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

Blog Post: The Math Behind a Challenge tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

Blog Post: Leverage consideration of ABS Challenges tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

When it comes to ABS Challenges, both of these statements are true A. The base-out situation is important B. The inning-score is IRRELEVANT The first is obvious Explain to me why the second is true (and it is true)

Left chart shows RE12: Run Expectancy by 12 ball-strike counts Right chart shows impact of challenging a call For example, successfully challenging 2-1 strike turns what would have been a 2-2 count (-0.041 runs) into a 3-1 (0.138). Thats a change of 0.180 This means ... 1/2

Standings tie-breaker rule in Olympics: For the three-way of Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, their 1-1 against each other meant it went to their goal differential (amongst each other): Slovakia was +1, Finland 0, Sweden -1 However, had Slovakia lost 5-2, Sweden would be #1 www.iihf.com/en/events/20...

I've never bought a Linux machine before. I have to get it for my son, who needs it for research work If someone out there can get me started on what/where in getting a Ubuntu Linux laptop, that'd be appreciated

Canada beat Switzerland by 4 who beat France by 4 Canada beat Czechia by 5 who beat France by 3 Either way expect Canada to beat France by 8 Slovakia beat Finland by 3 who beat Sweden by 3 who beat Italy by 3 Slovakia should beat Italy by 9 Slovakia beat Italy by 1

"Our team in 1992 was never this good" -- Bird & Magic

Small update to post below: 2025 @retrosheet.bsky.social data has now been loaded, as well as people-register from github.com/chadwickbureau One of reasons I've pushed for Retrosheet Database is so folks out there can start sharing their work As simple example, its very straightforward to do this:

This is a fascinating topic... basically, batters are human, so what is the human ramp-up time? The only batter known to exist in the entire history of baseball immune to ramp-up time was Tim Raines (1987) And, would be interesting to see it for other sports (hockey, basketball, soccer especially)

WAR: it may not be perfect, but it doesn’t have to be It just needs to be better than the next best thing. Which it is

Really, first and only? Theres at least 15 women in the Hockey Hall of Fame (and itll grow by at least 1 per season)

Good stuff, I recognize ~20 names in there...

"I don't even like to fly! I take trains!" -- Zefram Cochrane, pilot of first warp flight

Folks waking up to Olympic Hockey rules for tied games should be reminded of what happened in 1998, the Czechia Miracle on Ice After stifling Canadians 1-1 thru regulation, they went immediately to shootout, featuring the two greatest goalies of all time www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

Blog Post: Swing/Take Approach by Ball-Strike Count tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

Counts where batter properly approaching ball-strike count: 3-0 0-2 Batter too passive: 0-0: treat as batter count 1-2: use 0-2 approach Batter too aggressive: 1-0: 3-1, 2-0 2-0: 3-0 0-1: 3-1 1-1: 3-1 2-1: 3-0 3-1: 3-0 2-2: 3-1, 2-1 3-2: 3-1 Chart: runs/100 pitches cc: @sunshinevvn.bsky.social

#Statcast JUAN SOTO - Swing Rate by Proximity to Border of Strike Zone (Adjusted for Ball-Strike Count) We are lucky we have one of the smartest batters of all-time active in his prime in Statcast era Here we see the swing rate of Juan Soto, since 2021, by strike zone location

SB - CS 75 - 10 Tim Raines (1984) 70 - 9 Tim Raines (1985) 70 - 9 Tim Raines (1986) *79 - 8 Josh Lowe (career) * 90.8% career SB% highest in MLB history, min 50 attempts 90.7% Buxton, 2nd place 90.0% Tim Locastro, 3rd place

Did each inning have 5 outs?

Which is why that for anyone you are on the fence for, if you have a spot on your ballot, then just vote that person in The worst you can do is the posthumous award... that goes against the very objective Dan lays out below...

NHL Standings under 5-Point System W-L 5-0 Regulation 4-1 OT (5 Min) 3-2 Shootout

Catcher Blocking Is Still The Wild West blogs.fangraphs.com/catcher-bloc...

One thing that clubs don't do enough of is (a) platoon alot more (easier to do when you don't have a 13-player staff (b) change batting order based on LHP/RHP You can easily bat Arraez 1st against RHP and 9th against LHP. After the 1st inning, it's the same batting order!

Its 2026 Jayson... must we adhere to Batting Title based on the antiquated batting average? Imagine if cooler heads did not prevail in late 1980s, and Clutch Hitter award went to the player with the highest GWRBI? We've already made Pitcher Wins and Saves obsolete Let's stop Fetch from happening

HOF Defender Phil Housley scored at least one goal as a *forward* in his rookie year, and likely more than one www.newspapers.com/article/the-...

Number of Runs Scored By 9 Players Having These Identical OBP For example: scoring 0.5 runs per inning will happen with the following team of batters: .143 HR .270 2B (or 3B) .361 1B .430 BB Each of those teams are identical to each other

Blog Post: The Math Behind Scoring Runs tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

Sinner won 154 to Novak 138, or 52.7% Thats likely what expectation was The question is how often would the game/set construction of tennis scoring allow for someone to win 53% of their points but lose the match Probably 15%? Novak won on Clutch and/or Random Variation cc: @joeposnanski.com

Mount Rushmore of Waving off a Penalty Celebrini Makar Ovechkin B Tkachuk

Want to celebrate the WBC with Baseball Czech bookmarks? Pre-order my book, WE SACRIFICE EVERYTHING TO BASEBALL, and send address and proof of purchase to WeSacrificeEverythingATGmailDOTcom and these are yours! Order from your fave indie or Amazon if outside the US: www.amazon.com/Sacrifice-Ev...

#Statcast Aging Curve for Swing Speed Using the delta-method Two best-fit lines for pre/post-peak, showing drastically different slopes Outside of ages 22-35 has limited sample, so beware

#Statcast Aging Curve for Exit Velocity Using the 50% fastest speeds for each batter-batside (aka EV50) Two best-fit lines for pre/post-peak, showing drastically different slopes Outside of ages 22-35 has limited sample, so beware

1st chart is run value by ball-strike Red = batter count Blue = pitcher count 0-0 is even Next is frequency Juan Soto finds himself by count: 35% batter, 41% pitcher Final is Salvador: 22% batter, 50% pitcher Multiply charts for Working The Count skill: +0.004 Soto -0.014 Sal

Blog Post: Paradigm Shift in Swing/Take evaluations glove-slap: @sunshinevvn.bsky.social tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

Blog post: FROG: the best living ballplayers every year tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

@klasfeldreports.com : maybe change "ends his order" to "concludes his order"... or something?

Using data lovingly collected from @naturalstattrick.com , we can apply simple adjustment to NetGoals on Even-Strength play to get a figure that, when added for all players on team, exactly equals the team total. Which in this case is +75 goals Details found here: tangotiger.com/index.php/si...

Do y'all know about Cot's Contracts? It's one of the best apps of the baseball sites If you apply a 4% discount rate, the present-value of his actual deal comes out to ~210MM$, which is the same PV if he signed a straight 4 x 57 deal legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation...

Using the actual signed deals, we can reverse-engineer an implied WAR and compare it to to @fangraphs.com forecasted WAR I'm showing bands at +/- 0.5 of the forecasted WAR, essentially our uncertainty level The big standout is Tyler Rogers, off by 1.1 WAR Source: www.fangraphs.com/roster-resou...

This was a terrific piece!

Impressive by Jason! In red are those outside his 95% confidence interval (more like 90% in reality). Pee Wee for example was actually 20.7%, just outside of the 21-25 range For the rest: All the greens are within 1% point, the blues are within 2% points. He got all the top 10, which is great!

What I would suggest @benclemens.bsky.social @davyandrewsdavy.bsky.social is to look at woba year-to-year and xwoba year-to-year (pitcher-level). If the the correlation is down, this means the talent is more clumped So naturally ALL metrics will have a lower year to year correlation as a result 1/2

I'm not a fan of "best player on best team" for MVP, but if it takes that kind of thinking to make the obvious MacKinnon win the Hart over the turbo-charged McDavid, so be it

Sorry, but it doesn't matter what the present-day value is. What you want is the even-payment equivalency (of which you would use present-day value calculations to determine that) And the deal listed below is equivalent to a straight 4 x 59.85 deal. These "deferrals" are...

Senior Data Analyst, Baseball Data Platform www.mlb.com/careers/oppo...

Any of the mindful-14 players selected is a good ballot Jayson makes up for only selecting 9 instead of 10, by selecting Torii Hunter, who has now jumped up substantially in odds of staying on the ballot for next year Torii is right on the edge of being removed

Since the 2022-23 season, 42 Defenders have taken 114 shots in the shootout, and scored 24 goals, a scoring rate of 21%, which is abysmally low And this is limited to just the 42 deemed good enough to even be given the opportunity I know Shea Theodore is 4 for 12, but Cale Makar is 0 for 4