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John Dewan's Stat of the Week
Can a horrible second baseman become a great outfielder?
February 28, 2007 This exact thing may be happening right before our eyes. Here are some of the numbers that make the case that Alfonso Soriano was the worst defensive second baseman in baseball in 2005: * Most Defensive Misplays for any position in the last two years: 52 * Third [...]
Are There More Hard-Throwing Righties Than Lefties?
August 17, 2006 Surprisingly, the answer is that there are significantly more hard-throwing righties than lefties. Not just in total, but percentage-wise as well. > Baseball Info Solutions has been tracking the speed of pitchers for the last few years. Overall, about half of all pitchers (54% in the last two years) average 90 [...]
What do teams with great one-run game records do the next year?
April 13, 2006 Four teams played over .600 ball in one-run games in 2005. They were: the World Champion Chicago White Sox (35-19, .648), the Boston Red Sox (27-15, .643), the New York Yankees (27-16, .628) and the oddball of the group, the Arizona Diamondbacks (28-18, .609). The question is: can a team consistently play well [...]
How does the White Sox five-man rotation stack up?
April 05, 2006 The five-man pitching rotation was a new fangled gadget in the 1970’s that caught on and became the norm. By 1979 nearly every team was using a five-man rotation. Hawk Harrelson, the colorful broadcaster for the World Champion Chicago White Sox, recently declared that this year's White Sox rotation of Mark Buehrle, Freddy [...]
Who is hot enough this Spring to carry it into the regular season?
March 28, 2006 Spring Training doesn’t often predict the regular season. For example, does anyone really believe the White Sox are the worst team in baseball right now? But there is one thing in Spring Training that can tell us something about the season ahead. A hitter that has a great Spring Training often goes on to [...]
More pitches per plate appearance equals more runs - - true or false?
March 22, 2006 Gotcha! Interestingly, it turns out to be true and false. Conventional wisdom for hitters is to be patient at the plate, work the count, see a lot of pitches and tire out the pitcher. Does this hold up when looking at the stats? We looked at team data to research this one and [...]
Who wins the 2005 Flat Bat Award?
March 16, 2006 The Flat Bat Award is given each year to the best bunter in baseball. There are two ways that we look at bunters. First, we look at bunters who are most prolific and most effective at sacrificing for runners on the bases. Second, we look at the best bunters when trying for a [...]
How effective were fifth starters in 2005?
February 22, 2006 Last year we found that the fifth starters for playoff teams were simply .500 pitchers. This suggested that you didn't need a strong fifth starter in order to succeed. Let's see if that trend continued in 2005: If you exclude the four best starters on each Major League team in 2005, the average [...]
Who will win Super Bowl XLI?
January 23, 2007 Click here to listen to John Dewan on 670 The Score As I discussed last week, there's a system that I've been using for the past 16 years that has correctly predicted the Super Bowl winner 14 times. It involves 12 predictors that each successfully predict the Super Bowl winner roughly [...]
Can you predict the Super Bowl winner?
February 01, 2006 There's a system that I've been using for the past 15 years that has correctly predicted the Super Bowl winner 13 times. Let me share it with you here, then we'll see how it does on Sunday. The system has twelve statistics that we use based on the regular season for the [...]