The Worst and Most Underrated Baseball Movies of All Time

Last summer we ranked the greatest sports movies of all time.  This summer, we’ve decided to take the next few weeks and discuss the worst and most underrated movies in each sport.  Our first sport to tackle is baseball. Perry: Worst Baseball Movie of all Time – The Babe (1992 - 47% Rotten Tomatoes, 5.7 IMDB) [...]

A Capital City Resurgance

Our nation’s capital needs some help. No, I’m not talking about whatever is going on with Obama and the White House. I’m talking about their professional sports teams, all of whom have spent the last decade or so at the bottom of their respective standings. The Wizards are in a rebuilding phase at the moment, [...]

The Most Interesting Man in Baseball

Francisco Liriano’s five year stint in the major leagues has been anything but typical. His career arc looks like a loopy, spiraling roller coaster, filled with highs, lows, twists and turns. From his initial dominance in 2006 to his demotion to the minor leagues in 2008 to his tainted no hitter this season, Liriano has [...]

Understanding WAR

In the last two weeks, we have discussed the best way to measure a player in terms of both offensive (wRAA) and defensive (UZR) production. Those two statistics express player value in terms of runs above average. We can add them together to find their overall Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. WAR is the most [...]

Understanding wRAA

As Chris explained in an earlier post, commonly used statistics such as batting average, slugging percentage, OBP and OPS all combine to give us a pretty good overview of a hitter. However, it is important to note that all of these stats have their flaws. In batting average, every hit counts the same and walks [...]

Baseball, Mad Men and the Evolution of Mainstream Society

      ‘America’s Pastime’ is a phrase you hear quite often when discussing our much heralded game of baseball. The phrase is synonymous with the good ole’ days of Ruth, Mantle and Maris. However, when a person talks about ‘America’s Pastime’, I never conjure up the images of Halladay, Pujols and Bautista. America has [...]

Understanding UZR

This week we move on from the idea of measuring luck in baseball (BABIP, FIP and LOB%) and focus on something entirely different. Sabermetrics do a great job of breaking down hitters and pitchers in ways that our regular ERA and AVG-type statistics only begin to hit upon. However, the idea of measuring a player’s ability in [...]

Understanding LOB%

In the past few weeks, I have gone into great detail about two major sabermetric stats that try to put a number on luck (http://www.dashright93berlin.com/understanding-babip/ and http://www.dashright93berlin.com/understanding-fip/).  Both BABIP and FIP attempt to eliminate variables from your standard statistics to get more of a true picture of what is going on.  This week, we will discuss [...]

Understanding FIP

A few weeks ago we discussed the idea of luck in a baseball sense and different ways to try and take luck into consideration when forming statistics (http://www.dashright93berlin.com/understanding-babip/).  Today, we’re going to go even more advanced and focus on just what the pitcher can control.  Fielder independent pitching, or FIP, is a statistic used to [...]

Understanding OBP, SLG, and OPS

Today we’ll look at three advanced baseball statistics that are interrelated: on base percentage (OBP), Slugging, and on base plus slugging (OPS). OBP is simple enough to define and to understand.  It is simply the percentage of times that a batter gets on base.  It helps to define a players value a little more than [...]