Stats

Cole Hamels went 14-10 with a 3.09 ERA in 2008. He ended the year a World Series hero.

Cole Hamels went 10-11 with a 4.32 ERA in 2009. He ended the year a World Series bust.

Naturally, any fan seeing this would think that Hamels had some sort of huge fall from grace; he must have done more wrong in 2009 than 2008.

The media was all over this line of thinking, particularly in the playoffs (when, admittedly, he did struggle, unlike his excellent 2008 postseason).

Not so fast.

Since I have a bunch of time on my hands in this month, being that I'm off from college, I've been compiling a leaderboard of what I call "True ERA." The formula for that is pretty simple:

True ERA = FIP + (xFIP - FIP) + (.92tRA - FIP)

How did I come up with this, you ask?

Well, FIP is widely regarded as a sort of "true ERA" since it takes out all luck. xFIP (Wow, I just started a sentence with a lowercase letter, and it was correct) is FIP with a HR/FB adjustment, so we can say that (xFIP - FIP) is simply a "homer adjustment."

I’m not normally one to criticize Chris Carpenter.

I spent a solid month arguing with whoever would listen about why he should win the Cy Young, and even wrote a manifesto about why he was a the best choice.

If you're a regular reader of "Here's a Thought," you probably know that I don't like to use ERA very much.

Instead, I prefer FIP, tRA, and xFIP when discussing pitchers. The statistics are just luck-adjusted ERAs, so they slot in nicely to ERA's "traditional" statistical role.

We are only a few weeks until it is the end of this decade, I was thinking and I decided that I would make the New York Baseball All-Decade Team.

This decade was great for the Yankees in winning two World Series but not great for the Mets in only making the playoffs a couple of times.

In fact, in the first World Series of the decade the two New York teams faced eachother in the Subway Series, The Yankees won the series in five games with Derek Jeter being named the MVP.

In this decade, both New York teams had players that will forever be a part of the franchises' history such as Piazza, Jet

There is much teeth-gnashing among Yankees fans as they mourn the departure of Hideki Matsui and probable loss of Johnny Damon .  Even here at the Bleacher Report, writers accuse management of penny-pinching at the expense of the team on the field .  These writers are wrong.  Brian Cashman's moves have made the 2010 Yankee

So far this MLB off-season, the teams in New York have been very busy.  The Yankees' move this week may have been the biggest.

I’ve come out of the woodwork for a brand new blog, because I’ve come across some interesting data, and I think it’d be just plain selfish of me not to share it with my Mets brethren.

While the media is busy debating whether or not the Mets' less than aggressive move for Jason Bay is purely a PR ploy, of greater interest to me personally is the assertion that Mets brass might actually prefer Bay to free agent Matt Holliday.

It seems that the Mets are—gasp—using statistics to evaluate how each hitter might fare in their cavernous ballpark.

(Originally posted on 4SportBoston.com )

It maybe too good to be true but it is.

MLB.com is looking for stat stringers to watch games and enter information about it for their website and applications like MLB GameDay.

I originally saw this post over at Baseball Prospectus and here's the text of the posting that they had:

The experts agree, there is a great chance Randy Johnson is the last 300 game winner: the bullpens, the lack of 20 game winners, it all points in that direction.

But does it really? A little analysis of history and current top pitchers indicate something else.

I am sure we will see a 300-win man again. Definitely. Not for another 10 to 15 years, and maybe even longer, but why shouldn’t CC Sabathia or Felix Hernandez get there.