HSAC Blog

Before examining some specific arguments offered by BBWAA members, I would like to make a general comment. Writers tend to rely on MVP Award balloting, Cy Young Award balloting, and Gold Glove balloting when weighing the merits of a particular candidate. I am not sure if this is due to laziness or arrogance.
BBWAA members, after […]

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Randy Moss surpassing Jerry Rice’s single-season receiving touchdown record, Tom Brady breaking Peyton Manning’s single-season passing touchdown record, the Patriots scoring the most points in a season, the Patriots becoming 16-0… all of the above could take place on Saturday. Three of the four records above could be broken, even if the Patriots lose. But […]

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This may be premature, but it looks like a little known streak here at Harvard may be coming to an end. For the last two season, Harvard Men’s Basketball garnered at least one vote in the Top 25 AP Rankings in the first few weeks of the year. It might not have been much, […]

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Boston sports fans have been experiencing the most astonishing simultaneous run ever by one city’s professional baseball, football, and basketball teams.
Today, and for some weeks now, the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics all have and have held their league’s best (and unshared) won/lost record. With 30, 32, and 30 teams in these leagues, that combination […]

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Better Park Factor Estimates
We’ve always known that there was something wrong with ESPN’s MLB park factor estimates. For example, we couldn’t believe that ESPN listed Oakland’s park factor as 1.357 in 2001, 0.703 in 2002, and 0.515 in 2003, despite there having been no alterations to McAfee Coliseum in this century. How can a […]

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It seems that ESPN might want to screen its in interns a little more thoroughly. It turns out that the park factor data they calculated for the 2001-2003 seasons is just blatantly wrong, even after using their own formula for calculating the results.
In each years from 2001 to 2003, ESPN’s calculated Park Factors had […]

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Free Agency in Baseball
Given the current Hot Stove season and the big name trades taking place (we’ll ignore the big name drug busts for the moment), we have recently turned our attention to free agency in baseball. Recent history has demonstrated that free agency, for many teams, is a costly failure. Far too often, teams […]

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Analysis of Streaks in MLB
The world of sports remembers and records streaks, whether it is the University of North Carolina’s 103 consecutive NCAA women’s soccer wins, or Prairie View A&M’s 80 consecutive NCAA football losses. From the Los Angeles Laker’s 33 game winning streak to the US Ryder Cup’s team of 13 straight titles, streaks […]

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