Joe Posnanski

My Sports Illustrated column this week is about Albert Pujols and how I’m not exactly certain why some people miss what seems pretty obvious: The guy’s far and away the best player in baseball But, I have achieved something much, much greater. Maybe. I have made Baseball Reference, the greatest baseball thing ever, even better. Maybe. Here’s what happened: I was trying to come up with a list of great players who were taken in the later rounds of the amateur draft -- say 10th round ... Read More

I know what you are wondering: How many players since the end of Deadball have had an OPS+ of 5 or less? Well, it depends on how many plate appearances you are talking about. Quickly, you know OPS represents on-base percentage plus slugging, and OPS+ measures a player against everyone else in the league (taking ballpark effects into consideration). A 100 OPS+ is precisely average. That means, generally speaking, that a 5 OPS+ represents a player who is 20 times worse than average. If ... Read More

It’s gonna be a busy book-writing week, so we probably won’t have any lengthy posts. But I’ll try to post a little a few little things, tidbits, obscure stats, jokes, whatever. We’ll start here: Four players in baseball history have put together this odd combination: 25 homers, 25 stolen bases, 40 doubles, more than 110 RBIs and 110 runs scored. They are: 1. Larry Walker in 1997. Of course, that was at Coors Field, so it’s pretty tainted, but he hit .366 with 46 ... Read More

Congratulations go out today to Arizona’s Mark Reynolds, who became the first player in Major League history to strike out 200 times in a season. I love, love, love achievements like that. I mean, ANYONE can succeed at this game if they can, you know, hit the ball. But few have been good enough to get enough at-bats to strike out 200 times. In fact, I guess the whole point is that no one ever had before. You know how they always try ... Read More

Brilliant reader Brian says that he really got backed up in traffic this morning in New York. Of course, traffic gets stopped in New York all the time, but apparently this was serious: There was someone threatening to jump of the GW Bridge. Now, normally people in New York will not stop for something as non-descript as a jumper -- I can remember many times standing in Times Square and being in awe as cars whizzed by while a guy in bikini ... Read More

Here’s my theory: Most sports fans are formed by the most cataclysmic or euphoric sporting event of their childhood. I am the sports fan that I am today because four days before my 14th birthday, with the Cleveland Browns in field goal range, Sam Rutigliano called a play called Red Right 88, and Brian Sipe threw an interception against the Oakland Raiders. Then Brian put his hand in his face, and he stumbled off the field, and Rutigliano said, “I love you ... Read More

Jason Bartlett has an 83 OPS+. Jason Bartlett has a .328 on-base percentage and has struck out three times more than he has walked. Jason Bartlett has a .358 slugging percentage and has hit 1.00 home runs this season. Jason Bartlett has missed 32 baseball games, which accounts for his relatively unimpressive total of 43 runs scored and 34 runs batted in. Jason Bartlett ranks 11th among “everyday shortstops” with an .825 zone rating. Jason Bartlett ranks 12th among “everyday shortstops“ with 4.22 range factor. Jason Bartlett ... Read More

Sam Harris wrote this fascinating paragraph about Sarah Palin, but I think it is about more than politics. It gets at the heart of something I think an awful lot about .... excellence and how people respond to it. "Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical ... Read More

This quote, from Royals general manager Dayton Moore, troubles me a touch. Only a touch. The quote is about Jose Guillen and it appears in this blog post by Star colleague Jeff Flanagan: "On the field, his performance has been right about what we expected," general manager Dayton Moore said. "He has played to his level." Now, I will readily admit that this quote would bother me a lot, except for this: I do not believe it. I fully expect a general manager like ... Read More

Everybody is in their prime. It’s a best of seven-game series. Who do you think wins the series? You can answer in the poll. I don’t just ask for the obvious reasons ... I’m curious about a couple of different things. Team A 1B: George Kelly 2B: Bill Mazeroski SS: Luis Aparicio 3B: George Kell LF: Lou Brock CF: Lloyd Waner RF: Harry Hooper C: Ray Schalk Backup catcher: Rick Ferrell Bench: Tinker, Evers, Chance. Pitcher: Catfish Hunter Pitcher: Rube Marquard Pitcher: Herb Pennock Closer: Bruce Sutter * * * Team B 1B: Mark McGwire 2B: Bobby Grich SS: Alan Trammell 3B: ... Read More