We love our sports forecasts here at FiveThirtyEight, but one of the things that make the games great is when a team comes along and takes prognosticators by surprise. So along with our Hall of Pretty Damn Good Players, we want to appreciate these unsung teams that nobody saw coming, in a series we’re calling […]
With a blazing average of 4.07 seconds to first base — that’s 15.1 miles per hour — Kansas City Royals shortstop Adalberto Mondesi was one of the fastest players in Major League Baseball last season. But this year, he’s not even the fastest player on his own team. That honor belongs to new center fielder […]
The Baltimore Orioles really struggled in the season’s second half, going 17-26 in the International League. Fortunately for Baltimore, they still managed to hold off the Charlotte Knights and Gwinnett Stripers by a comfortable margin in the South Division. Advancing to the postseason, the Orioles rallied to capture the league title with series wins over […]
When the Kansas City Royals made back-to-back World Series in 2014 and 2015 — coming agonizingly close in the former and winning the latter — they launched a thousand think pieces about whether manager Ned Yost’s brand of small ball would spread throughout the game. But then it looked like it might never get the […]
The 2018 MLB season could end up being defined by a lot of things, including the possibility of even more tinkering to the baseball, an epic spate of strikeouts or the disappointing performance of the league’s supposed superteams. But most likely, we’ll remember 2018 as the year tanking dominated baseball’s landscape like never before. Not […]