Category: Baseball
The Official 2024 ZiPS Postseason Odds Released, Game-by-Game Analysis Now Available!
Peter Aiken-Imagn Images While the Mets-Braves bonus doubleheader kept the computer idling for a bit yesterday, the numbers have been crunched, the models have been updated, and the initial run of the ZiPS Game-by-Game Postseason Odds is now live. These will no doubt change quite a bit as teams make their plans more explicit and…
FanGraphs’ 2024 Playoff Power Rankings
After a thrilling conclusion to the regular season on Monday, the postseason is finally upon us. There are a couple of favorites in the National League in the Dodgers and Phillies, but the American League field looks pretty wide open, and both of the teams that played in last year’s World Series are home on…
Analyzing the Factors Behind Our Presence: A Deep Dive into FanGraphs Baseball
CHICAGO I just couldn’t help myself. The heat index was 105 degrees when I hopped on the train in Downtown Chicago to head to Guaranteed Rate Field on Monday, August 26 — the day after the White Sox had lost for the 100th time of the 2024 season — and I had the sudden urge…
National League Wild Card Series Preview: San Diego Padres Set to Face Atlanta Braves
Orlando Ramirez and Brett Davis-Imagn Images With the 2022 change to a 12-team playoff format, the addition of the Wild Card Series, and the decision to do away with winner-take-all tiebreaker games, Major League Baseball thought it had stuck a fork in Team Entropy and done away with end-of-season scheduling chaos. But with the league’s…
Top Five Highlights from Yesterday’s Mets-Braves Doubleheader
Welcome to a bonus edition of Five Things I Liked (And Just Liked, This Doubleheader Was Glorious So Let’s Not Be Negative) This column usually runs on Fridays, and it’s supposed to be about a week’s worth of games played by every team in the majors. But uh, did you all see yesterday’s spectacle? The…
Effectively Wild Episode 2225: The White Sox Unpleasant Trivia Challenge
In (dis)honor of the 2024 White Sox displacing the 1962 Mets atop the modern-era single-season losses leaderboard Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens, and Yahoo Sports’s Jordan Shusterman conduct a draft of facts and stats about this record-setting Sox season, scored by Sox Machine White Sox reporter James Fegan, who also describes covering the…
Missing Letter in Coliseum: No ‘A’
In the early 2000s, the Oakland Athletics’ marketing department rolled out a promotional campaign that played on the team’s ubiquitous single-letter nickname. Billboards appeared throughout the Bay Area with images of the A’s squad, each one emblazoned with bold, white font stating “There’s No A in Give Up,” or “There’s No A in Ego”. Over…
Preview of American League Wild Card Matchup between Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Royals
Facing Off: Henderson’s Orioles Take on Witt’s Royals in ALDS Showdown Peter Aiken and Reggie Hildred-Imagn Images If you look at the top of the American League leaderboards this year, you could be forgiven for treating baseball like it’s the NBA, where the best players all lead their teams to the playoffs. Aaron Judge and…
Previewing the American League Wild Card matchup between the Detroit Tigers and Houston Astros
The Detroit Tigers, after snapping a decade-long postseason drought, are set to face the Houston Astros in the first round of the playoffs. This matchup not only marks the first postseason meeting between the two franchises but also brings Detroit manager A.J. Hinch face to face with his former team, the Astros, whom he led…
The Pursuit of 121 Wins: A FanGraphs Baseball Analysis
It was supposed to happen on Tuesday. Loss no. 121, the record-setter, the final stamp of disapproval on this year’s Chicago White Sox. It couldn’t have gotten worse after a 3-22 start, but it didn’t get much better. The White Sox tied the modern-era record for losses in a season with a week to spare,…