The Best Fourth Outfielder in Baseball

The Giants’ Gregor Blanco has been described as the best fourth outfielder in baseball. He has filled in admirably the last four years for the Giants when the inevitable outfielder injury occurs. He has averaged 2.4 WAR over those four years despite never being considered a starter. He has only made one opening day lineup…

Who Got Lucky in 2015?

Winter is coming and baseball has once again forsaken us. We are left to over-analyze stats and obsess about free agents and trades. As I did in 2013 and 2014 I’ll try to find last season’s luckiest and unluckiest players in an attempt to find players likely to regress or improve (egress?) next season. First…

The Best

My favorite product rating sources are The Wirecutter and The Sweethome. They’re kind of like Consumer Reports, but instead of tedious charts breaking down every inane nuance, they just say: this thing is the best and you should buy it if you need one. You should probably just check them out instead of continuing to…

10 Most Popular Grubulub Posts

Grubulub has been around for about three years. Here are the ten most popular posts to date: 10. Best of Chico: Beer Edition When it comes to beer Chico, California is known for Sierra Nevada. We love Sierra Nevada but the people who live in Chico know there’s more going on around here. Chico is…

2015 MLB All Star Starters by WAR

All Star voting seems like an even bigger mess than usual this year. Like I did in 2012 and 2013, I’m going to take a look at who should actually be an All Star. I’ll use WAR again, but I’ll take the past calendar year into consideration instead of just the first half of this season.…

What’s Up With Casey?

Grant says he should have a 1 month leash, Dave says he should be moved to lead off. Casey McGehee, the Giants’ big off-season acquisition, has struggled thus far: not hitting well, slow on the bases, questionable defense, and soooo many double plays. Let’s see how bad it has been so far this season by…

2015 Hot Starts

We’re almost 10% into the 2015 MLB baseball season, so just for funsies lets look at the stat leaders and extrapolate their season if they were to miraculously maintain their hot start through the entire season. “Hot start” might not be quite right for some of these stats like HBP, and HRs Allowed.  Stat  2015…

In Short, Luck’s Always to Blame

The most interesting part of my Who Got Lucky in 2014 article was the wild swing in luck a few players experienced from 2013 to 2014. Clay Buchholz moved from the luckiest list in 2013 to the unluckiest list in 2014, and Edinson Volquez moved from unluckiest to luckiest. This got me wondering who had the…

Who Got Lucky in 2014?

After the 2013 season I used BAPIP and FIP to find batters and pitchers who were the luckiest and unluckiest players of the season. See that article for an explanation of these stats, and how they relate to luck. Before taking the same look at the 2014 season, let’s see how our 2013 lucky and…