A Look Back – 1997

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Longtime reader/poster Bells had what I thought was a phenomenal suggestion idea for a post here, in which we could pick a season and dive in. I decided to pick what was probably the first season I would really say I was a “baseball fan.” So let’s look back at 1997, and PLEASE feel free to add as much commentary and as many memories as you can!

1997 At-A-Glance:
World Series – Florida Marlins over Cleveland Indians (4-3)
Awards:
AL MVP – Ken Griffey, Jr.
NL MVP – Larry Walker
AL Cy Young – Roger Clemens
NL Cy Young – Pedro Martinez

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Exceeding Expectations: RE24 Leaders

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One of the lesser known and seldom discussed offensive metrics is RE24, a measure for batters (or pitchers) of how much better or worse they were in improving their team’s run expectancy in their plate appearances. Last year’s league leading batters were Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon, and most often (but not always) the RE24 leaders are the same leading players as evaluated by other metrics. But, what RE24 provides that other metrics don’t is that each player is evaluated on how well he did in his own individual context. More after the jump.

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Make Me a Hall-of-Famer – Toby Harrah

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Sorry for being gone for so long. In my absence, Dr. Doom has written this post, with more to come. Enjoy!

Welcome to a new post series. I’m calling it, “Make Me a Hall of Famer!’

In this series, what I’m going to do is take a player who is below 60 WAR, and turn him into a 60-WAR player. That’s pretty much the number that gets you in. Obviously, that’s not 100% accurate – there are plenty of guys above that who are out, and plenty below who are in. But I figure that gets you into the conversation.

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