Tag: Red Sox

  • Beating Ted Williams

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week the Red Sox’s season came to an end after being swept by the Cleveland Indians and with the sweep so too ended David Ortiz’s career. He is one of the best Red Sox hitters of all time, but Ted Williams was the best. And so last week FiveThirtyEight ran a piece on how one manager…

  • Miniature Ball Fields

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week Jackie Bradley Jr., the starting centerfielder for the Boston Red Sox, saw his hit-streak end at 29 games. For those of you who do not follow baseball, that means he hit the ball and reached first base safely without causing an out for 29 games in a row. Quite a feat. Anyway, because…

  • Don’t Go, Big Papi

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    Brendan Barry
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    Today’s graphic is not terribly complicated, but it is near and dear to Boston Red Sox fans. This is David Ortiz’s final year as he announced his retirement at the year’s outset. And of so course FiveThirtyEight examined Big Papi’s chances of getting into the Hall of Fame. Credit for the piece goes to Rob…

  • Pedro Martinez Was A Great Pitcher

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last week FiveThirtyEight posted a nice article about the best pitchers in baseball. Turns out Pedro Martinez rates pretty highly among them. The late 90s and early 00s were great for Red Sox pitching. Credit for the piece goes to Neil Paine and Jay Boice.

  • Rich Hill’s Curveball

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today marks the final start of the year for Rich Hill of the Boston Red Sox. It’s also only his fourth start of the year. He was signed as depth as attrition left an empty spot in the rotation. In his three starts, however, he has given up only three runs in 23 innings while…

  • David Ortiz Still Has 500 Home Runs

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    So what I was saying yesterday about there not being a new Boston Globe piece about David Ortiz’s 500 home runs. I was wrong. I missed it. But, here you go, in its semi-splendour (not digging the illustration of the baseballs /quibble). There are some merits to the piece in terms of the filtering—you can…

  • David Ortiz Has 500 Home Runs

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    This past weekend, David Ortiz hit his 500th home run, a significant milestone in Major League Baseball attained only by a handful of players. This piece from the Boston Herald commemorates the feat—with too many photographs and embellishment for my liking—by putting his season totals on a timeline while putting Ortiz at the bottom of…

  • Red Sox Hire Dave Dombrowski

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    Brendan Barry
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    The Boston Red Sox made big baseball news last night by announcing the hiring of former Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski to head Boston’s baseball operations. The second big piece of baseball news, Boston’s GM, Ben Cherington, has resigned as he does not want to work under Dombrowski. As you might figure, I enjoy data’s role…

  • Pedro Martinez Was Amazing

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    So the Red Sox in 2015 are godawful, terrible, bloody bad baseball. But, go back 11 years and they were amazing, fantastic, great and awesome baseball. 2004 was, of course, the year the curse was broken and that was in no small part due to the pitching efforts of Pedro Martinez, who would head down…

  • Foul Balls at Fenway

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Happy Friday, everyone. Foul balls are the souvenirs of fortune at baseball games. (Home runs as well I suppose.) You can’t buy them, you can only hope to be one of the lucky few who catch one. So the Boston Globe ran an article with an integrated interactive piece that told the story of a…