Now that we’ve released this season’s Top 40 Prospects list, it is time to return to a tradition we started last season, to objectively evaluate our list from a year ago and see what we can learn. As we did last season, we will compare our ranking of each player with the ranking given to…
One of the principal tenets of performance analysis is the idea that a player’s statistics are affected by his home ballpark. That’s why most serious performance metrics account for the environment in which a player plays using a park factor. This park factor is generally arrived at by comparing the number of runs scored in…
TOP 40 PROSPECTS Where’s Aubrey Huff? Is he off the list because Tampa Bay hasn’t moved Vinny Castilla yet? — Kenneth Shankland No, he’s off the list because we got confused. This is as good a time as any to make a confession: in the process of compiling our Top Prospect list, we somehow got…
Over the weekend, Derek Jeter and the Yankees reached agreement on a ten-year, $189-million contract that makes him the game’s second-highest player and likely cements his status as a career-long Yankee. The deal slots him about where he should be, among the highest-paid players in the game, but behind Alex Rodriguez and in a position…
In my last Pivot column for ESPN.com, an offhand comment about the stupidity of the Brewers drew a surprisingly large number of reader e-mails, almost as many as I got about the Henry Rollins reference. One particular reader expressed the reasons for his frustration: It seems is though year after year the Milwaukee Brewers don’t…
Baseball Weekly recently ran a Bob Nightengale column that focused on some of Scott Boras’s ideas for improving competitive balance. Buried at the end of the article was an interesting quote from a major-league general manager that cited the most oft-repeated mantra of the small-marketeers. As part of the argument, Nightengale quotes Kansas City GM…
I grew up in New York City, so February to me has always meant cold, hockey, my birthday and cold, not necessarily in that order. As a young player, February wasn’t a time for baseball. Hell, some Aprils weren’t a time for baseball. And even though I now live in Southern California, where Little League…
PITCHING AND DEFENSE I wonder if you have looked at whether there is evidence that pitchers can “control” extra-base hits. By this, I mean, are there pitchers off whom batters generally do not hit the ball as hard or hit the ball on the ground? If there is no correlation between a pitcher and “giving…
Let’s see…the last time The Daily Prospectus appeared, Alex Rodriguez was an underpaid Mariner, Florida was just another big state with 25 electoral votes, the St. Louis Rams were on their way to becoming a dynasty and Mario Lemieux was a retiree. The world…she sure do spin fast these days, eh? In our little corner…
PEOPLE SKILLS "I can’t be satisfied with coming back to the Pirates and being a bench guy, not after what I did last season. I think the Pirates have to realize that. I’m not asking the Pirates to give me anything. I feel you should earn everything you get in this game. I feel I…
When Baltimore Ravens owner Heartless Art Modell stood at the podium in Tampa Bay Sunday night and said that the Vince Lombardi Trophy belonged to the people of Baltimore and the state of Maryland, he wasn’t kidding: they paid for his stadium, his team, and arguably his salary and the increase in his net worth,…
On Tuesday, Baseball Prospectus announced its Top 40 Prospects for 2001. The driving force behind that list is Rany Jazayerli, but the good doctor gets input from everyone on the BP staff. Below is a sampling of the discussions that took place in December, when the list was being compiled. Rany Jazayerli: Here is my…
This week, Baseball Prospectus 2001 will be released to bookstores nationwide. As always, the book will contain our list of the top 40 prospects in baseball, as compiled by Rany Jazayerli, along with Jazayerli’s commentary on each player. To celebrate the release of the book, for the first time ever we are announcing our Top…