Deviating from the Past

Every baseball ranking—even those based on statistics—is biased in some way. It’s what makes practically every list debatable.

For instance, take a list as fundamental as “hit leaders.” As a counting stat, a player’s hit total is impacted by his place in the batting order as well as his lineup’s offensive strength, two factors that have [...]

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Measuring a Pitcher's Ace Factor

Below is a statistical collection of the seasonal performances of every starting pitcher between 1950 and 2010.

Each pitcher’s season, represented by a blue diamond, was measured by a calculation that didn’t consider any of the usual suspects typically used in measuring a pitcher’s effectiveness, such as ERA, strikeouts, WHIP, shutouts, or even ground ball percentages, contact [...]

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Sorry Albert, It's Votto's Time

Ranking the 2010 NL MVP Candidates

[Author's note: Irony can be pretty ironic, I suppose. It's not the first time that an MVP favorite tanked in the post-season, but Joey Votto did just that, going 1-for-10 against the Phillies as his Cincinnati Reds went three and out. It's worthy to mention that the ballots [...]

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