Archive for May 2014

Yesterday, Xander Bogaerts had a 14-pitch battle with Phil Hughes. Hughes eventually won, as Bogaerts hit a weak fly ball to center field. But it got me wondering just how rare of an event this was. The venerable Jeff Zimmerman was kind enough to help me find out this very thing: Number of Pitches Per […]

Baseball fandom is a many-splintered thing. As the season moves into a complex of motivations, biases and burdens, you just might wish for simplicity again.

We all know the outlines of the tall tale … baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York in 1839. To this day, people argue over the true origins of the game. Some trace its roots to the late 1700s in New England, while others claim it is a variation of the British […]

Sunday’s getaway-day game between the San Francisco Giants and the host Atlanta Braves featured a play we don’t see too often, and a choice we see even less often. Buster Posey was awarded first base on catcher’s interference by Braves backstop Evan Gattis, but manager Bruce Bochy waved off the award. If Posey had gotten […]

We used to have this really cool thing on the old Hardball Times website.  It was called the WPA Inquirer and it allowed you to look up the Win Expectancy and Leverage Index of any situation, compare it to another and then calculate the difference between the two.  We call that last thing Win Probability […]

Breaking down a new page to be housed at THT, plus a week full of posts spawned from its creation.

The runner at second has a modest lead as the batter strokes a single through the right side.  The hard-charging outfielder scoops up the ball and unleashes a cannon shot.  The runner has turned third and is digging for home.  A smile comes to the face of the batter as he rounds first to see […]

Everyone thinks Anna Karenina ends with the title character throwing herself under a train, finally destroyed by a passionate but ill-advised love affair. Sometime in the middle of spring training, I was talking with a friend and he mentioned how the Reds were about to break his heart for six months (we are both Reds fans). Nearly […]

The Stealing Home podcast comes to The Hardball Times.

It’s not news to anyone that Clayton Kershaw’s spring has been disastrous – it’s on ESPN, SportsCenter, blogs, news sites, and everything in-between. Those who remember 2013 will also recall that Kershaw had a poor spring then, but it was nothing like it was in 2014 – his ERA is more than twice what it was last […]