A blog about nothing (and baseball) by Sam Sharpe. https://sharpestats.com/ Introduction Anyone can admit that baseball is hard to predict1, probably one of the reasons it can be so exciting. I’ve definitely done my share of modeling game and at-bat outcomes, but I wanted to pose a different challenge for this post: predicting injury risk. Injury risk is an important... Sun, 06 Nov 2022 11:52:19 -0500 https://sharpestats.com/mlb-injury-point-process/ https://sharpestats.com/mlb-injury-point-process/ Not often do we get the chance to witness live experiments mid-season on player performance, but that is pretty much what we have in the MLB sticky stuff crackdown. By intervening on one of the elements that we suspect contributes to pitching performance and keeping the rest constant, MLB has... Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:52:19 -0400 https://sharpestats.com/ab-testing-the-shift/ https://sharpestats.com/ab-testing-the-shift/ After another year of baseball, another month of twitter arguments about what “MVP” means, and a great start to the postseason with three game fives, it’s time for the annual MVP prediction. If this is the first of my predictions you’ve seen, you are doing it all wrong! Go back... Wed, 09 Oct 2019 22:58:19 -0400 https://sharpestats.com/2019-mlb-mvp-predictions-declining-focus-on-batting-average/ https://sharpestats.com/2019-mlb-mvp-predictions-declining-focus-on-batting-average/ Last year’s MLB MVP vote didn’t quite test the voting traditions and written rules, but this year might be different. A majority of MVPs in the past have been position players as many people view the Cy Young as the pitcher award and the MVP as more or less a... Tue, 16 Oct 2018 22:04:35 -0400 https://sharpestats.com/all-betts-are-on-yelich/ https://sharpestats.com/all-betts-are-on-yelich/ If you’re a baseball fan, you may have noticed you’ve been watching on average 10-15 minutes more baseball then you were 10 years ago.  Or maybe you are always switching between games like me and never stop to notice. If you’re not a fan, it’s probably why you don’t watch baseball... Tue, 13 Feb 2018 22:11:01 -0500 https://sharpestats.com/making-baseball-slow-again/ https://sharpestats.com/making-baseball-slow-again/ Baseball season is coming to a close and the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BWAA) will soon unveil their vote for AL and NL MVP. The much-anticipated vote is consistently under the public microscope, and in recent years has drawn criticism for neglecting a clear winner cough Mike Trout cough. One... Mon, 30 Oct 2017 20:47:20 -0400 https://sharpestats.com/thinking-like-an-mlb-mvp-voter/ https://sharpestats.com/thinking-like-an-mlb-mvp-voter/ I’m going to admit it up front. I don’t hate romantic comedies. Love Actually could be one of the best movies ever made. Whether it’s the storyline, the writing, the directing, the music, or the acting, sometimes a good romantic comedy is just the thing we need on cold winter night... Sat, 09 Sep 2017 09:11:51 -0400 https://sharpestats.com/who-are-the-best-romcom-actors/ https://sharpestats.com/who-are-the-best-romcom-actors/ The contextual revolution (don’t really know if that’s a thing, but it sounds official) emerged in the MLB the past few years, attempting to control for more situational effects than current sabermetric driven baseball stats. These models build upon Bill James’s work, Tom Tango’s all-important linear weights, and similar metrics that account... Sun, 30 Jul 2017 16:14:01 -0400 https://sharpestats.com/stealing-bases-and-splitting-the-rewards/ https://sharpestats.com/stealing-bases-and-splitting-the-rewards/ Mid-inning entertainment takes many forms in the MLB from The Freeze in Atlanta to the simple crab shuffle in Baltimore. These bouts of entertainment grab the attention of all fans regardless of age no matter how trivial or silly they may be. I always think to myself, who cares which... Fri, 07 Jul 2017 16:23:55 -0400 https://sharpestats.com/profiting-off-the-nationals-presidents-race-puppet-masters/ https://sharpestats.com/profiting-off-the-nationals-presidents-race-puppet-masters/