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John Dewan's Stat of the Week
Who are the Runs Saved Leaders? (Part II)
June 29, 2011 Last week, we reviewed the Runs Saved leaders for infielders and catchers. Today we’ll look at outfielders and pitchers. A fielder’s Defensive Runs Saved (Runs Saved, for short) is an estimate of how many runs a player saved or cost his team defensively in the field compared to others at his position. [...]
Who are the Runs Saved Leaders? (Part I)
June 23, 2011 With summer officially beginning this week, it’s a good time to check in on our Runs Saved leaders. Runs Saved are a defensive measure we developed in The Fielding Bible that shows how many runs a defender saves (or costs) his team in the field. This week, we’ll look [...]
Gem: A Pitching Masterpiece
June 13, 2011 Last week, we evaluated the definition of a Quality Start and concluded that, while still useful, it is seriously flawed. This week, we’re going to introduce an alternative: Gem. In the baseball vernacular, broadcasters and writers use the term "Gem" regularly to describe a pitching masterpiece: "Felix Hernandez pitched [...]
Who's Hot and Who's Not
May 27, 2011 Want to know how "hot" or "cold" your favorite players or team are, and to what degree? Well, Bill James came up with a way to translate recent performance into a temperature. It's a cool (or, should we say, hot) system that provides added insight into to the notion of hot and cold [...]
Evaluating Pitcher Accuracy with Catcher Charting
May 20, 2011 Today, I’m excited to share with you one of the new things we’ve been working on at Baseball Info Solutions. In addition to our normal pitch charting efforts, last year we started charting the catcher’s target on each pitch. Where does the catcher place his mitt prior to the pitch as [...]
Padres hitting .218!
May 06, 2011 But they are not the worst hitting team in the majors. That honor goes to the Minnesota Twins who have the worst OPS (.615) and the fewest runs per game (3.07). The Twins are hitting 12 points higher than the Padres at .230, but their OPS [...]
Does it make sense to "waste" a pitch with an 0-2 count?
April 29, 2011 When a pitcher starts a batter off with two consecutive strikes, he's clearly ahead in the count and has a range of options available. He can take the efficient route, again throwing the pitch in the strike zone and forcing the hitter to take a defensive swing or head back to the [...]
Who are the best defensive teams of 2011 so far?
April 20, 2011 The Indians, Royals, and Rangers feature the three best records in the American League. Not coincidentally, they also feature three of the top-rated defenses thus far in 2011. The 2010 AL Champion Rangers are hardly a surprise considering the addition of former Fielding Bible Award winner Adrian Beltre, but the Royals were supposed [...]
Contender or Pretender? The Predictive Value of the First Ten Games of the Season
April 12, 2011 Much has been made of the slow starts of the Red Sox and Rays, each losing the first six games of the 2011 season. The Rays, who finished with the best record in the American League last year, were expected to contend despite heavy offseason losses but have limped to a 2-8 [...]