Who are the best teams? Who are the worst teams? And just how good or bad are they? Dugout Central writers and readers are again challenged to predict the number of wins in the regular season for each of the thirty MLB teams.

Last year, Author Alan Hirsch was kind enough to answer and respond to questions and criticisms of his book, The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball. Alan co-wrote The Beauty of Short Hops with his brother, Sheldon Hirsch.

This is not a replacement for watching and scouting, in addition to looking at the statistics. This is merely a way for fans—who often don’t get to see their team’s minor-league players and the minor-league players everyone is raving about—to eyeball some numbers and get an idea about what their team has in the organization.

Some teams are bad, but at least they have one or two good players to root for. The teams on this list didn’t even have that. A brief synopsis is given of the seven teams in the history of major league baseball that had no player with at least 2.0 WAR.

We present the fourth annual list of best players at a given experience level, as determined by Runs Created per Plate Appearance.

In a recent Dugout Central article, John Bowen asked if the quality start is a bad statistic. In this article I present data on how often a team wins given how long the starting pitcher lasts and how many earned runs he allows, and suggest two possible redefinitions of the quality start.

In an article published earlier this week on his blog-that’s-not-a-blog, Murray Chass raised some interesting points about pampered pitchers in this day and age. The article made some interesting points with regards to pitch counts and 5-man rotations, but he goes on to bring up some questionable points with regards to how pitchers are evaluated.
Chass [...]

Bill James introduced the concept of similarity scores by comparing career totals in games played, at bats, runs, hits and other offensive stats. However, it emphasizes counting stats, and therefore in most cases players can be similar only if they have a similar number of plate appearances. I introduce the Rate Similarity Score, which identifies batters with similar batting profiles even though they may have very different career lengths.

Who are the best players for each franchise? Using WAR, the likely contenders can be identified. Many are no-brainers, but some cases are not so clear-cut. And what current players have a chance to be the best player in their team’s history?

John looks at the best seasons for the Houston Astros/Colt .45’s.

Who has the best shot at breaking Barry Bonds’ record of 762 home runs? Who is likely to reach 500 or 600? We all know the usual suspects, but is there a way to estimate their actual probabilities? Using past performances beyond a given age level, we can try to quantify what we think we already know.

We present the third annual list of best players at a given experience level, as determined by Runs Created per Plate Appearance.

Last season the National League won its first All-Star game in fourteen tries, but has the NL really caught up with the AL? An analysis using Pythagorean expectation indicates that the answer may be “yes.”

At the beginning of the season, Dugout Central readers and staff were challenged to predict the number of wins for each of the thirty MLB teams. After six months of games, it came down to a single game late on Sunday to decide the winner.

Just as the playoff picture will not be completely determined until the final Sunday – or maybe even later – the Dugout Central Challenge title hinges on the results of just a few games at the end of the season.