Last day we’ll deal with this, I promise. One thing I probably should have included in yesterday’s column was a brief explanation of how park factors are calculated. A lot of the mail I received attempted to tie Veterans Stadium’s high walk park factor to the composition of the Phillies’ staff. While that seems to…
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six First, let’s recap the complete Top 40 lists for each publication, along with the grade for each player: Baseball Prospectus Baseball America John Sickels 1. Nick Johnson 1 1. Rick Ankiel 6 1. Corey Patterson 5 2. Rick Ankiel 6 2. Pat Burrell…
I returned from a road trip up the California coast to what I will gently call a flood of, um, "constructively critical" e-mail from Yankee fans, responding to last Thursday’s piece for ESPN.com. Buried amidst the profanity, though, was some good response to the Daily Prospectus of the same day, which dealt with Curt Schilling‘s…
DIGGING A HOLE "Nobody got injured." —Tony Muser, Royals manager, on the positives of losing four straight to the Yankees "Right now we’re like a dog that is down. When you get a dog down, you kick it. When you’re being kicked, you don’t like it." —Russ Johnson, Devil Rays infielder "Every time we play…
Each edition of the annual Baseball Prospectus covers more than 1,600 players, with full Davenport Translations and comments. Even with that kind of blanket coverage, every year players who miss the cut for the book make the cut in spring training, finding their way onto major-league rosters. Our staff has collected DTs and player comments…
Back in March, I did a column on the Arizona Diamondbacks that contained the following sentence: "The staff is the D’backs strength, but other than Randy Johnson, there’s no one here who’s a good bet for 200 innings of league-average ball." That generated a lot of reader mail, some of which sung the praises of…
Recently, I had the chance to speak extensively with Brad Humphreys, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Humphreys has spent several years researching the true economic impact of sports teams, particularly on the debate over the merits of publicly funding new facilities for privately-owned sports franchises. His most recent work,…
Davenport Translations: ERA BA OBP SLG Pacific Coast League 4.84 .277 .348 .435 According to Clay Davenport’s ratings in Baseball Prospectus 2001, the Pacific Coast League (PCL) is approximately as competitive as the Japanese professional leagues and not quite as challenging as the International League. The PCL is now and has always been a hitters’…
One of my best friends, Derek Jacques, is a very good pool player. It was from Derek that I learned the term "cripple stick," which is a nickname for the bridge, a piece of equipment used to extend reach on certain shots. Writers have their own cripple sticks, one of which is the use of…
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five While there was significant agreement between our Top 40 Prospects list of a year ago and the Top Prospect lists made out by John Sickels and Baseball America, there was some discord as well. Both Sickels and BA had 14 players in their own Top…
2000 American League BB/9 K/9 K/BB R/9 3.74 6.27 1.68 5.34 April 2000, American League BB/9 K/9 K/BB R/9 3.79 6.32 1.67 5.55 April 2001, American League BB/9 K/9 K/BB R/9 3.36 6.76 2.01 5.05 2000 National League BB/9 K/9 K/BB R/9 3.84 6.75 1.76 5.07 April 2000, National League BB/9 K/9 K/BB R/9 4.09…