Baseball

Defensive Scouting Report: Brandon Crawford

Range/Positioning: Brandon Crawford has plus agility and quickness, which provides him with above average range for the shortstop position. He glides on the infield, making the difficult plays look easy. Entering 2015, he had 21 Range and Positioning Runs Saved over his career. Crawford also entered 2015 having made 28 more…

Mark Simon 07.08.2015
Read More

Flame Thrower Pitches Backwards?

In today’s baseball world there are a handful of guys on every team that throw absolute gas. In 2015, Nathan Eovaldi, has the highest average velocity for starting pitchers so far this year at 96.0 mph. However, Eovaldi’s past results have been rather inconsistent compared to other top flame throwers like Garrett Richards,…

Brandon Haney 07.01.2015
Read More

A Look Into the Unhittable

It was a two-start stretch in June of 1938 that has since lived in baseball infamy. A rookie for the Cincinnati Reds, Johnny Vander Meer, completed what many to this day still believe is an untouchable feat: back-to-back no hitters. An accomplishment that seems more fairy tale than reality, this…

Joe Firestone 07.01.2015
Read More

The Best Team Defense Improvements of 2015

On the heels of Kansas City’s improbable postseason run in 2014 and now successful start to 2015, baseball has been further exposed to the importance of team defense. With an electrifying outfield headlined by 2014 Fielding Bible Award winners Lorenzo Cain and Alex Gordon, the Royals have owned the American League’s best defense since the…

Andrew Kyne 06.02.2015
Read More

Analyzing Baseball’s Final Four

Now that the 2014 major league season is down to the final four, we can reflect on how these four teams made it to the League Championship Series and how they stack up for a World Series run.  To do so, I’ll look at the hitting, pitching, and defense of…

Jeremy Kaufman 10.10.2014
Read More

Less Is More When Niese Is At Bat

The Mets finished the first month of the 2014 season with a winning record, despite just a .220 batting average as a team over their first 26 games, second worst in the National League. Needless to say, a lot of that early season success is due in large part to…

jp 05.05.2014
Read More

Shift Rates on the Rise

The usage of shifts in MLB has exploded this season.  Teams are on pace to combine for more than 13,000 shifts on balls in play this year, up from just over 8,000 a year ago.  Front offices and field staffs are shifting their defensive infield alignments as a result of…

Jeremy Kaufman 04.30.2014
Read More