November 21, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. Most Recent Comments
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Sportswriters don’t vote for Cy Young based on popular opinion; baseball universe explodes (14) Where could Omar Vizquel and Nick Johnson end up? (6) You’re not Alou (8) Is peak at age 29? (6) 
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Monday, November 29, 2004Win Shares AgingThe Baseball Crank has done some nice follow-up analysis of his Established Win Shares method by looking at how aging affects Win Shares. Very nice job, and it's interesting that Win Shares follows a fairly typical aging pattern. Thursday, November 25, 2004Happy ThanksgivingIt's Thanksgiving Day here in the US of A. We would like to wish you and your family a great holiday, and thank you for dropping by throughout the year. Tuesday, November 23, 2004Miller at MillerIt appears the catcher Damian Miller will play for the Brewers at Miller Park next year. He'll reportedly be paid $8.75 million over three years. This is a great deal for the Brewers. Miller was the sixth-best catcher in the AL last year, creating 15 Win Shares/four WSAA. Next year, the Bill James Handbook projects that he'll create 45 runs in 106 games. Those numbers, along with his great catching skills (led the league in fielding Win Shares per 1,000 innings behind the plate) project out to 13 Win Shares and two WSAA. At that rate, believe it or not, a fair market value for Miller next year would be around $6.5 million. The Brewers signed him for $3 million a year. Plus, they got only three Win Shares from their catchers last year, which means this signing could yield nine additional Win Shares, or three wins, compared to last year's catching squad. That is one of the bigger upswings for any one position we will see the entire offseason. Yes, Miller will be 36 years old next year, which is probably what scared teams off. But the Handbook lists his injury risk as medium and I don't believe he spent any time on the DL last year. Nice job by Milwaukee. Friday, November 19, 2004Why Seth Etherton?I've been meaning to comment on this for awhile, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long. On November 1, the A's signed minor league free agent Seth Etherton. It was a move that went relatively unnoticed, and where it was noticed, it seems to have been met with confusion. The only two major A's weblogs to have mentioned the deal were Barry Zito Forever (which simply asked "Why?") and Elephants in Oakland (who commented, "The A's added Scott Etherton for some reason, hopefully somebody knows.") Anyway, I'd like to clear up some confusion: It's yet another shrewd move by Billy Beane. Yes, Seth Etherton (not Scott) has a horrible major-league track record -- in 18 career starts, he has a 5.98 ERA and 20 homers allowed in 90.1 innings. But in 26 combined starts between AAA Louisville and AA Chattanooga in 2004, Etherton was brilliant. He posted a magnificent 156-41 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 152.1 innings, and his 3.37 runs per game was 38% better than the league average. He's also only 28, and in my estimation, he is the best minor league free agent pitcher this winter. Will Etherton even make a start for Oakland in 2005? Maybe, maybe not. But he has a chance to be a real diamond in the rough, and Billy Beane was smart to snatch him up before Los Angeles and Boston did -- because they surely would have. New Lahman Database Now AvailableSean Lahman and friends have been working hard gathering data and have now updated their excellent database through the 2004 season (version 5.2). It's available in various forms, including Access (a relational database program). Access allows you to create statistical queries in a snap and imports and exports data with ease. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||