Which baseball players have had the most surprisingly bad and surprisingly good seasons in recent years? I wondered about this while researching an article on whether spring training performance foreshadows regular-season production. I calculated the uncertainty in the Marcel forecasting system projection for batting wOBA — a measure of a hitter’s overall offensive production per […]
Jessie Schwartz for The New York Times Baseball writers elected no one to the Hall of Fame on Wednesday, despite what might have been the deepest ballot in years. The failure of the writers to pick Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens was not a surprise given the low vote totals received in the past by Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, other players associated with the use performance-enhancing drugs. But the vote totals for Bonds and Clemens, just 36 and 38 percent, were lower than expected. Craig Biggio, who received 68.2 percent of the vote in his first year of eligibility, will almost certainly make it into the Hall of Fame someday. Still, his profile is quite similar to Robin Yount...
Left, Barton Silverman/The New York Times; Chris Livingston for The New York Times Some Hall of Fame voters lump Mike Piazza, left, and Jeff Bagwell together with known steroid users. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, eligible to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for the first time, will almost certainly not be named when the next choices for Cooperstown are announced on Wednesday. Instead, tallies of sportswriters who have publicly announced their ballots suggest that they may only get 40 to 50 percent of the vote, despite having statistical records that rank them as among the best players in history. A player must be named on 75 percent of the ballots to be elected to the Hall of...
Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press With his speed and good judgment on the bases, Mike Trout increased his contribution to the Angels’ offense. On Thursday, the American League will announce the recipient of its Most Valuable Player award. The winner is likely to be Miguel Cabrera, the Detroit Tigers star who won the league’s triple crown by leading in batting average (.330), home runs (44) and runs batted in (139). It might seem as if these statistics make Cabrera, the first triple crown winner in either league since 1967, a shoo-in for the M.V.P. But most statistically minded fans would prefer that it go to another player, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels. The argument on Trout’s behalf isn’t all that...
The Boston Red Sox’s odds of reaching the playoffs peaked on Sept. 3. Following a 12-7 win against the Texas Rangers, they held a 9-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays with 24 games to play, giving them a 99.6 percent chance of making the post-season.
The Red Sox, of course, once had a reputation for elevating improbable collapses into the routine, dealing their opponents one inside straight after another.
There was the Bucky Dent game in 1978:
The Aaron Boone game in 2003:
And there was Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, when Mookie Wilson’s grounder skirted through Billy Buckner’s legs, bringing Ray Knight around to score.
