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Fourteen post-1900 hurlers have averaged 20 or more victories in their best ten seasons. Mathewson heads the group with almost 28 wins per year. Canton and Palmer are the latest additions to the list. Through the years there have been many attempts to compare baseball’s outstanding pitchers. Statistical analysts have usually concentrated on either a […]

Do players perform better in their walk year? Conventional wisdom would say they do perform better in the year before they become free agents, at least according to the stereotype of the greedy player, who will put out extra effort only when he will be rewarded financially. Traditional economic theory agrees. Like all rational economic […]

BASEBALL BATS OUTSIDE THE BOX There are a number of different ways to reach first base safely, one of which is by hitting a baseball. Applying the expression “thinking outside the box” to the art of hitting, one will eventually conclude that there is a better baseball bat out there just waiting to be discovered. […]

When the Designated Hitter (DH) rule went into effect at the start of the 1973 season, Major League Baseball (MLB) changed in more ways than one. Among the many changes across offense and defense was the effect that the DH had, and continues to have, on pitchers and hit batsmen. Previous writings and the raw […]

Editor’s note: This article was selected as a recipient of the 2025 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award.   On July 25, 1966, Casey Stengel and Ted Williams were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Although most observers likely assumed that Casey would steal the show, as he usually did, it was Williams […]

When Brad Lidge announced his retirement late in 2012, some commentators pointed to the home run he gave up to Albert Pujols in the 2005 NLCS as the defining moment of his career. To Phillies fans, though, the image of Lidge on his knees, arms raised in triumph after recording the final out of the […]

Through Major League Baseball’s first 134 years, 1876–2009, some of its most interesting and uncommon events have been the 260 no-hitters (18 of which have been perfect games).1 In 2010, pitchers threw six no-hitters, two of which (and almost a third) were perfect. In this paper, we investigate whether simple mathematical models can explain the […]

In early 1970, when I was a freshman at St.John’s University, I went to Shea Stadium to purchase tickets for Opening Day. As I walked toward the ticket office, I noticed a lot of refuse strewn around the parking lot, including one large piece of green plywood sheeting lying face down on the ground. It […]

In the winter of 1961, baseball fans were gearing up for an expansion of the National League — newcomers named the New York Mets and Houston Colt .45’s would play their inaugural season in 1962. Baseball writers around the country, however, were more thrilled by the return of Casey Stengel, hired to manage the Mets. […]

Anyone interested in researching the Negro leagues should contact this man. Former player, manager, and historian, he has seen nearly all the great black stars. A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, when there was a vacancy on the National Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee, SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee submitted the names of several candidates who […]

There are two main objectives for the hitter.  The first is to not make an out and the second is to hit for distance. Long-ball hitting is normally measured by slugging average. Not making an out can be expressed in terms of on base average (OBA), where:       OBA    =  Hits + Walks […]

Ed Barrow (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The Toronto franchise of the International League was one of the strongest and had one of the longest tenures—from 1895 (when the league was called the Eastern League) until 1967. Ed Barrow had a lengthy, esteemed career as a baseball executive that ultimately landed him in the National Baseball Hall […]

In the 1912 season Rube Marquard, the left-handed pitcher of the National League (NL) New York Giants, won nineteen consecutive games and it was thought at the time to be one game shy of the record. The record was thought to be twenty, set by John Perkins “Pat” Luby, a right-handed pitcher for the NL […]

Gold Glove Awards, first presented in 1957, are given annu­ally to the best defensive players at each position in each league. Guidelines for Gold Glove Award voting now state that coaches and managers may vote for players in their league, but not for players on their own team. The guidelines do not suggest what characteristics […]

Since the dawn of free agency, there has been increasing affection paid to players who spend their entire career with the same team. From the ballpark statues of Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn to the retired numbers of Robin Yount and George Brett, baseball fans in recent years have celebrated star players who rose through […]

Before the Arizona Diamondbacks’ inaugural Opening Day on March 31, 1998, author Mark Harris, Arizona’s poet laureate of baseball, wrote this fanciful essay focusing on the undercurrent of resentment among many Arizona baseball fans and one fan’s struggle to accept the new ball club. A version of this story originally appeared in the Mesa Tribune […]

The yardstick for enshrinement in Cooperstown is generally determined by a player’s ability to dominate a decade. Dale Murphy more than met that standard. Crippled by recurring knee problems that required mid-career surgery, Murphy retired with 398 home runs—one fewer than first-ballot inductee Al Kaline and 16 more than 2009 inductee Jim Rice. When he […]

Appendix 1 in Herm Krabbenhoft’s research on Hank Greenberg.

  Bud Fowler’s election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in December 2021 has brought new attention to this Black baseball pioneer of the nineteenth century. Fowler was one of the first Black players to make a living in so-called “Organized Baseball,” playing for a series of otherwise all-white teams between 1878 and 1895 […]

One of the best-known pieces of advice in baseball is to keep your eye on the ball. In a recent survey, former college baseball players were asked whether they had been told to keep their eye on the ball when batting.1 Ninety-eight percent of the players answered yes. Despite the widespread use of this phrase, […]

Researching People and Biographical Data In the early days of baseball biographical research, a researcher had to spend much of his time at the library or a genealogical research center poring over hard-to-read microfilm. It was a very painstaking, time-consuming effort as much of the microfilm had to be ordered through inter-library loan and then […]