Part Two Part One From 1946 though 1993, National League Most Valuable Player awards could be safely predicted, with only a handful of exceptions, using just a few indicators. Since that time, however, the system has already made three major mistakes (the MVP was not selected as a candidate by the system) and one minor…
It’s time to present the inaugural Golden Gun award, given to the league’s best catcher at shooting down would-be baserunners. The winner is the major-league leader in Stolen Base Runs Prevented (SBRP), which is calculated from the number of opponent steals (SB), the number of runners the catcher throws out (CS), and the number of…
BOTTOM OF THE NINTH "When you’re a little kid, you think about the seventh game of the World Series. It didn’t matter how the hit came." —Luis Gonzalez, Diamondbacks outfielder, on his Series-winning hit in Game Seven BEST SEASON EVER "To talk about it on May 21 is ridiculous. I could be hit by a…
In the spirit of holiday cheer, Bud Selig has suggested that MLB may operate the Expos for the 2002 season while the franchise awaits contraction. His comments ran in the Chicago Tribune on December 23rd. Now, this whole problem has come about because Jeff Loria–the New Yorker who bought the Expos after the last ownership…
In part one of this series I identified a set of seven criteria by which "candidates" for National League MVP can be determined, and a quick tiebreaker to tell which of several candidates will be selected. You’ll recall that from 1969-1993, the system identified the eventual winner as a candidate in all but two cases:…
Part One Part Two MLB’s financial disclosures break down team revenues into five categories. Two, regular-season game receipts and local media money, were discussed in the first two installments of this series. The third column, postseason revenue, contains a few surprises: Team Postseason Revenue New York Yankees $16,000,000 Arizona Diamondbacks $13,000,000 Seattle Mariners $7,392,000 Oakland…
John Burkett‘s agent, Tommy Tanzer, announced that his client has accepted a two-year contract from the Boston Red Sox worth $5.5 million annually. In and of itself, this isn’t particularly interesting. What is interesting is the fashion in which events transpired. Player representatives and attorneys are nervous about the state of the market for free…
Many people think that the owners came up with contraction as a bargaining chip, a way to force the players to negotiate the next Collective Bargaining Agreement at a marked disadvantage. Commissioner Bud Selig has been adamant that this is not the case, going so far as to vow that baseball "will contract." Selig was…
I’ve been mistaken. All along, I thought that the man most responsible for the Royals’ perpetual lease on the second division was Tony Muser, or Allard Baird, or maybe even Herk Robinson. How foolish of me. It’s clear now that it’s been Billy Beane all along. Billy Beane, who robbed the Royals of Jermaine Dye,…
THE WORST IDEA EVER GOES TO WASHINGTON "The summary information they have turned over to us is meaningless in the absence of learning details concerning related-party transactions’ salaries and fees received by the owners and their families; and the impact of stadium-acquisition loans by stadiums. In essence, what they have told us is, ‘We lose…
I bleed green and gold. Even when faced with ’70s crowds that made a late-season Milwaukee road trip to Montreal look Woodstockian, I have always loved the Oakland A’s. There’s no rational reason for it, and a careful examination of the DSM-IV may well have my mug shot. My mom and dad took me to…
The decision to offer arbitration to a player eligible for free agency is one of the few bright-line tests of a baseball team’s front-office acumen. The elements of the decision are fairly simple, yet nearly every year a handful of teams do things that border on the bizarre, that reflect a lack of preparation for…
All you ever hear about small-market teams is that they can’t afford to sign their good players when they become free agents. Well, look at the bright side, Royals fans: your team goes to great lengths to ensure they won’t have any free agents to lose. The Royals aren’t losing Johnny Damon to free agency;…
Part One The second column of MLB’s financial disclosures sets forth each club’s purported revenues from local television, radio, and cable contracts. As the table below shows, media revenues are heavily affected by the size of a club’s local market. For example, the Mets and Diamondbacks have identical media contracts on a per capita basis,…