HSAC Blog

Here’s a piece written by Andrew Thomas, one of our graduate student members, on the likelihood of different “streaky” accomplishments in baseball. It uses some probability and statistics to try to prove the difficulty of reaching certain milestones.
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Fans of Major League Baseball have seen three major achievements in recent
weeks, each in a different discipline […]

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Our sports group has just made its first mark in the academic world!  Follow the link to the spring issue of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports to read our first published paper, “Improving Park Factors in Major League Baseball“.  In it, we devise an alternate method of calculating park factors for MLB ballparks […]

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Over at The Biz of Baseball, Maury Brown provides some excellent analysis of the Forbes Valuations of MLB teams over the past 6 years:
Overall, the most obvious news is owners are making money, and lots of it. Using the overblown cliché, they are hitting the ball out of the park. There may be disparity […]

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Spring training is already underway in Florida and Arizona, and it’s even starting to thaw out a bit up here in New England.  This is the time of year when all 30 teams have high aspirations for the season, no matter whether they are coming off a World Series championship like the Red Sox or […]

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David Pinto (Class of 1982, Mather House), author of the popular site Baseball Musings was a guest speaker this past Thursday and spoke to members of HSAC about his entry into baseball journalism. We encourage anyone with an interest in baseball to check out his site.

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Mike Greenwell has just been voted into to the Red Sox’ HOF. On Sep. 2, 1996 he had one of the most amazing offensive games ever, batting in all 9 runs in a Red Sox 9-8 win over Seattle. Five other players have had more RBI in a game (the record is […]

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In Part I I analyzed Troy Tulowitzki’s 7 year, $45mm contract from both sides of the negotiating table. I came to the conclusion that Tulowitzki was either extremely risk averse, undervalued, or both. But I failed to answer the question - how risk averse is Troy Tulowtizki? My risk aversion estimate was confounded by the […]

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I was quoted by Alan Schwarz in his NY Times Sports article
Jan 29, 2008 about a 1/29,000 chance of a 3-team trifecta in
one city.   Click here for the article.
Alan and I both have been asked about this number,
    E.g.   “Where did the “1-in-29,000 come from?
            Is that based on winning the championship,
            having the best […]

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Troy Tulowitzki recently signed a 6 year, $30mm contract with the Colorado Rockies, with a $15mm club option for the 7th year. How much is Tulowitzki’s production worth? Was this a good deal for the Rockies? Was this a good deal for Tulowitzki? For both? The only recent comparable is Grady Sizemore, who the […]

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 We have an expression, “In the right place at the right time,” that many people use but so few people take seriously.  Or, maybe people do take it seriously, but they just choose to ignore it whenever they want.  This discussion could also be expanded to argue whether a success or failure is due to […]

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