This is a tough time of the year to write about baseball, so I love when people say things that don’t make a lot of sense. The great thing is, you can almost always count on someone to come through in the clutch.
Enter Tampa Bay Devil Rays manager Joe Maddon, talking about the fact that his outfielder, Delmon Young, didn’t win the AL Rookie of the Year:
It’s really disturbing. I can see him not winning the award, but leaving him off eight ballots is just a sign of personal prejudice.
In this case, “personal prejudice” is code for “understanding the criteria …read more

The good folks at Walk Like a Sabermetrician have posted an article on the trouble with OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) as a statistic (tip o’ the Knuckle Curve cap to Baseball Think Factory). This is a drum I’ve beaten at various points in the past, with limited success, but here is the problem in a nutshell:
What if we think about what OPS looks like if you write it with a common denominator? Now we have:
OPS = ((H+W)*AB + TB*(AB+W))/(AB*(AB+W))
That is a hideous equation that measures, um… what? Anyway, I agree with the overall sentiment:
OPS is a fine, quick …read more

Rich at Baseball Analysts takes a look at Milwaukee Brewers phenom and leading (what, there are others?) National League Rookie of the Year candidate, Ryan Braun. In case you’ve missed it, Braun is hitting a robust .343/.388/.663 so far. Big deal, right? Um, yeah…
To put Braun’s numbers in historical perspective, he is on pace to produce the highest AVG, SLG, OPS, and OPS+ of any first-year player in the modern era. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound native of Southern California is in elite company with such greats as Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Mize, Albert Pujols, Frank Robinson, and Ted Williams.
Sure, but is he …read more

I was thinking about which players have been among the biggest surprises so far in 2007. There are plenty of names to choose from, but two that really stand out to me are the Tigers’ Magglio Ordonez and the Royals’ Alex Gordon.
Among all MLB qualifying batters, Ordonez has the highest OPS, while Gordon checks in at #185. Only Jason “I Really Need to Find a New Career” Kendall has a lower OPS (438).
Not to pick on any one system, but Ordonez and Gordon provide an excellent illustration of why “projection” is just a fancy word for “guess”:

Magglio Ordonez and Alex …read more