OwlBB Home Page

The sentence in the heading box atop each page here says it all: baseball team and player performance examined realistically and accurately.

If you want to know in definite, meaningful numbers why each team is where it is in the standings, and how various players do or don’t help their team, this is the place to find out. Here we do not dispense opinions, or natter about “chemistry” and “momentum”: we leave that to the writers and sportscasters (who, through some miracle, manage to get paid for such nattering). Here, we apply on a daily basis the proven techniques of modern numerical baseball analysis to raw stats to generate meaningful interpretive measures of performance.

If you are already up to speed on what we do here and how and why, then you can just jump right into the daily results: use the orange “Teams” and the green “Players” drop-down menu boxes atop this page to find the displays you want. (The available displays are discussed farther down this page.)

(Right now, of course, all the results are the finals for the previous season, but fresh stats will start rolling in as soon as the coming season actually opens.)

The Background Information Available Here

If, on the other hand, you are new to baseball analysis, or know something about it but not how we do it here, there are some pages you should read before jumping into those daily results. There is, at the top of this and every page of this site a complete Site Directory (the colored boxes), with pages grouped logically (we hope). And there is also a full Site-Search Engine up there.

For the newcomer here, we urgently recommend as a first step a reading of the following pages, preferably in the order shown here:

(These are the pages in the red Background drop-down menu block at the top of this and every page.)

For You Rookies
what this site is all about—what it is telling you about baseball, and how, and why
Some Baseball Analysis Theory
a semi-technical backgrounding on modern baseball analysis
Baseball Stat Definitions
the standard and the unique statistics we present
Baseball Data Normalization
how we do or don’t correct for what, and why
The “Quality of Pitching” Measures
why they are the best way to evaluate pitching
Fielding and Defense in Baseball
how important defense is or isn’t in baseball, and how to correctly evaluate it
About the Team-Performance Table
arguably the most important page here, with a lot packed into it—this explains what it all is

The Daily Stats Presented Here

There is a huge amount of daily-updated data presented on over fifteen hundred pages on this site. Here is a guide to what we have for you. We hope that the drop-down menus atop each page are clear enough to guide you, but the material below fleshes out the necessarily short menu tags.

Team-Oriented Data

There are three team-level data pages plus four sets of 30 individual team pages. Those various pages are:

(These are the pages in the orange Teams drop-down menu block at the top of this and every page.)

The Main Team-Performance Table Set
this page has so much information in it that we made a separate page just to explain all the data packed onto it.
By-Team Performance by Players & Pitchers
there are four 30-page (one per team) sets of team stats; the pages linked below are each a “portal” page from which you select the particular team you want to see.
- Showing Team & Player Current-Season Data
  this shows individual 2023 stat lines plus team & league lines
- Showing Team & Player Career Data
  like the above, only showing full-career data lines rather than this season’s
- Team & Player Current vs. Expected Stats, Batting
  this shows, for each player, both their actual raw stats for this season and what would be expected (for the same play time) based on their career-to-date stats; it gives a quick idea of who is above or below expectation and—quite important—by how much in actual events (hits, walks, whatever).
- Team & Player Current vs. Expected Stats, Pitching
  like the above set, only for pitchers instead of position players.
All-Teams Table: Win Expectations From Player Career Stats
this shows how good each team is “on paper”—that is, how many wins would normally be expected of each based on the career-to-date stats of its players & pitchers pro-rated for actual play time (thus it can change daily).
All-Teams Table: Defense
How good each team’s “whole-team-level” defense is, and how it is likely to be affecting wins totals.

Player-Oriented Data

There are eight sets of pages each for batters and for pitchers. Those include listings, both current-season and career, by name, by position played, by performance, by performance per position played, and more; check out the various descriptions below for the full panoply.

In addition, there is a large set of individual one-man data pages; those are not listed in the menus (or here), but you can get to any man’s page from links in any tabulation page that includes that man (the all-batters page necessarily includes all men, but there are—as you will see below—many other pages also listing men).

(These are the pages in the green Players drop-down menu block at the top of this and every page.)

Batters
There are numerous pages, each displaying batter performance in some different (and ideally useful) manner, as described below.
- Sorted by Performance:
  - Current-Season Stats:
    showing all men in one master tabulation.
  - Career Stats:
    showing all men in one master tabulation.
  - Career Stats, 500 Plate Appearances Minimum:
    leaves off men whose data don’t mean much yet, to avoid clutter.
- Sorted by Name:
  - Current-Season Stats:
    showing all men in one master tabulation.
  - Career Stats:
    showing all men in one master tabulation.
  - Career Stats, 500 Plate Appearances Minimum:
    leaves off men whose data don’t mean much yet, to avoid clutter.
- In Performance Order by Position(s) Played, Current Season:
  
  C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | LF | CF | RF | DH | P
- Alphabetically by Position(s) Played, Current Season:
  
  C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | LF | CF | RF | DH | P
- In Performance Order by Position(s) Played, Career:
  
  C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | LF | CF | RF | DH | P
- Alphabetically by Position(s) Played, Career:
  
  C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | LF | CF | RF | DH | P
- Frequent-Use Position Players, by performance:
  showing all 2023 “regulars” sorted by TOP.
- Frequent-Use Position Players, by name:
  showing all 2023 “regulars” sorted alphabetically.
Pitchers
There are numerous pages, each displaying pitcher performance in some different (and ideally useful) manner, as described below.
- Sorted by Performance:
  - Current-Season Stats:
    showing all men in one master tabulation.
  - Career Stats:
    showing all men in one master tabulation.
  - Career Stats, 500 Plate Appearances Minimum:
    leaves off men whose data don’t mean much yet, to avoid clutter.
- Sorted by Name:
  - Current-Season Stats:
    showing all men in one master tabulation.
  - Career Stats:
    showing all men in one master tabulation.
  - Career Stats, 500 Plate Appearances Minimum:
    leaves off men whose data don’t mean much yet, to avoid clutter.
- In Performance Order by Pitching Role, Current Season:
  
  Starters | Relievers
- Alphabetically by Pitching Role, Current Season:
  
  Starters | Relievers
- In Performance Order by Pitching Role, Career:
  
  Starters | Relievers
- Alphabetically by Pitching Role, Career:
  
  Starters | Relievers
- Frequent-Use Starters and Relievers, by performance:
  showing all 2023 “regulars” sorted by TOP.
- Frequent-Use Starters and Relievers, by name:
  showing all 2023 “regulars” sorted alphabetically.

Some Other Matters

More Useful Information

In addition to the key pages listed above, there are some others (besides, of course, the actual daily-results pages), and we hope that you will look these over as well:

(These are the pages in the purple Miscellaneous drop-down menu block at the top of this and every page.)

The Juiced Ball
why baseball before and after 1993—and with even more drama in more recent years—is really a very different game
Steroids and Baseball
why just about everything you think you know about them is wrong
(that is now actually a separate, full-fledged site of its own)
The Owlcroft Baseball-Analysis Formulae Tested
the formulae run against more than six decades’ worth of all-MLB data
The Owlcroft Baseball-Analysis Formula: Tabulated Data
the actual data points shown in the graph on the page just above
Calculating the Effects of Fielding on Wins
exactly how much each team’s variance from average fielding affects its wins total
Making Optimum Use of Players and Pitchers
the page title is self-descriptive
About Owlcroft
who we are and why we might know what we’re talking about
Links About Eric Walker
material from across the web referencing us
Links To A Select Few Other Useful Baseball Sites
including those that link to this one

Baseball Books

We have compiled what we hope is a sound guide to some of the most important books available for the reader interested in modern baseball analysis, plus a few of a more general nature—but we tried to keep the list to books that offer some significant insight into the game and its workings. Those books are listed on our Selected Baseball Books page here; but we also have a page about Buying Books On Line, with a lot of interesting material (such as the criteria for labelling the condition of used books). The Selected Baseball Books page not only lists our recommended books, it provides links whereby you may see the offerings, used and (when applicable) new, and their prices, and even allows you to buy them, direct from ABEbooks. (Full disclosure: we are an ABEbooks affiliate, and would get some pittance if you do buy anything through our links).

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The Owlcroft Baseball-Analysis Site