Newsletter Excerpt, October 14, 2020 -- "Rhythms"

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 nearly 25 years.

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"For years we’ve been used to the rhythms of playoff series. Two games, take a breath, home team changes, bullpens reset, hitters get a mental-health day, managers get a chance to consider their options...and then we play again. 2-2-1 and 2-3-2 formats have a flow, and while perhaps more fair, the 2-2-1-1-1 preferred by the NBA and NHL have always seemed more disjointed to me."

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 13, 2020 -- "It's Just Baseball"

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 nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"It made sense, a decade ago, to call it 'shifting.' It didn’t happen much and it definitely looked weird. That verbiage is long dated when more than a third of batted balls are hit into data-driven positioning. It’s not shifting, it’s defense. It’s putting your players in position to succeed. It’s exploiting a known weakness of your opponent.

"It’s playing baseball."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 12, 2020 -- "Dodgers/Braves Preview"

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 nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"We saw Dave Roberts flinch last week, lifting Kenley Jansen from a save situation with two outs in the ninth; we also saw what happens when he does that, as Joe Kelly walked the first two men he faced. The Dodgers’ closer right now is Score Enough Runs to Not Need a Closer. We’ll see what Roberts does, but the Braves’ best path through this series is almost certainly through picking off Jansen, Kelly, and whoever else Roberts turns to in big spots. The Braves make this harder for Roberts with all their right-handed power; against a more balanced team he could turn to Jake McGee and Victor Gonzalez."

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 11, 2020 -- "Rays/Astros Preview"

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 nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"The team with the better regular-season contact rate went 5-2 in playoff series in 2017, with the Astros winning the World Series. They were 3-4 in 2018, with the Red Sox, third in MLB in contact rate, winning it all. Last year, they went 5-2 again, with the Nationals (third in MLB) beating out the Astros (first). That’s 13-8 in playoff series the last three years, for 50-27 in the 11 years I’ve tracked."

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 11, 2020 -- "As Good As It Gets"

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 nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"You can say that the game we love has issues. Acknowledge this, though: Game Five of the ALDS was the best version of this kind of baseball we can get. It had amazing pitchers and talented hitters and, when called upon, good fielders using the 2020 mix of data to know where to be, and their skills to know what to do when the ball was hit to them."

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 9, 2020 -- "What I'm Watching"

 

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 nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"This October, I’ve laid off the Ball Go Far... stuff, because I think the point has largely been made outside of a number of broadcast booths. Short sequence offense wins in the playoffs, and it’s gratifying to see, some days, my entire Twitter feed making the point for me. This series, it must be said, has been all about the dingers: The Yankees have 16 of their 23 runs on homers, the Rays have 15 of their 19. That’s more than three-quarters of the runs in a postseason series coming on the long ball."