Allard Baird has been an all-too-frequent target of my wrath since this column started several months ago, and he’s deserved it. While Baird has shown a greater willingness to gamble and to entertain new ideas than his predecessor, Herk Robinson, the bottom line is that in less than two years as general manager, Baird has…
Sunday, February 25, 2001. That was the day the Toronto Blue Jays were eliminated from the 2001 American League race. In my mind, anyway. That day I was online reading the Toronto Sun and came across this tidbit courtesy of new Blue Jays’ skipper Buck Martinez: "We don’t give a damn, we’re a team of…
Many people have written to me about the article comparing the Japanese leagues to the American majors. Before looking at DTs of Japanese players, I’d like to address a few points common to many of those e-mails: Confusion over statistics. The statistic used in the article was Equivalent Average, not batting average. EqA values may…
Welcome to the first "Doctoring the Numbers" of the year. Traditionally, DTN is a an in-season column, but I’m setting that aside this week. I write these columns as a gut reaction to something I’ve recently encountered–an interesting statistic, an compelling quote, or a thought-provoking assertion. Two weeks ago, Rob Neyer made a statement that,…
Set aside all the economic and competitive reasons a salary cap is stupid. There’s another reason you, as a baseball fan, should be against any kind of cap: it’s boring. If you love your sport, you’ll oppose salary caps for it. Why should any fan care about whether their team has a "veteran exception" that…
A few weeks ago, I started what I hoped would be a series on baseball’s economic issues. As you can see, it’s been a while between articles. It has taken me three weeks to put together a coherent salary-cap column, because there are so many issues that come into play when trying to write about…
MARLINS LET BLOOD, GET NEW BLOOD "We haven’t laid off anybody. In this transaction, all we’re guilty of is being loyal to our employees that we have." —David Samson, new Marlins president, after the entire player-development staff was laid off so that the Expos player-development staff could take over "I don’t see any reason why…
"The Man With the Golden Gun", an article that ran last month on this site, recognized the most valuable and least valuable catcher arms in the majors last season. That piece generated a lot of reader response, including this e-mail from M.H.: I have my doubts about this Stolen Base Runs Prevented statistic. It seems…
I dread the Winter Olympics. In their current form, they embody and promote ideals and practices that I find, for lack of a better term, pathetic. I find subjective sports to be among the most offensive ideas around, and, as you might expect, I find figure skating, a darling of network coverage since Peggy Fleming,…
Frank Robinson, the new manager of the Montreal Expos, becomes the second most famous Robinson in Montreal’s baseball history. Listen closely to his game plan and pay attention to his spring training camp, because managers can have dramatic impact on player performance. Three of the key questions I’ll be looking at in trying to determine…
This week’s question (actually, it’s an old question, but I’m just now getting around to answering it) comes from P.W., who writes: As a Red Sox fan, I enjoy watching the Jimy Williams game of pretending that everyone is a regular. It got me thinking about lineups and percentages of playing time that go to…
You might have read this winter that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are about to get better. Don’t believe it. The D-Rays have finished last in the American League East in all four years of their existence. They have never lost fewer than 92 games, and last year they finally made it all the way…
Jack Morris isn’t the only player seeing his career burnished by friendly sportswriters trying to make a Hall of Fame case. The Cleveland Morning Journal‘s Jim Ingraham is using the election of Ozzie Smith to beat the drums for Omar Vizquel. With all due respect to Ingraham, you cannot compare the achievements of the two…
We’re proud to present the Baseball Prospectus Top 40 Prospects for 2002, as compiled by Rany Jazayerli. Complete analyses of these players, and more than 1,500 others, are available in Baseball Prospectus 2002. Hank Blalock, 3B, Texas Rangers Josh Beckett, RHP, Florida Marlins Sean Burroughs, 3B, San Diego Padres Nick Johnson, 1B, New York Yankees…