30 home runs was a lot? It wasn’t that long ago, really. In 1992, 30 homers would have placed a hitter fourth in the National League. These days, a player could hit 30 home runs and never show up on the typical fan’s radar. We’re in the middle of the biggest…
Last July, I published an article here at Baseball Prospectus Online on the best teams in baseball history. At the time, the 1998 Yankees were plowing through the American league like Arnold Schwarzenegger through "Commando", and I noted that by my measurements, they could wind up as one of the best teams ever. "The Best…
With the Yankees flirting with a record-breaking pace this year, the idea is being bandied about that this team might be the best team in baseball history. People are comparing them with the 1927 and 1961 Yankees, or the 1906 Cubs (the usual suspects) in categories like winning percentage, run differential, et cetera. (How come…
One of our readers (and occasional contributor), James Kushner had some reflections on Steven Rubio’s Abstract Progress: Dear Steven Rubio and other Baseball Prospectors: I’m writing in response to your article “Abstract Progress”, which decries the lack of influence that Bill James and his theories have on “the minds of the average fan or baseball…