Baseball Beyond Batting Average

Mark and Andy are joined by special guest Kirk McKnight, author of The Voices of Baseball: The Game's Greatest Broadcasters Reflect on America's Pastime to talk about the newest edition of the book, as well as the usual assortment of baseball statistics, odds, and ends. McKnight brings to the episode a wealth of knowledge about MLB's teams, players, and stadiums culled from dozens

Mark and Andy determine once and for all who the first family of baseball is, the Boones or the Bells. Taking into account multiple pieces of data, both stats-based and otherwise, the competition between these uncannily-matched combatants comes down to the wire and a surprising finish gives a slight edge to the gang you might not expect. Your hosts finish up the episode with a less

The 2001 Mariners won as many regular season games as any team in baseball history, but fell short of playoff success. How did a team without Griffey, A-Rod, and Big Unit reach such heights? Mark and Andy are back to do a statistical deep dive into the winningest regular season team in history, position by position and player by player, and leave no stone unturned. Along the way, q

Mark and Andy are back for another episode of your favorite advanced stats baseball podcast. This time they are highlighting forgotten stars of the 1980s. While it may seem that the 1980s were just a few short years ago and thus none of the stars was forgotten, your hosts attempt to find some names that may be underappreciated or that produced some seasons that may not be remembere

Mark and Andy are back for another installment of their baseball stats exploration. Andy explores the list of the 70 20-20 seasons in baseball history. No, not home runs and stolen bases, but 20 batting runs and 20 fielding runs. Mark takes a look at noteworthy accomplishments in the first 162 games of players' careers. Who had the most hits? The most home runs? The most strikeouts

Mark and Andy are back with their latest statistical explorations into baseball's history. This time, Mark looks at some of the most extreme--and worst--100 RBI seasons ever put together. Let's just say Tony Armas figures prominently. Andy takes on the scorching hot topic of pitchers hitting, both the best and worst of all-time. Randy Johnson falls into one of those categories. It

Mark and Andy are joined by Adam Darowski of Baseball Reference to talk about some advanced hitting stats that were recently added to players' pages, rBat+ and rOBA, as well as many other baseball-related topics, including his Hall of Stats site. Learn how these new stats are calculated, how they came to be on the page, and where the all-time greats rank according to the measures.

Mark and Andy pare down their normal gargantuan episodes into one that can be digested in a shorter amount of time. The topics this time are "manager stats"--really an investigation into a team's actual performance vs. their record based on their total WAR--and game scores, the Bill James stat used to evaluate starting pitching performances. Both topics are revelatory and fun, and

Mark and Andy are joined on this episode by baseball stats guru Jim Passon. The hosts and their guest take turns highlighting some of the less-remembered stars of the 1960s. As over 50 years have passed since the primes of their careers, players like Floyd Robinson, Don Mincher, and Jim Maloney are not household names. They all had their moments of glory, however, and this episode

Mark and Andy are joined by Mark and Jeff from the Two Strike Noise podcast to create a foursome of podcasticness never seen before. The topic? The 1990 baseball season, a subject so nice they had to record it twice. While the National League portion of the season is discussed here, the AL happenings will be discussed on a subsequent episode of Two Strike Noise. Here, your hosts co