When evaluating an outfielder’s ability to track and catch fly balls, two of the factors we look at most closely are the outfielder’s jump and the outfielder’s speed. Statcast breaks an outfielder’s jump down into three components: reaction for the first 1.5 seconds, burst for the next 1.5 seconds, and route efficiency for the first 3 seconds.

In this analysis I’ll determine which factors are the most important for an outfielder’s success, and use those factors to project the top defensive outfielders in 2024.

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A pitching staff featuring a varied range of release points provides an additional way to unsettle an opposing lineup. In this analysis, I will measure the release point diversity of both right-handed and left-handed pitchers on each team from 2023, to pinpoint the teams that lead the way in this strategy and those that trail behind.

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There have been many analyses over the years about the best situations to bunt. Tom Tango’s The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball has a thorough analysis of when a team should sacrifice bunt, considering factors such as the on-base percentage of the on-deck hitter and the speed of the batter, as well as the score, game state, and run scoring environment.

In this post, I will take a look at the last two years of bunt attempts (4733 attempts, just under one bunt attempt per game) to assess which situations bunts have been most successful in improving an offense’s run scoring and improving an offense’s win probability. I’ll also assess the pitch characteristics of the pitches that bunts have been most and least successful against.

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Modern defensive metrics vary significantly in their approach to evaluating fielders. In essence, Fangraphs’ dWAR, which I’ll refer to as fdWAR, is a measure of athleticism, whereas Baseball Reference’s dWAR (let’s call this bdWAR) is a measure of game impact, including a team’s positioning.

In this post I’ll take a look at how the 30 MLB teams ranked in each of bdWAR (overall defensive performance), fdWAR (athleticism), and the difference between bdWAR and fdWAR (positioning value) for the 2023 season.

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What are some of the hidden ways in which a superstar hitter helps his team?

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Whether a free agent is looking for a shorter term deal with high average annual value (AAV) or a longer term deal with a larger overall guarantee, should he be looking to sign a deal in November or December, early in the offseason, or should he wait until January or February, as spring training approaches?

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Mariano Rivera, the only unanimous inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame, is widely recognized as the greatest relief pitcher of all-time and solidly in the conversation for greatest pitcher overall. But how different from the rest was he really?

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