The Kid from the Old School

Whether or not the Philadelphia Phillies rebound from their slow start to the 2012 season, remains to be seen. But if we are watching the changing of the guard in the NL East, then the May 6 evening that Cole Hamels plunked Bryce Harper, claiming it was “Old School,” will certainly be seen as a [...]

Another Kind of Parkway Series Imagined

Watching the Orioles-Nationals series play out over such a gorgeous weekend, with so much fine young talent on both sides of the diamond, it was hard not to project into it something more than just another interleague squabble. With Baltimore sitting comfortably atop the American League East and Washington still within hailing distance of the [...]

A Tale of Two Teenagers

Another teenage phenomenon has made his way through Hagerstown, only this year he was wearing visiting gray and his stay lasted for only four games. Dylan Bundy, the Baltimore Orioles 2011 first-round draft pick who is rated by many scouts as the best high school pitching prospect in the last 25 years, threw five shutout [...]

Touring the Bases With Bob Wolff

Bob Wolff is one of the most famous television and radio announcers of the second half of the Twentieth Century. He has been inducted to both the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown and the Basketball Hall of Fame as well. His call of Don Larsen’s World Series Perfect Game in 1956 for Mutual Radio [...]

Why Davey Johnson Is So Unhappy

One thing about Bryce Harper’s steal of home a few days ago, it brought a smile to the face of his manager Davey Johnson. Johnson has otherwise found too little to smile about during the first month of the 2012 season, despite the overall good performance of his team. Davey was a hitter. That is [...]

Harper Means Hustle and the Giant Combo Size

Bryce Harper is only a few days into his major league career. It is like a movie and the credits are still playing over the first few frames as we are introduced to the action. And maybe it is too early for the critics to assess what they are seeing, but there can be little [...]

Off the Beaten Basepaths #3: The Eastern Shore

Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the Delmarva Peninsula has a rich baseball history. Hall of Famers Jimmie Foxx and Frank “Home Run” Baker were born there as were many other Major League ballplayers. An excellent musuem, the Eastern Shore Baseball Hall of Fame, is located in Salisbury. But there’s no sense reading about it, when you [...]

History in the Making, Or Just Another Ballgame?

Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg were taken in the amateur draft twelve months apart. Each was a Boras client deemed difficult to sign and likely to command a record signing bonus. Each was acclaimed as a unique talent well worth whatever it took. The fact that they came in succeeding years was deemed extremely rare. [...]

A Flood of Riches

The rain is falling in Washington and it will mean that there is no chance to sweep the Marlins today. There is nothing cloudy or damp, however, about the superlatives being used to describe the Washington Nationals pitching staff. It is dedicated Nationals fans who are most aware of what it all means as they behold [...]

Cardiac Kids Take Chicago

Three tense and tightly contested games yielded two road wins for the 2012 Washington Nationals in Chicago thanks to surprising late inning magic. Call them the “Comeback Kids,” the “Cardiac Kids,” whatever you will, but the Nationals scored nine times in the last two innings during the three-game set in the Windy City.  The late [...]

Remembering Nick Adenhart

The following is an excerpt from Safe at Home: A Season in the Valley, which I wrote in 2009 about a college summer league team, the New Market Rebels. Preparations were well under way for the Rebel season when Nick Adenhart, who happened to be from my home of Williamsport, MD was killed three years [...]

What Does F12 Really Mean?

As previously defined, the Factor12 Rating (F12) is an analytic measurement utilizing league average performance to compare the value of all MLB pitchers. In basic terms, F12 is a rating that takes into account all aspects of pitching. It produces a number on a scale of 0.000-infinity (theoretically), where the average pitcher’s value is 24.000. [...]

This Ain’t Your Uncle’s Slide Show

When I was a boy, the latest in home entertainment technology was not a 60″, HD, surround-sound television, but the Kodak Carousel slide projector.  This bit of click-clacking wizardry was hardly entertaining, however, because invariably, Uncle Bob and Aunt Sally would invite you and your family over to view the slides from their latest vacation [...]

Batting Practice with the Z-Man

There are so few players who can lift the average fan from his seat during batting practice. It most commonly takes one of those leviathan sluggers like a Frank Howard or Mark McGwire to send ball after ball rocketing into the stands. So I was taken aback when in Kissimmee, Florida for a game between [...]

Baseball Gauge – Introducing our new version of Wins Above Replacement

In celebration of the new season, Seamheads.com and The Baseball Gauge are proud to announce our new Wins Above Replacement. The updated calculation has two major changes from our previous system. The first upgrade is our Fielding system, which now uses Runs Saved from Michael Humphreys Defensive Regression Analysis. This allows us to compare and [...]

Just Another Gated Community

We arrived back from Spring Training last night, three games in three delightful mad dash days that left us wishing there was time for one more. When I got home there was a wonderful surprise: a copy of the new biography of Bill Veeck by Paul Dickson. I went to sleep reading it. Yes I [...]

Changed Forever

In 1968 baseball’s golden era did not go gently into that good night of historical lore and remembrance. It went out with the bang of Bob Gibson and Mickey Lolich fighting it out in one of the great pitching duels ever, one that played out in the final game game of the ’68 World Series. [...]

Off the Beaten Basepaths: Spring Training 2012

It wasn’t easy going to Florida for a Spring Training sojourn because it was up to us to have as much fun as possible on behalf of all our friends who couldn’t go. Our motto was We’re having fun because you can’t.  It took us 15 days and we drove almost 2,900 miles down, around, [...]

Talking About the Dynamics and Emotions of Spring Training With Jack Perconte

The surface rituals of spring training are well known to fans, but camp presents unique challenges to players whether they’re established starters, prospects or trying to make sure they hold onto their big league jobs. Baseball instructor Jack Perconte, who now coaches players privately in Illinois, was in spring training most years in the ’80s, [...]

All That Twitters is Not Gold

Spring Training is a time of hope, it is said. But of course there is hope and then there is the stuff they sell on the sidewalks in Chelsea packaged as hope.  Maybe Bryce Harper really will hit ten home runs during the Spring and make the Opening Day roster. And that dude actually is selling a [...]

Spring Training, Here We Come!

Ah, spring. The time when a young man’s fancy turns to baseball, especially if that young man is now 55 years old.  Hope is springing eternal in training camps across Arizona and Florida and fans up north are dreaming that this is the year for their favorite team. Don’t you wish you could go to [...]

Off The Beaten Basepaths

It appears quite possible that the Hagerstown Suns, Bryce Harper’s home for the first half of the 2011 season, will be moving to Winchester, Virginia. The Suns of the South Atlantic League had hoped that the city of Hagerstown would either significantly renovate Municipal Stadium or replace it all together, but that hasn’t happened. The [...]

Economics of MLB Ballparks

Several sources in the literature provide general and specific economic and financial data and basic sport statistics about each current and former Major League Baseball Ballpark (MLBB). These sources, as a group, include academic studies, articles in books, journals, magazines and newspapers, industry reports, and websites. With respect to MLBBs, authors focus on and analyze [...]

An Evening with Joe Torre

The 1,500 fans crammed into George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium Wednesday night came to hear one of the most well-respected names in the game today, Joe Torre.  It was Phil Hochberg’s honor to emcee the evening sponsored by the Smithsonian Museum.  As the former Senator’s PA announcer Hochberg looked out over the crowd noting it [...]

A Vote for the Expanded Playoff Format

Commissioner Selig is still determined to create a second Wild Card slot for the 2012 season.  No team may be impacted by a possible second Wild Card chance more than the Washington Nationals. The window for this innovation in 2012 may be closing, but as the spring reporting date looms just days away, how many [...]

Can’t Buy Me Love

Most of the big name free agents this off season migrated toward the American League Danny Knobler pointed out a few days ago. The signing of Albert Pujols by the Angels and Prince Fielder by the Tigers, coupled with Yu Darvish landing in Texas signals a shift of power to the AL. But is it a [...]

Touring the Bases With Hall of Famer, Monte Irvin

Monte Irvin has had an extraordinary life and I had the privilege to talk to him about his long career in the game recently. He is 92—he will turn 93 on February 25th—and can look back over a remarkable period in our history, as he recalled,  ”It was a time when baseball was really king.” [...]

The Business of Baseball

Such current, popular, and reputable publications as Business Week, Forbes and Fortune, and the former Financial World contain annual financial data and other information about Major League Baseball (MLB) and the league’s franchises. Based partly on what these magazines published on professional sports, there are economists and various organizations that research and perform studies, and [...]

The Impact of Prince Fielder in Washington

Prince Fielder was always one of the impact players in this year’s free agent class, but he is still out there and according to the “industry analysts” the table continues to tilt increasingly toward Washington as his landing spot. This morning Adam Kilgore in the Washington Post summarized the case, saying he is “Washington’s to [...]

2012 Milestones (And Beyond): Home Runs

Depending on which camp you’re in, 2012 will either tickle you pink or make you throw up in your mouth.  With 629 home runs already under his belt, Alex Rodriguez is only one away from tying former teammate Ken Griffey Jr. at 630 and 31 away from catching Willie Mays for fourth place on the [...]

Mr. President, Baseball Lasts Til Almost November

The St. Louis Cardinals are in the Rose Garden soon for the customary victory lap stop-over at the White House. It will be a rare baseball event for President Obama, and that is a sad commentary for both the game and for a president whose political advisors are so clearly asleep at the switch. Presidents [...]

2012 Milestones (And Beyond): Hits

Last time around I looked at potential milestones in runs scored and Alex Rodriguez’s quest to join the top 10 in 2012, which looks likely based on his career average and last three seasons.  If you’re hoping for another new member of the 3,000-hit club, however, don’t hold your breath (unless you’re a Yankee fan, [...]

Fun With Retrosheet: Do Only Slow Runners Ground into a Lot of DPs?

There was a discussion recently on SABR-L about whether we can reliably determine that a player was slow from his offensive statistics. Several markers were proposed: low stolen base totals, a poor SB success rate, and few triples were some of those that were mentioned. So was a high number of grounded into double-plays (GIDP). [...]

2012 Milestones (And Beyond): Runs Scored

Ten days ago I wrote that we won’t be witnessing any real milestones in wins for a long time unless Jaimie Moyer makes a successful comeback, and even that’s no guarantee.  Using Bill James’ “Favorite Toy” at ESPN.go.com (called “Career Assessments” now), I deduced that CC Sabathia has a 45% chance of reaching the 300-win [...]

100 Years Ago Today

In early December 1911, Washington Nationals president Tom Noyes welcomed his new manager Clark Griffith to town for the first time.  Griffith was given a posh new office in the Southern building and no sooner had he looked over his new digs, than he was off to the winter meetings to hunt for talent during [...]

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