By Joshua Iversen The MLB First Year Player Draft has always been something of a shot in the dark. Every year, over 1200 amateur players are selected across 40 rounds. Only a tiny fraction of them will ever make it to Triple-A, let alone the Major Leagues. But as difficult Read more…
by Anthony Franco The calendar has flipped to February, and the college baseball season will officially get underway later this month. Baseball America, D1 Baseball and the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper have all dropped their initial top 25 lists in the past month, and there’s a consensus in the top tier. Read more…
By Chris Weikel The penalty for using a pitcher for the third time through the order has been well-documented in recent years, influencing team strategies and redefining the starting pitcher’s role as we know it. The gist of this phenomenon is that pitcher production nosedives from a combination of fatigue Read more…
If you’ve followed my work, you know I am borderline obsessed with barrels and strongly believe in in the predictive forces of Barrel FIP. I have tweeted out starting pitcher barrel stats daily for two seasons now, and from the feedback I have received over that time, I know my Read more…
By Chris Weikel Since Bill James released the Baseball Abstract in 1982, the professional baseball world has adopted the study of data into every aspect of the game. College baseball, on the other hand, has been far less receptive. That is now beginning to change. Five small D1 programs are Read more…
By Joshua Iversen In the week before Christmas, baseball’s hot stove finally began to heat up. A handful of mid-tier free agents found their 2019 homes and two major trades went down involving significant Major League players. The first was a three-team deal between the Oakland Athletics, Texas Rangers and Read more…
By Joshua Iversen Baseball is constantly changing and evolving, and its latest form is perhaps its most unique yet. Home runs and strikeouts are way up, while batting average and innings pitched by starting pitchers are down. But how do these MLB-level changes affect the way the game is played Read more…
By Steve Mar For a number of years, Major League Baseball has been dealing with a pace-of-play issue. The league has done a number of things to try and combat the slow-moving game including a pitch clock which gives pitchers a set amount of time to deliver their next pitch, Read more…
By Anthony Franco The topsy-turvy 2009 MLB draft is nearing its tenth birthday. Next June figures to see its fair share of retrospectives, no small number of which will retell how this generation’s greatest player fell to the back end of the first round. For all the attention on that Read more…
By Chris Weikel The most critical exchange in any baseball game is the battle between the hitter and pitcher. Happening on average more than 300 times per game, every swing of the bat has the potential to change the fate of a game. Two of the most important — in Read more…