Saturday, May 4, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, May 4, 2019 -- "Something's Up"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for more than 20 years.

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"           AVG   OBP   SLG    HR%   ISO   HR/FB
4/6-4/19   .248  .324  .433   4.1%   185   15.3%
4/20-4/26  .253  .328  .434   4.0%   181   15.6%
4/27-5/3   .234  .304  .381   3.1%   147   12.2%


"Is this what a change in the composition of the baseball would look like in the stats? I don’t know. I do know that there’s precedent for things changing on a dime within a season. This “era” started in the middle of 2015, when a league that had been slugging under .400 for 2 1/2 seasons suddenly jumped to .403 in July, .417 in August, and .415 in September."