Regardless of what a player’s final numbers are at the end of the year, he didn’t accumulate them by putting up the same production each month of the season. All players have streaks, stretches where the hits fall in as well as periods where they simply can’t buy a hit. But even knowing that, we [...]
The Mets finished the year 77-85, 13 wins behind the division-leading Braves. Not all wins are created equally. Some wins are due to “talent” and others are due to “luck.” And it’s not always easy to tell where one of these things ends and the other starts. The Braves were 23-12 in one-run games while [...]
As we near the end of the second decade of the 21st Century, the game is different than it was back in Y2K. Everyone focuses on the increase of strikeouts, especially as it compares to hits. But one thing that doesn’t get nearly enough attention is how the game is trending younger. Baseball-Reference includes age-related [...]
It’s been reported that Steven Matz feels sharper since he returned from the disabled list in mid-August. He’s made five starts since being activated and two of those he was really good and the other three he was forgettable or worse. Given that he allowed 16 ER in 11.2 IP in his last three starts [...]
After starting the season in the minors, Zack Wheeler places right now in the top 10 in the National League in both IP (160.1) and ERA (3.37) and he has career-best numbers in WHIP (1.185) and K/BB ratio (3.18). But there are at least as many people still dubious about his ability to continue this [...]
On Friday night, Noah Syndergaard allowed five stolen bases. At some point during the telecast, Gary Cohen wondered aloud how many of those runners came around to score. In Friday’s game, not one of the five did. But that doesn’t mean that it happened that way earlier. Cohen seemed to think that it was a [...]
Due to the dreaded three I’s – injured, ineffective and inefficient – the Mets’ offense hasn’t been close to what was expected coming into the season. While the NL average runs per game is 4.43, the Mets are 13th with a 3.92 mark. And as bad as they’ve been overall, they’ve been worse when Jacob [...]
If you follow amateur baseball at all, you know more about the players selected in the draft than me. The best I can do is tell you that a guy who hit a triple and a homer for the Copperheads was taken by the Giants – in the 15th round. But hopefully what I’m lacking [...]
Back in the early 80s, when Dale Murphy was one of the best players in the game, my brother had him on his fantasy team and thought he was the greatest. Looking to take him down a peg, I told him – you get to 0-2 on Murphy and throw him a curve out of [...]
Dear God - not another Realmuto thread
Taking the next step in our quest to accurately evaluate drafting from the opening decade of the 21st century, I used the ranking system Brian unveiled and assigned values for every first-round pick arranged by team. The goal is to assess which teams got the most out of their first-rounders over a 10-year period. To [...]
Over the past few weeks, Joe Barbieri and I have presented the first 100 picks of the drafts from 2000-2009. While we made some comments and provided some context on the picks from those individual drafts, now it’s time to put it all together and look at our 10-year sample with the idea of looking [...]