The Rays Tank: Consistency, Sam Fuld, and wWPA

MLB Chatter

With no games yesterday, the baseball world stood still for the most part. It was one of those awkward dead times of the baseball year; with the World Series coming up, there should be plenty to talk about. But as baseball has become a very regional affair in recent years, it's gotten to the point where many people have trouble following along as hard when their favorite team gets eliminated. And so, yesterday was awkward; it reminded us the offseason was coming, and didn't leave many non-Rangers and Cards fans things to talk about. Doot doot doot.

There were a couple cool articles out there yesterday. A. Darowski over at Beyond the Boxscore created a postseason version of WPA, which he call Weighted WPA. It takes into effect the importance of the game being played, so big events happening in key games of a series are even more important. It's very cool, and you'll never guess who's the leader in wWPA (/sarcasm).

Also, Dave Cameron looked at how the bullpens were a large part of the success for both the Rangers and Cardinals, and makes the point that dominant bullpens might start having more and more of an effect in the postseason in coming years. The postseason allows teams to use their relievers even more aggressively, and teams are starting to take advantage of that fact.

Rays Talk

Over at ESPN Florida, Tommy has another article up; this time he takes a look at Sam Fuld and tries to divine what his role with the club will be going forward. It's easy to write Fuld off as a disposable piece, but he's an effective fourth outfielder and can produce at the plate when put in favorable situations. The Rays will likely be holding onto him for the next couple seasons.

Also, last week there was a discussion on the site about consistency and how it effects an offense. Whelk was kind enough to pass along some links regarding consistency, so for anyone out there that had there interest piqued the other day, here you go: Part 1 and Part 2. The articles are a bit old, but they're good conversation starters and get your mind thinking.