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August 23, 2005
by Clay Davenport
Clay returns with the most recent installment of his Objective Hall of Fame series, as he starts to move away from 19th Century players.
August 18, 2005
by Clay Davenport
Clay continues assembling his Objective Hall of Fame, and starts to see his selections veer away from the True Hall's inductees.
August 15, 2005
by Clay Davenport
The top-rated player in baseball history highlights these three classes in our Objective Hall of Fame.
August 10, 2005
by Clay Davenport
Clay fills out classes from 1937 to 1940 as he continues to build an Objective Hall of Fame.
August 8, 2005
by Clay Davenport
With recent inductees into the Real Hall of Fame still in mind, Clay proposes an Objective Hall of Fame. In Part One, Clay details his methodology and presents the opening class.
May 19, 2005
by Clay Davenport
Clay Davenport takes BP's Postseason Odds report for a historical test drive.
April 18, 2005
by Clay Davenport
Clay Davenport looks into minor league batting averages on balls in play, and finds some surprising results.
March 2, 2005
by Clay Davenport
Most Cuban players coming to the major leagues have been disappointments. Now, we may know why.
November 4, 2004
by Clay Davenport
Defense is about keeping runs off the board, no matter how many highlight reels you make or miss.
November 3, 2004
by Clay Davenport
Reputation and highlights, or data and analysis? The Rawlings' Gold Glove Awards reflect the former. Now we bring the latter into the discussion.
October 8, 2004
by Clay Davenport
Clay Davenport emerges from the Baseball Prospectus lab with a brand-new stat report, this one assessing every playoff team's chances to win it all.
September 23, 2004
by Clay Davenport
Using the feedback he received upon his re-launch of the Playoff Odds Report, Clay Davenport had made some changes to the system.
September 2, 2004
by Clay Davenport
One of 2003's most popular features comes back with a new and improved methodology. Clay Davenport explains.
August 28, 2004
by Clay Davenport
As Cuba celebrates their return to the top of the heap, Clay Davenport takes a look at the field they conquered and comes away less than impressed.
July 30, 2004
by Clay Davenport
Now that we've gotten to the 100-game mark on the season, I decided to take a look at how the park factors were shaking out so far in '04. Park factors are noisy pieces of data--that's the reason why we use three-year averages in the first place--and I expect that some of these 100-game factors will change significantly between now and the end of the season.
That caveat aside, let's take a look at how pro baseball's parks--from the majors down to A-ball--are playing.
July 8, 2004
by Clay Davenport
As some of you may have noticed, there have been some changes in the Minor League EqA page.
Let's start with the simple. When you go there now, you'll get a short, simple, fast download, with what is essentially a page of links. The long list of every player in the minors? Not gone, but moved under its own link--so that only the people who really want it have to wait for it to download.
The main feature on the page is a list of all the leagues, along with their stats, sorted by offensive level. I'm always trying to remind people of the context of minor league statistics, and this is one more heavy-handed way to remind people that some leagues (near the top) favor the hitters, while others (near the bottom) favor the pitchers. Click on the league, and you'll get the information that was on the old minor league page: a top-10 list for each league, a breakdown of league statistics by position (approximated by games played at each position), and a list of all players in that league, sorted by team.
February 24, 2004
by Clay Davenport
Dayn Perry explained why various statistics--like batting average (AVG) and runs batted in (RBI)--were not as reliable as you've always been told, and why we at Baseball Prospectus don't use them in our analysis terribly often. Today, we're going to look into one of the statistics we do use: Equivalent Average, or EqA. In its rawest state, EqA is a simple combination of batting numbers, not so very different from OPS.
Compared to OPS, it counts walks and HBP a little higher (at 1.5 instead of 1), it has stolen bases, and hits and extra bases are counted a little less (since they are divided by plate appearances, not just walks). What, then, makes EqA different from the other statistics? Simply put, its more accurate, its unbiased, and it models the scale of batting average, so it's easy for a new fan understand.
February 5, 2004
by Clay Davenport
In the first part of our winter leagues study, we looked at what the player performances said about each league's level of quality. In Part II, we'll look at what player performance in these leagues say about a player's future.
January 27, 2004
by Clay Davenport
The regular seasons for the various winter leagues are over now, although the various league playoffs leading to the Caribbean World Series are still ongoing--a process that runs almost as long as their regular season, kind of like the NBA.
The Caribbean World Series is a contest between the winners of the four regional leagues: the Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan winter leagues, plus the Mexican Pacific League. What I'm going to do here is to give an overview of those four leagues, plus the Arizona Fall League, with an emphasis on how to make sense of winter league statistics.
The process for working out the talent level of a league depends on, number one, having a large number of players in the circuit who have played in other leagues; and number two, knowledge of how good those other leagues are. Every player who has played here and elsewhere becomes a data point: You rate the player's hitting (or pitching) level, relative to league average, with park adjustments when you have them, in both leagues. If his relative offensive level gets worse, that is a (slight) argument that the new league is tougher than the old. If it gets better, that's an argument that the new league was easier.
November 26, 2003
by Clay Davenport
Vowing not to take a bite of turkey until he's done, Clay Davenport rolls out the new 2003 BP player cards just in time for the holiday weekend. Adjusted translations, tweaked fielding metrics, plus plenty of other fixins. Dig in.
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