The Decline Of 20-Game Winners: A Lack Of Quality Not Quantity

Last week, Padres’ Greg Maddux registered his 350th win.  There’s a good chance we won’t see that again in our lifetime.  While I still hold to my earlier posts that 300-game winners are not dead yet, there is serious cause for concern with the disappearance of consistent, high quality starting pitching.

Was Clemente Really Slighted by MVP Voters in 1960?

Roberto Clemente called the 1960 N.L. MVP voting an “injustice,” but was it really?

Can the Rays Survive Without Kazmir?

What is Tampa Bay not telling us about Scott Kazmir and how will the Rays do without him?

Is Piniella’s Decision on Fukudome a Mistake?

Cubs skipper Lou Piniella recently unveiled a new lineup that would be more productive with Kosuke Fukudome leading off instead of hitting fifth.

MAJOR LEAGUE EQUIVALENCIES

Major League Equivalents (MLEs) are a series of calculations designed to take non-major league baseball performance and estimate what that performance’s results would look like statistically in the context of the Major Leagues. Bill James gets credit for being the inventor of MLEs, as he outlined his method for batters in the 1985 Baseball Abstract. […]

WHAT’S ON SECOND? The Japanese are Coming, Part III

I never like to assume, so once again a quick clarification from the previous segment: In Step #4, Leagues Park Difference, the 13% Park Difference will expand or contract depending on the SPECIFIC parks a player is coming from and going to. For example, if a Japanese player is moving from pitcher-friendly Koshien Kyujo in […]

WHAT’S ON SECOND?: The Japanese are Coming Part II REDO

Before moving on to Part III, there’s a clarification I need to make regarding Part II. In addition to factoring in the difference in league parks between any two leagues when doing MLE’s, you must also factor in the difference between league SCORING environments. In the previous Part II, I ‘plugged’ a 7% difference into […]

WHAT’S ON SECOND? The Japanese are Coming, Part II

As was mentioned in Part I, over 600 (664 by my count) players have played in MLB and NPB. Out of that 664, 32 of those have been native born Japanese players. If we break out the numbers by batters and pitchers, we get: Japanese Pitchers to MLB – 23 Japanese Position Players to MLB […]

The Favorite Toy and the Home Run King

I have a list of articles I intend to write, most about players who toiled long before any of us were a gleam in our parents’ eye (hell, long before our parents were gleams in their parents’ eyes), but sometimes events collide and new ideas crop up and articles seemingly write themselves. With the recent […]

What’s On Second? The Japanese are Coming, Part I

  Here on seamheads.com at “What’s On Second?”, we’ll be doing various ‘statistorian’ types of analysis, looking at the history and past statistics of baseball, hopefully with the goal of understanding the present a little differently.   Japanese baseball continues to have a bigger impact on U. S. baseball each passing year, with this year […]

Your 2007 World Champion Red Sox

About 25 years ago, Bill James introduced a prediction system that picked the World Series winner with 70% accuracy. He wrote about the system for Inside Sports magazine in 1982, then expounded on it in his 1984 Baseball Abstract. He developed the system in 1972 and it accurately predicted the World Series winner at a […]

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