Loading... Please wait...
John Dewan's Stat of the Week
A Closer Look At Early-Season Intriguing Stories
It’s too early in the season to make judgments on predictability or sustainability for most statistics. Who you play, who you don’t play and an abundance or lack of flukish plays can wreak havoc on early-season numbers.But within the smallest of sample sizes are interesting stories from the first two weeks of the season. Here [...]
The Outlook for 2017's Overachieving & Underachieving Pitchers
By Mark Simon We’re a few days into the 2018 season, and one of the questions on your mind is probably “How will my team's starting pitchers perform?” That’s a question that can be looked at in some interesting ways. At Sports Info Solutions, our defense-independent pitching statistics (DIPS) are able to provide expected results on every ball in play against a pitcher [...]
The Outlook for 2017's Underachievers and Overachievers
By Mark Simon With the MLB season beginning, there are some things we can count on. Some players will struggle inexplicably. Some will have unexpected remarkable success. But how do we know whether a struggle or success is legitimate? There are statistical measures that help. Our defense-independent batting statistics (DIBS) are able to give expected results on every ball [...]
The Outfield Shift Has Arrived
Over the weekend there was a bit of hubbub about the Phillies’ use of seemingly conflicting shifts in the infield and outfield in a Grapefruit League game against Twins first baseman Joe Mauer. Their infielders were playing Mauer in what BIS calls a Full Ted Williams Shift (three men on the pull side of [...]
Ranking the Top Starting Rotations
Although this has been a slow MLB offseason by most standards, some of the moves have resulted in notable starting pitchers such as Yu Darvish, Jake Arrieta and Gerrit Cole moving to new teams. With Major League Baseball’s Opening Day just a few weeks away, we decided to rank baseball’s top starting rotations based on [...]
Stat of the Week: Praising Arizona
By Mark Simon After a 24-win improvement in 2017, the Arizona Diamondbacks have had a busy offseason in trying to put together a roster that could compete with the Dodgers for the division and the Rockies and Giants for the Wild Card. The Diamondbacks are trying for consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 2007-2008. Most notably, the [...]
Norway Skiing Away with Medals Race
We worked with the Wall Street Journal to develop Olympic medal projections and shared them in the Journal here and in the Stat of the Week a couple of weeks ago here. With a week left of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, the model is working pretty well. Except for the United States. There [...]
What does Yu Darvish Bring To The Cubs?
By Mark Simon Saturday, the Cubs landed the biggest pitching prize of the free-agent market when they agreed to a six-year, $126 million deal with Yu Darvish. The Cubs believe they added both quality and depth and a replacement for one of their top pitchers, Jake Arrieta. Darvish will slot in alongside Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester, José Quintana and another new acquisition, [...]
2018 Winter Olympics Projections
The 2018 Winter Olympics kick off this week in Pyeongchang, South Korea, with comprehensive coverage scheduled to begin tomorrow. The ultimate prize for the competitors is an Olympic medal, with 306 awarded in 102 events. We ran 1,000 simulations for these Olympics using probabilities provided by the Wall Street Journal to try to determine which countries [...]
Patriots and Eagles: Two Key Insights Into Their High Scoring Offenses
The Patriots scored 458 points this past season while the Eagles were one point behind at 457, making them the second and third most prolific offenses in the NFL behind the LA Rams (478 points). Sports Info Solutions has been tracking in-depth situational information that provides some key insights into why they’ve been so effective.Short Answer: Running Backs! First the Eagles. The [...]