As the 2014 draws to a close, I wish to take this opportunity to thank all my readers for supporting my baseball blog. The blog has just passed 500,000 views. Also, I would like to thank all of you who wrote postings for my blog or contributed suggestions for my blog.
Congratulations to the 10 teams that made it to the 2014 postseason. Using my linear formula, I predicted 9 out of the 10 playoff teams. The five AL teams were Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, and LA Angels. The five NL teams were the San Francisco Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, LA Dodgers, and Washington Nationals. Special congratulations to the Giants for winning their third World Series in the last five years and to the Royals for reaching their first World Series and their first postseason since 1985 when they defeated the Cardinals in 7 games. The longest drought for a postseason appearance now belongs to the Toronto Blue Jays who last appeared in the postseason in 1993 when they won the World Series against the Phillies (4-2). Which 10 teams will make the playoffs in 2015?
My New York Yankees were one of the major disappointing teams for 2014. Last offseason, the New York Yankees dished out $486 million in contracts to the likes of Masahiro Tanaka, Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann and Jacoby Ellsbury, among others. Despite this monstrous spending spree, the Yankees missed the playoffs for the second consecutive season. It was unfortunate that Derek Jeter, in his last season, was not given a chance to step up as he usually did in the playoffs.
For those of you who are either interested in learning statistics for your job or for school or how to use statistics to help you with your fantasy baseball, may I suggest my textbook called “Sandlot Stats: Learning Statistics With Baseball”, published by Johns Hopkins University Press (2012). This book can be purchased at Amazon.com or from many other booksellers.
I wrote this book for my course called Baseball and Statistics which runs every semester at Quinnipiac University. My students come from different majors including sports journalism, television and radio, political science, psychology, legal studies, engineering, and business. All needed mathematics is contained in the book. You can preview my book and read the reviews atwww.sandlotstats.com. The only prerequisite for using this book is an interest in baseball. My book teaches an introductory statistics course using baseball data. Every major league team today have hired people called sabermetricians to analyze their baseball data. Bill James pioneered this analysis when he became GM of Oakland. The book and movie “Moneyball” details how Bill James used statistics to help the low budget Oakland Athletics reach the 2002 playoffs.
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Keep on emailing me any suggestions for future blogs. Also, I am available to speak to any group on many topics in baseball including the history of baseball, using baseball to teach students statistics, and my current research in baseball. Spring training is now around the corner and like you, I anxiously await opening day.
Finally, I wish you and your family a very happy and healthy 2015.