Tag Archive for ‘hardball times’ rss

Writing the Book (8 Dec 08)

I hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving. I’m finally settling back into my routine and almost caught up on emails. If I still owe you a response, this is probably the week it happens. I got a ton of work done in Hawai’i, which is good because I’ve been stressing about the whole book thing. [...]

Thanksgiving Holiday Schedule

Forgive the lack of updates this past week. I rolled out of bed on Monday, blinked, and it was Saturday. Time is not your friend. We’re off to Hawai’i for the annual Thanksgiving shindig at my wife’s family’s farm. I’m prepping some articles (mostly annotated reruns) to run in my absence; although discussion is always [...]

Links for 18 Nov 08

Hooray, it’s links: Giles and Hoffman (It Might Be Dangerous…). Paul DePodesta offers his thoughts on the re-signing of Brian Giles as well as the latest in the Trevor Hoffman negotiations (or lack thereof). [h/t LynchMob] John Moores to give $2.1 million to Scripps Research Institute (Gaslamp Ball) I especially like how some of the [...]

Links for 31 Oct 08

Happy Halloween! To the links… Sabathia’s free agency could set up a big payday for Padres ace (San Diego Union-Tribune). Reader Nick G. sends us an update on the Jake Peavy “story” from Tom Krasovic. Quoth Peavy’s agent, Barry Axelrod: Making this about money is not my style, nor Jake’s style. I think we proved [...]

Links for 22 Oct 08

Notes to self: Always add Sriracha to spaghetti sauce, stop leering at Yvonne Strahovski, listen to more Fishbone… Why not us? Comparing Royals’ moves to Rays’ decisions (Kansas City Star). Reader Didi sends this article by Joe Posnanski. There’s plenty of good stuff in here, but looking beyond the article, what gets me is the [...]

Links for 14 Oct 08

I’m trying out a tool that pulls links from my Delicious bookmarks and publishes them here on a semi-regular basis… How much should Ben Sheets get? (Hardball Times). Victor Wang uses projected performance and risk analysis to predict that free-agent right-hander Ben Sheets will get $55-65 million for 4 or 5 years. The methodology seems [...]

We’ll See You When We See You

The season is over. Thank goodness for that. The Padres played brutal baseball for most of 2008, and fans were in a pretty sour mood all year. Unfortunately I let the negativity get to me more than I should have. I suppose it’s safe to admit this now, because I no longer feel it’s likely [...]

Fun with Run Support

My latest article at Hardball Times focuses on a technique Bill James employed in his 1988 Baseball Abstract to evaluate the degree to which a pitcher might be aided (or not) by his offense. James used it to compare Danny Jackson and Walt Terrell from 1985 to 1987; I use it to compare Jarrod Washburn [...]

Here, There, and Everywhere

My latest article at Hardball Times looks back at a 1989 game in which the Cleveland Indians collected six hits, all home runs. Joe Carter knocked three of them. Carter, you may recall, came to San Diego the following year and gave a convincing demonstration of how utterly useless the RBI statistic is. Ten men [...]

Please, Don’t Beat the Worms

In the Ducksnorts 2008 Baseball Annual I noted that Adrian Gonzalez didn’t ground into many double plays in 2007. Given how slow he is and how many he’d hit into the year before, this surprised me. Well, now he’s back to his old tricks: Adrian Gonzalez, Grounders and Double Plays Year PA GIDP GB% Statistics [...]