Estimates of MLB's "Stadium Effect"
A quick follow-up to Take Me Out to the (New) Ballpark. I appreciate the comments and I find the shared experiences and emotions from teams/stadiums a fascinating topic on both ...Take Me Out to the (Newer) Ballpark
My wife and I recently visited the West Coast, affording me my first game at Dodger Stadium in 45 years. While Brooklynites still despair the Dodgers exit from the East ...Management by Discrete Jumps, Not Increments?
Tom Verducci of SI.com hammers the management of pitching in MLB, particularly the role of "closers," in "With More Closers Breaking Down, It's Time to Rethink the Modern Bullpen." In ...A $2 Billion Bargain for New Dodger Owners?
The $2 billion winning bid the group headed by Guggenheim Financial CEO Mark Walter and Magic Johnson as PR owner raised many eyebrows. It blows away the $1.5 billion paid ...Playoff Roulette
Jeffrey Beckmann at BleacherReport presents a slideshow of the "50 Best Teams" not to win a World Series. Of the teams on this side of 1950, the 1996 Braves and ...The World is Not Enough
Ryan Jazayerli at Grantland offers a thorough and insightful survey of the demise of the Astros in "Rock Bottom in H-Town." Many turns to the story -- hiring of Larry ...MLB Umps Not so Color Blind?
The racial bias analysis of strikes-balls decisions of MLB umps by UT-Austin professor Daniel Hamermesh and coauthors (Parsons, Sulaeman, Yates) has generated the expected buzz in the popular press and ...How Much v. How Well -- Michael Jordan as "6th Man"?
In 1968, Gates Brown hit .450 as a pinch hitter and .370 in total with an OPS of 1.12. Yet, Brown did not register in the year end MVP voting. ...Dead Money in Baseball
Today's LA Times has an interesting article on the subject of contracts gone bad in baseball. As used in the baseball world, the term "dead money," is analogous to the economic concept ...Valuing Pujols
Dave Cameron's piece in today's WSJ presents a simple calculation of Albert Pujols' value. Cameron's analysis leads him to conclude that Pujols "deserves to be the highest-paid player in baseball history," ...