Welcome back to BF&N Ash Day… The MLB offseason is pure torture. Fans long for the return of baseball and the warmer weather that accompanies it. The winter crawls by as we eagerly count down the days until pitchers and
Read more
Category: Baseball
DFA – Baseball is Boring
In a new section at Bat Flips and Nerds, Dross From Amateurs, we feature posts that don’t quite fit anywhere on the internet. At all. Baseball is boring. That’s what we keep hearing, it’s too long, it’s stagnated, it’s full
Read more
Umpires are more biased than I thought
In the midst of its Postseason, and probably unbeknownst to most of its fans, MLB has taken its next steps in using an automated ball-strike system or “Robo Umps” as I like to call them. This was first tested in
Read more
Chasing Probabilities and The Postseason Crapshoot
The end of the regular season is the time of the season when I check the playoff odds every day, to see how much they have changed. As I have said with WAR in my previous pieces, these are values
Read more
ALDS preview: New York Yankees vs. Minnesota Twins
Nothing is certain in this world except death, taxes and plenty of home runs in the ALDS between the New York Yankees and Minnesota Twins. Both teams exceeded the magical mark of 300 homers this season, with the Twins claiming
Read more
NL Wild Card game preview
The Cardinals emphatic victory over arch-rivals Chicago Cubs on Sunday night, clinched the NL Central division title to set up a five-game NLDS against the Atlanta Braves, starting on Thursday 3 October. The result means the win-or-go-home NL Wild Card
Read more
AL Wild Card preview
Entering the final weekend of the regular season, we have three teams vying for the two AL Wild Card playoff spots. We even have the possibility of a Game 163. All three divisions are represented, and one of the Oakland
Read more
Who have been the second-half comeback kids?
After the dog days of the offseason, and then the seemingly never-ending schedule of meaningless Spring Training games, the regular season arrived and demanded the complete attention of the baseball world. By the end of April, the following was true…
Read more
Checking the Fundamentals of WAR – Part 2– The Hitter & Pitcher Split
In the first piece, here, I discussed checking the replacement level for WAR. This was re-blogged by Tom Tango and led to a discussion with him and Mitchel Lichtman, one of the other co-authors of The Book (a seminal sabermetric
Read more
September storylines to follow: Worst team of the century
With four or maybe five of the divisions sewn up, you can be forgiven for thinking that there is not much left to get excited about until the postseason starts. When real, meaningful baseball takes centre stage. The tightest AL
Read more