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FanGraphs | Stephen Loftus: Let’s have some fun with win probability in the postseason. The pitchers to have the highest leverage in the 2018 LCS when pitching? Caleb Ferguson and Kenley Jansen. The most consequential hit-by-pitch? Jeff Kent in 2002. And, there were a number of games where there was technically more than one WPA accrued based on swings.
Baseball Prospectus | Rob Mains ($): What if we applied the Gini coefficient to baseball leagues? It would make the most unequal league the AL in 1909, and the most equal was in 2015, when the AL had only two teams win fewer than 75 wins, and only two won 90. This year looked like it would be just as unequal as ‘09, but that only played out in the AL, where the Yankees, Astros, and Red Sox made it the 26th most unequal year.
Tangotiger Blog | Tom Tango: It’s weird that we seem to calculate WAR for pitchers who hit and non-pitchers who hit. Does Randy Johnson deserve WAR off his valuation if he just had the unfortunate luck of hitting in the NL? Should we just zero out those totals and only count the positive?
The Athletic | Eno Sarris ($): This is an excellent piece on the dichotomy of slugging first baseman/range-y outfielder Cody Bellinger and how he is trying to adjust the hitch in his swing for better results.