Slightly Better than Replacement Level
Virgil Trucks had a really good Major League Baseball career. The burly right-hander pitched in 17 seasons, amassed a 40.4 bWAR, won the 1945 World Series, and finished his career with a very respectable 3.54 FIP and 117 ERA+. Trucks also pitched five seasons in the minors where he was (surprise, surprise) very good. However, […]
Harry Strohm never played an inning of baseball in the major leagues. The Kansas City, Missouri native spent the entirety of his career, all 25 seasons, in the affiliated minor leagues. His is the sort of career that isn’t really possible nowadays. Strohm played in an era where there were more opportunities in the affiliated […]
Sometimes when I’m reading a baseball book I have to stop and ask myself, “Is this book actually good or am I only finding it interesting because it’s covering a subject I’m not familiar with?” When this happens I hem and haw while actually reading the book and then have to spend at least a […]
I’m not going to try and lie and act like I was acutely aware of who Juan Pizarro was prior to his passing a couple of weeks back. In all my various baseball research I had never stumbled across his name as more than a passing oddity. Even then I can’t say with one hundred […]
Noah Frank – Baseball Prospectus ($): The secret has always been that the way the Oakland Athletics became a winning franchise in the Moneyball era was bad for baseball. We ignored that though, for plenty of reasons. It was fun to tie in our research with a front office more willing to consider said research, […]