For the fifth consecutive year, I attended the Joint Mathematical Meeting of the Mathematics Association of America (the MAA) and the American Mathematical Society (the AMS). This year the meeting was in San Diego from January 7 through January 10. This meeting is the most important meeting for both these organizations. At this joint meeting, …
Monday, May 15, 2017 marks the 76th anniversary of the beginning of Joe DiMaggio’s record 56-game hitting streak, which ran from May 15 to July 16, 1941. The streak ended On July 17 when he went 0-for-3 against the Indians, with third baseman Ken Keltner making two outstanding plays to stop the streak. In Chapter …
The book “Moneyball” chronicles how Billy Beane used certain batting statistics to build the low budget Oakland Athletics into a contender in the early 2000s. With the help of Paul Depodesta he showed that on-base percentage (OBP) was much more valuable for run production than batting average. Concentrating on a player’s OBP and ability to …
Read what my student Greg considers the biggest surprise in the MLB for 2017 is so far. Every year there are storylines between teams and players, and surprises that come out of the league. The biggest surprise so far in 2017 has been one in the name of Eric Thames. Thames is a 30-year-old left-handed …
My previous blog looked at the performances of the American League Teams at the midpoint of the 2016 season. I now turn to looking at the National League Teams. As I did with the Al Teams, I will compare the NL Teams actual winning percentages to their expected winning percentages based on all games played …
With the baseball season entering the midpoint of its long 162-game schedule, each team has played approximately half its scheduled games. This is the time when I compare their actual winning percentages to their expected winning percentages based on all games played as of the end of July 2. To obtain their expected winning percentages …
Yes, it has been a long time to be precise 107 years since the Chicago Cubs have won the World Series in 1908. Before this season began, in my blog of April 13, I picked the Cubs to win the 2016 World Series. I was not alone with this pick. In fact, 14 out of …
In a previous blog I talked about two important sabermetric formulas. Bill James’s Formula is Win% = (Runs Scored)2 / [(Runs Scored)2 + (Runs Allowed)2] and Stan “The Stats Man” Formula is Win% = 0.000683*[(Runs Scored) – (Runs Allowed)] +.50. James’s formula is called the Pythagorean Formula for Baseball and Stan’s Formula is called the Linear Formula …