This One is Different

Excerpt from my manuscript, “Between the Lines: A Father, A Son, and America’s Pastime” There’s no feeling in baseball, maybe not in any sport, like the feeling of hitting a home run. As an oversized kid playing on an undersized Little League field I was lucky to learn that at a young age. No matter […]

We Declare Peace on War

The 2013 Major League Baseball season begins Sunday night. In preparation for another exciting campaign, the founders at 60ft6in.com has introduced a new pitching metric called Pitcher Evaluation ACE (PEACE). This new tool compares each pitching season to the average historical season. The structure of PEACE is similar to Factor12. However, adjustments have been made to account for […]

A New York View of the 1913 Merkle Play

For those who read the accounts of Fred Merkle’s handling the ball hit to him in the third inning of the final game of the 1913 World Series—from the Philadelphia sport writers’ view—I have some follow up that presents the play from the New York writers’ view. One major difference is the Philadelphia writers all […]

Deviating from the Past

Every baseball ranking—even those based on statistics—is biased in some way. It’s what makes practically every list debatable. For instance, take a list as fundamental as “hit leaders.” As a counting stat, a player’s hit total is impacted by his place in the batting order as well as his lineup’s offensive strength, two factors that […]

Bermuda Triangle Behind Home Plate

Something strange has been going on at home plate during the two LCS series. In the space of five games, we have seen five clearly blown calls on balls that never got past the plate. It’s as if there’s no umpire at all back there, or like a wrestling referee the assigned umpire is somehow […]

Memories of Billy Martin From Mike Pagliarulo, Rod Carew, and Rickey Henderson

Billy Martin’s death on Christmas evening 1989 provided the troubled finish to a melancholy year for baseball. As a way to look back on that day and Martin’s career, as well as the reasons why he had such an impact on baseball and the players he managed, here are some memories of the man. In […]

Ballpark Analysis

Back in July, we announced the latest and greatest version of the Seamheads Ballpark Database (see: http://seamheads.com/blog/2009/07/02/the-seamheads-ballparks-database-is-here/).  We also promised we would eventually begin publishing a series of analytical articles that would use the data from the Ballparks Database to investigate various questions, along the lines of what we had previously done in this article […]