While Barry Larkin and Ron Santo are being deservedly honored for their Hall of Fame careers today, here is a nice article about one of the best players the HOF writers overlooked. The author of the article, Patrick Languzzi, is spearheading the campaign to help get Dwight Evans his rightful place in Cooperstown. Languzzi created his own website, "Call to the Hall," devoted to Evans' HOF candidacy. There is a link to his website in the article and on his website he also has started a petition you can sign to help get "Dewey" on the 2013 Expansion Era HOF ballot. Additionally, here are the links for his website: http://call2thehall.blogspot.com/ and the petition: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/call-to-the-hall-support-dwight-evans-for-mlb-s-hall-o.html

I've been reading it (as an original Kickstarter backer) and now the rest of you mere mortals can, too. Basically, I write about baseball because of Sky Kalkman. He and Marc Normandin (both former managing editors for Beyond the Box Score) built an incredible roster of writers for this ebook project. Go take a look at the site. Go buy the book (you finally can today!). You won't regret it.

Here's a list of players that won the MVP but were not All-Stars in the the same season: Jimmy Rollins 2007 Justin Morneau 2006 Chipper Jones 1999 Juan Gonzalez 1996 Terry Pendelton 1991 Robin Yount 1989 Kirk Gibson 1988 Dave Parker 1978 Don Newcombe 1956

The second annual Saber Seminar will be taking place on August 4th and 5th in Boston, MA. Bobby Valentine, Tom Tippett, Kevin Goldstein, Dan Brooks, and many more will be presenting at the conference. Beyond the Box Score's Glenn DuPaul will also be presenting about WAR. Anyone in interested in baseball statistics and the science of the game, should head to Boston for the weekend. Tickets are still available for "baseball's best fans" and all the proceeds for the conference benefit the Jimmy Fund and the fight against cancer.

While my own research lately has been slow and sporadic, friend of BtB Graham Womack is back with another wisdom-of-crowds project. This time, he's looking for the top 50 players of all time to make up an Inner Circle Hall of Fame. The ballot contains all current players in the Hall of Fame, regardless of how they were inducted (BBWAA, Veterans, Negro League Committee, etc.). The ballot does not contain managers and those inducted because of other non-playing roles. Also, since it only features current Hall of Famers, you can't vote for Bob Caruthers. I know you were planning to, but you can't. Let's vote! I'm very curious what Graham finds with this project.

Over at Baseball Nation, Rob Neyer has posed a simple, but difficult question: who is the greatest hitter in baseball? Rob's narrowed it down to Ryan Braun, Josh Hamilton, Joey Votto, Miguel Cabrera, and Matt Kemp. But the real question here is - how do you identify what makes someone the greatest hitter? What stats would or should you use? How recent should the data be? Share your thoughts here or over at Baseball Nation.

Based on the number of runs scored, I have determined that the formula for win expectancy is the following: Win expectancy = 1-((1/(RS+4.5))^((RS^1.14)/14.1)) [?] RS = runs scored I discovered the coefficients of 1.14 and 14.1 by calculating the cumulative amount of deviation from normal win expectancies (1969-2011), weighted for instances of runs scored, using an extremely vast array of coefficients in MS Excel, effectively using what I like to call a "bowl apparatus". Based on the repetition of the formulas with varying coefficients, 1.14 and 14.1 gave me the lowest cumulative deviation value. Remarkably, even though this was done using data only from 1969-2011, the correlation is even stronger (using these same coefficients) when data is expanded to 1901-2011, and actually accounted for many of the biggest deviations! This suggests that the formula works just as well, if not better, for games before 1969. The link above will take you to Baseball-Reference's situation calculator - try this for yourself! The link below has the collected data. Win expectancy chart (with deviations)

Albert Pujols might be done hitting as we've known him.

Looking for the best Late-Bloomers in baseball's past.