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John Dewan's Stat of the Week
The 2024 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot
The neverending debate that is Baseball Hall of Fame worthiness can move ahead to 2024 after the elections of Scott Rolen and Fred McGriff to 2023’s Hall class. Next year’s BBWAA ballot includes not just prominent holdovers like Todd Helton, Billy Wagner, and Carlos Beltran, but also three newcomers who surpass the standard set by Bill [...]
How Cody Bellinger Improves The Cubs Outfield
The big move for the Cubs this winter was signing free agent shortstop Dansby Swanson to a seven-year deal. But signing Cody Bellinger to a one-year contract to play center field might be the most impactful defensive move in MLB this offseason.The Cubs played eight different players in center field last year, with 98% of [...]
How Trea Turner Improves the Phillies Defense
By MARK SIMONA couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the difference that Cody Bellinger should make for the Cubs, whose center fielders ranked worst in MLB in Defensive Runs Saved last season.What Bellinger represents to the Cubs in center field is what Trea Turner represents to the Phillies at shortstop.Didi Gregorius, Bryson Stott, [...]
The Blue Jays Remake Their Outfield
The Blue Jays ranked eighth in MLB in Defensive Runs Saved last season with 44 and they’ve spent a good portion of their offseason trying to improve upon that. A closer look at the components of Defensive Runs Saved might explain why.In 2022, the Blue Jays ranked 3rd in Runs Saved from infield and outfield [...]
2023 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot
This is the time of year when we typically write about the Hall of Fame-worthiness of players on this year’s ballot. We’ve previously written about almost all of the prominent candidates and we can sum it up thusly: By the Bill James-created Hall of Fame Value stat (HOF-V)*, which sums a player’s Win Shares and four times [...]
2022 MLB Year-End Awards
Happy Holidays!Every year at this time we do some supplemental, statistically-driven MLB awards. These will salute some of the leaders in specific areas of our recordkeeping. Here are the 2022 winners:The Hard-Hitter AwardSports Info Solutions charts every batted ball as hard-, medium- or soft-hit, based on the ball's location and velocity (note that this differs [...]
Carlos Correa: Misplay Minimizer
The most distinct thing about how Carlos Correa plays shortstop is that he does so in a way that minimizes the mistakes he makes. We can back up what we say here based on tracking done by our Video Scouts, who watch every play of every game. They credit and demerit players using approximately 30 categories of [...]
MLB's Best Players Are Entrenched
Trea Turner and Aaron Judge were among those richly rewarded with new contracts at this year’s winter meetings. We mention them specifically not just because of the size of their contracts, but because they’re currently adjacent to each other on a prominent statistical list. Player Total Runs Shohei [...]
Reviewing Hall of Fame Contemporary Era Candidates
By MARK SIMONIf only it were so simple such that we could judge Hall of Fame candidates just on their on-field performance.If we did, the Contemporary Baseball Era player ballot would look a lot different than the eight names who will be voted upon by a committee of 16 voters on Sunday.Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, [...]
2022 NPB & KBO Fielding Bible Awards
For the third straight year, Sports Info Solutions is rewarding defensive excellence on a global level. Today, we announce the winners of the NPB and KBO Fielding Bible Awards.The awards were voted on by a panel of experts and members of SIS’ operations staff, who spent the entire season tracking NPB and KBO games. Among [...]