Baseball Therapy

Baseball Therapy: A Sabermetric Case for Miguel Cabrera’s MVP Candidacy

The best way to win a debate is to make the argument for the other side better than your opponent does. To support Mike Trout's MVP case, Russell tries taking the opposite stance.

Baseball Therapy: Reading Lolita in Teheran, Part 3: Smoking, Hitting, and the Search for an 80 Brain

by Russell A. Carleton 9/24

Is changing a player's approach at the plate like getting someone to quit smoking? And how does learning ability affect development?

Baseball Therapy: Wild-Card Game Theory

by Russell A. Carleton 9/21

Is there a scenario where it might make sense for a team not to try to win a playoff game?

Baseball Therapy: Reading Lolita in Teheran, Part 2: Reading and Fear of Failure

by Russell A. Carleton 9/18

How reading a pitcher is like reading a book, and why being self-conscious can make you bad at baseball.

Baseball Therapy: Reading Lolita in Teheran, Part 1: Intro and Losing Focus

by Russell A. Carleton 9/10

What can the staff psychologist/stathead learn from the way our prospect expert describes players' problems?

Baseball Therapy: Is There Really Racism in the Broadcast Booth?

by Russell A. Carleton 9/05

Russell puts the conclusions of last week's attention-getting article in The Atlantic to the test.

Baseball Therapy: One-Run Winners: Good or Lucky?

by Russell A. Carleton 8/27

Do teams like the Orioles that excel in one-run games do so out of skill, or have they just gotten lucky?

Baseball Therapy: Are Closers Worse When They’re Surprised?

by Russell A. Carleton 8/20

Closers are unusually erratic when they're faced with an unexpected save situation, but are they any less effective?

Baseball Therapy: So You Wanna Be a Manager

by Russell A. Carleton 8/06

You think you have what it takes to be a major-league manager? In that case, Russell has several assignments for you.

Baseball Therapy: Seven Minutes of Terror

by Russell A. Carleton 7/30

What happens to closers when they don't know a save situation is coming?

Baseball Therapy: It Happens Every May

by Russell A. Carleton 7/24

When we say that certain stats "stabilize" after a certain point, we don't mean that they'll stay stable.

Baseball Therapy: It’s a Small Sample Size After All

by Russell A. Carleton 7/16

Russell reruns the numbers to determine when hitter stats stabilize.

Baseball Therapy: Hire Joe Morgan

by Russell A. Carleton 7/09

A former BP author returns from his adventures in baseball consulting with a slightly different perspective on sabermetrics.

Baseball Therapy: Why Are Games So Long?

by Russell A. Carleton 5/03

Many factors contribute to lengthy games but none more so than the number of pitches.

Baseball Therapy: The Difference Between Night and Day

by Russell A. Carleton 4/26

More research is needed before we can truly know the effects of sleep on player performance.

Baseball Therapy: Good Night, John Boy

by Russell A. Carleton 4/19

A player's sleep hygiene can factor largely in how he performs and develops.