Today being the 1st of the month, I would normally have provided a monthly update to the leaders in the Three True Outcomes. However, I’m posting tonight to let you know that I’m taking a hiatus from blogging for the foreseeable future, for a very good and fun reason. I’m writing my first book/book proposal. … Read more
Andrew Baggarly was watching the Giants play this past Thursday, and stumbled upon this factoid: Austin Jackson lines out in his first at-bat of the spring. I actually spent 20 minutes on this, and could not find another MLB player whose name is two state capitals. — Andrew Baggarly March 1, 2018 . . … Read more
Over on Facebook, in the Effectively Wild (Baseball Prospectus daily podcast) group, there is currently a discussion of music-oriented fantasy baseball team names. Here are some of my suggestions so far: Four Non-Bonds (if you think your team might be “one-hit wonders”, I suppose) ChiCarGo (25 or 6 to 4 ….. would be a weird … Read more
Today is Thanksgiving, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the following people/entities for making my baseball blogging world a better place (in no particular order): Baseball Prospectus: The folks I followed (Kahrl, Jaffe, Goldstein, Lindbergh, Sheehan, Goldman) are gone, but they continue to find great writers/analysts. From prospect talk to fantasy baseball … Read more
Friday night marks the beginning of “Yom Kippur“, the holiest day on the Hebrew calendar. It is a day of atonement, and one is to refrain from work, while attending synagogue and fasting. At the VORG, it means its time for another edition of “Sabbathmetrics“. Today we examine the Sabbath/non-Sabbath performance differences of former pitcher … Read more
Wednesday night marks the first evening of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. So its time for another installment of “Sabbathmetrics”, where we determine if Jewish ballplayers perform better or worse on the Sabbath. Our subject today is lefty pitcher Ross Baumgarten. Baumgarten was a 20th-round selection of the White Sox in 1977 and made … Read more
Various sports outlets and Twitter folks are noting tonight’s “Ray-Romano” pitching matchup in the Arizona-Cincinnati game. Here are some more “celebrity” pitching matchups that have taken place (thanks to the gamelogs at Retrosheet): DATE VIS HOME VIS P HOME P 19340522 SLN NY1 Dean Smith 19340719 SLN BSN Dean Smith 19360521 SLN NY1 Dean Smith … Read more
Friend of the VORG Zack Raab set out a request to Jayson Stark and I: since you love these wacky finds and I love seeing what you can do with them, ever seen this in a MLB lineup? ?? — Zack Raab June 20, 2017 … which referred to this tweet: … Read more