755, .406, 56. Each of those numbers probably triggers an image in your mind’s eye. The timelessness of baseball’s statistics is what makes baseball such an appealing sport to so many people, and what keep us interested long after the heroes of our youth have retired. Of the major American team sports, baseball is the…
Since his debut in 1996, Vladimir Guerrero has been one of the most exciting players in baseball – possessing the ability to hit for a high average with lots of power and wielding a breathtaking throwing arm. Despite an approach at the plate that can generously be described as not really what statistical analysts recommend,…
There were two hot tickets for central Virginians in the summer of 1992: the new rock band from Charlottesville that featured both a saxophone and a violin, and the AAA All-Star Game hosted by the Richmond Braves. Seventeen years later, Dave Matthews Band have established themselves as one of the biggest touring bands in the…
I play fantasy baseball when my wife isn’t looking. That’s not a dirty little secret or anything. It’s just an acknowledgment that the time I put into managing my roster, basically mornings before she’s out of bed, isn’t a lot. With that said, pretty much everything I read or watch about baseball is filtered through…
The lesson that many people take away from Michael Lewis’s best-selling book Moneyball is that On Base Percentage (OBP) is the only way to build a good baseball team. What is often missed is that the book is really a tale of economics, about finding inefficiencies in the market and exploiting them. In the late…
Bio: Ten years ago I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, but when asked about my dream job I would probably have said “general manager of the Oakland A’s”. This was a more realistic assessment of my talents than the response for the first 18 years of my life, “centerfield for…