Russell Eassom

Can we Bake in some more Luck?

February 26, 2021 Russell Eassom Analytics, Baseball

In the companion piece to this, I went through how I created a couple of metrics to show the cluster luck that can happen in a game. And armed with the Expected Runs (xRuns) and Run Luck (RL) we could

Wait, Did we just get really lucky?

February 25, 2021 Russell Eassom Analytics, Baseball

To me, one of the amazing things about baseball is that a team can get ten men on-base and, one day they could score zero runs and another day they could score all 10. Also, a team can score 20

How do we solve the ‘Plawecki-Mikolas-Flaherty Problem’?

February 15, 2021 Russell Eassom Baseball

I expect everyone who reads this article has no idea what the Plawecki-Mikolas-Flaherty Problem is and that is probably how it should be. It is a niche scoring/stats problem that I have created, and it is all down to how

The Psychology of the Infield Shift

February 3, 2021 Russell Eassom Baseball

Over the past 10 seasons, the shift has gone from a quirky defence against some pull-heavy left-handed hitters to being employed against over 50% of lefties and over 20% of righties. In that time multiple researchers have shown that the

Does the Madden Curse extend to MLB?

February 2, 2021 Russell Eassom Baseball

After rumours and blurred images made the rounds of the internet on Sunday night, Monday morning stateside came and we were all given clarity. It was officially released that Fernando Tatís Jr. will be the cover player in 2021 for

Seriously, the Pirates can win the NL Central in 2021

December 29, 2020 Russell Eassom Baseball

The final acts of some MLB teams in 2020 has been to confirm once again that owners have little or no care about winning the World Series or even getting to the playoffs if it costs them too much money.

The People Say No to 16 Teams, But what about 12 or 14?

September 25, 2020 Russell Eassom Baseball

Across the internet parts of baseball fandom, there has been an almost universal dislike for the expansion of the playoffs to 16 teams to continue beyond the 2020 season. I have seen no-one actively liking the idea and just a

MLB 2020 Playoffs Explained (Hopefully)

September 16, 2020 Russell Eassom Baseball

Baseball in 2020 is weird and MLB in 2020 is even weirder still. We have watched less than two months of MLB games, yet we are already in the crunch moment of the season with most teams having fewer than

Is Shane Bieber Elite?

July 27, 2020 Russell Eassom Analytics, Baseball

A while back, I was tagged in a Twitter thread talking about the predictive/sticky nature of hard hit balls for pitchers. The reason behind that discussion was the Cleveland pitcher Shane Bieber. Last season, he put up some fantastic numbers

The rise of the hit by pitch

July 11, 2020 Russell Eassom Analytics, Baseball

With the current trend of thinking in the front offices in MLB, we are seeing many aspects of the game at all-time highs and lows. A lot these are constantly talked about: strikeouts, home runs and lack of stolen bases