Ovi has 32 goals Most goals in player's last season: 38 Mike Bossy, early retirement 31 Frank Mahovlich, absonded to WHA 30 Kenny Wharram, myocarditis 29 Gordie Drillon, joins Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII 28 Gerry Heffernan, sent to minors after winning Stanley Cup 1/2

On Left: Amount of Ride and Arm Side movement of 4-seam fastballs, relative to arm angle On Right: Same data, but magnitude of movement relative to the baseline for that arm angle The large driver to direction of movement is arm angle (which drives release direction)

@swingsandtakes.com There might be other reasons the denominator might be off in Search. I'd recommend going here first to match against baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/...

Since the 2017-18 season, it is Nikita Kucherov, and NOT Connor McDavid, who leads in the NHL in scoring, based on ice time Here are the scoring leaders, per 1600 minutes played Source: sports-reference.com/stathead/tin...

Certainly talent fluctuates, not only year to year, but day to day, even pitch to pitch! Thats because players are human, and humans actually are in a constant state of flux However, Random Variation swamps any of that flux

2026 Called Strike Rate By Proximity to Border of Strike Zone Initial Umpire v Final including ABS The more calls are reversed, the steeper the curve to expect. Perfect challenges would have a line straight down at 0

(Initial) Umpire Called Strike Rate By Proximity to Border of Strike Zone

Hart Voting Totals, for the 9 seasons since 2017 season - McJ only one in all 9 - Old Man tied for second with 7 - only appearance by Taylor Hall was his MVP year - no D among top 20 - Hellebuyck top goalie - Ovi 6 seasons, but overall outstide top 20 Source: @hockey-reference.com

Say your buffer zone is +/-0.5 inches Three things will happen 1. Issue of presentation 2. Showing balls just miss clipping buffer zone by same < 0.1 inches as image below 3. # of challenges will jump, since you wont lose challenge on "call stands"; players will be even MORE emboldened to challenge

That seems to be a terrific solution!

Blog Post: ABS Challenge Run Values tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

As expected, catchers are not only challenging at 2:1 rate over batters, but they are also much more successful. Look to see that bump to 3:1 ratio Also as expected, pitchers provide no added-value to catchers. The catcher understands not only that pitch, but also game strategy

And he ended up saving him a lost challenge!

NHL Standings with the more correct 5-point system West: same 8 teams, same order East: Penguins get knocked out, with Islanders/Senators taking their place 5 - Regulation Win 4 - OT Win 3 - Shootout Win 2 - SO Loss 1 - OT Loss 0 - Reg Loss

Blog Post: ABS Challenge Rates by Proximity to Border of Strike Zone tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

Coming soon... Runs Gained on ABS Challenge The Yankees are VERY aggressive on their challenges. But it doesn't matter as long as they are getting good overturns, which they are The Reds are VERY efficient... but a bit TOO efficient, leaving unused challenges on the table

Your weekly reminder that: - In ABS-games, the *official* strike zone is the 2D ABS Strike Zone (based on batter HEIGHT) - In non-ABS games, the *official* strike zone is the traditional 3D Strike Zone (based on batter STANCE) In short: every game has one official strike zone

Updated #NHLAnalytics list

When you do cross-era comparisons, it is VERY useful to look at peers, and not just top player. Otherwise you get into ridiculous opinions Left is McDavid years (2016-2026) Right is Orr/pre99 years (1967-1979) You can see that from #2 to #10, they track each other... 1/3

1970s Montreal Canadiens v 1980s NY Islanders v 1980s Oilers in the playoffs... Habs playoffs: 71-24 (5 Cups) 1973-1979: 68-24 1980 1st round: 3-0 NYI playoffs: 71-23 (4 Cups) 1980-1983: 60-18 1984 until last round: 11-5 Oilers playoffs: 71-19 (4 Cups) 1984-1988: 68-18 1989 1st 4 games: 3-1

I've crossed out every situation in which no player should EVER(*) ABS Challenge, because they have proven they can't distinguish an egregiously bad call from an actual good-close call (*) To the extent that all the players are interchangeable in skill. We'll learn more...

Batters made 45 ABS Challenge where payoff was very low: They successfully overturned 22 of 45, or 48% Pitchers: 4/7, 57% Catchers: 31/51, 61% Players have shown in situations where they MUST be very confident to challenge, they've only been proven right 57/103 or 55%

What do you think of this setup @hockeyviz.com ? Round 1 (standard cross-group tournament setup) Pacific 1-4 plays Central 4-1 Metro 1-4 plays Atlantic 4-1 Round 2 (reseed) East: 1-4, 2-3 West: 1-4, 2-3 Round 3 (reseed) East 1 v West 2 East 2 v West 1 Round 4 potential for two intra-div teams

New! I've been thinking about this one forever. Which outfields are easy or difficult to field in? And why? How much do roofs matter? Which ones? Wind? A Statcast ranking from best to worst. A long read w/ insights from PCA, Kevin Pillar, and more: --> www.mlb.com/news/ranking...

If Mexico-Italy enters Extra Innings all tied up at 4 (or less), USA can move forward under these conditions: 1st line says this: Mexico scores the winning run in bottom of the 10th, without Italy recording an out. In that case, Italy has given up 11 runs in 54 outs. But...

ABS Challenge Runs Flipped Based on the RE288 (run expectancy by the 24 base-out x 12 ball-strike situations), we can calculate the change in runs by a successful challenge At the *team* level, an UNSUCCESSFUL challenge is essentially meaningless Cardinals are so far the best

This is a crazy amount of work to get it nailed down like this for easy consumption

Agreed. There should be a cover on that arm rest

Here you go, the Wilyer Abreu ABS Challenge: the most confident someone will ever be in measuring something moving at 90 mph to under 1 inch:

Blog Post: Tango Prompts Claude AI to replace The Balk Rule Enjoy... tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

For those of you pondering coming up with a better rule than the balk rule, Ill get you started Since MLB implemented disengagement (AND STEOPFF) rule, pitchers are ALREADY highly incentivized to not throw to a base unless they can pickoff the runner You are half-way there...

Depending how you choose your replacement level, your typical great player compared to your typical bench/platoon player can be anywhere from 9X to 22X as valuable This is why all the talk about "oh, a 6 WAR player has more value than two 3 WAR players" is missing the entire point of the baseline

🚨New at Baseball Savant, all the ABS info you've been looking for 1) a high-level dashboard showing overturn rates, trends, and plenty of splits Showing 2025 AAA here, but 2026 MLB ST is available too baseballsavant.mlb.com/abs?gameType...

We're excited to wade into the ABS Challenge discussion with our strategy guide to maximizing challenge usage! We've taken count, situation, inning, pitch location (and more), and broken down ideal challenge behavior with clear, distilled points:

For those who want ABS to include a Buffer Zone, in order to give a benefit of doubt to the umpire, it's going to look like this As you can see, it's going to be somewhat unintuitive, especially if you don't know whether batter or catcher is challenging In the end, all we...

As expected, 3-ball and/or 2-strike counts are where the challenges happen, given that it has the chance to impact the final outcome directly The "other counts" though is still much too high, as batters and catchers are getting only 0.11-0.12 runs per overturn: needs to be 0.20+

ABS Challenge report so far: - Fielders challenging 152 to 84 for batters (or only 36% challenges are by batters) - Fielders got 84-152 overturned (55%), earning 0.18 runs per overturn, 0.10 per challenge - Batters 41-84 (49%), earning 0.21 runs per overturn, 0.10 per challenge

Standard for Strike A. ANY part of ball touches zone (Black box) B. ENTIRETY of ball inside the zone (Green box) C. AT LEAST 50% of ball inside zone (Orange box) EVERY SINGLE PITCH is strike under ANY of three standards I feel like Sisyphus rolling that baseball into the box

ABS Challenge report so far: - Fielders challenging 113 to 56 for batters (or only 33% challenges are by batters) - Fielders got 61-113 overturned (54%), earning 0.15 runs per overturn, 0.08 per challenge - Batters 27-56 (48%), earning 0.20 runs per overturn, 0.10 per challenge

So far, overturned ABS Challenges...

The goalie for Team Canada actually led the Olympic tournament in Save Percentage The only problem is that he only played one game hockeystats.com/olympics/goa...

Final 2026 Olympic Men's Hockey Standings (sans France, senza Italia)

In baseball terms: Baseball Forecasting Systems 25 years ago, on the advent of The Marcels being released (The Marcels cleared the deck of all the foolish forecasts, and highlighting the remaining good ones)

Chicken Nuggets/Tenders and French Fries, with BBQ or Honey Mustard Sauce (aka Happy Meal sans toys) Easily my goto food when Im on the road A friend of mine was manager at a fast food place 30 years ago, and he says: you know we only pay 10-15 cents for each chicken piece. Probably 25 cents today

Here's the first day report on ABS Challenges The blue highlight is batter challenges, of which there were only 3. The other 20 all by fielders. This is smart, because catchers are the most dispassionate of the participants, not to mention game-strategic-thinking The yellow highlight .... 1/n

I use the word all the time, I didn't realize it wasn't "approved" In any case, the gatekeepers are always ~20 years behind recognizing words in use That's why English is a great language: it grows on its own

Olympic Hockey Standings Bonus: With Italy and France games removed

Larry Lester and I will talk about how Negro League stats came to be a part of MLB's official record. This will be a Zoom event, so consider joining us next week, on Thursday, Feb 26 at noon Eastern Time. nyslibrary.libcal.com/event/16236463

Blog Post: Cost/Benefit Analysis of Making an ABS Challenge tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

ABS Challenge Breakeven Chart Make this your screen saver or background for your phone or computer For any combo of bases, outs, strikes, balls, this shows how certain player has to be in order to challenge As you can see, bases loaded 3-2 count should be heavily challenged