2025 MillersTime Baseball Contests

06 Thursday Mar 2025

Tags

2025 Baseball Contests, Baseball Predictions, MillersTime Baseball Contests, MLB. Predictions

Contest #1 – Always a part of these contests, these questions give contestants the chance to use their knowledge, loyalty, concentration of a specific team.

Are you a ‘homer’ or not? (a sports fan who is so blinded by their loyalty to their favorite team that they can’t be objective about the team’s prospects for the coming year):

a. Name your team

b. What will their season record be?

c. Where will they end up in their Division at the end of the season?

d. Will they make the 12 team playoffs?

e. If so, how far will they go in those playoffs?

f. What will be the reason for well or how poorly they do this year? Be as specific as possible.

Prize: A copy of Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100 or of his new book, Why We Love Baseball.

Contest # 2 – Name the three teams in each league that will win their Division:

a. AL East (Yankees 2024)

b. Al Central (Guardians 2024)

c. AL West (Astros 2024)

d. NL East (Phillies 2024)

e. NL Central (Brewers in 2024)

f. NL West (Dodgers in 2024)

Prize: A copy of Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100 or a copy of his new book, Why We Love Baseball.

Contest #3 – True / False:

a. Neither of these two teams will make it to the World Series, despite all the money they spent this off season: LA Bums or New York Mets.

b. Some one will hit more than 60 Home Runs this year (2024 Judge 58, Otahni – 54)

c. At least five batters will strike out 200 or more times this year. (Two did in 2024)

d. There will be no 20 game winning pitchers this year. (None in 2024)

e. No team will win 100 or more games this year. (Dodgers won 98, the most in 2024)

Prize: Join me for a Nats’ game in DC, or I’ll try to join you, if possible, for any regular season game elsewhere. In either case, I’ll buy the tickets. You can buy the food and drinks.

Contest #4 – Also a recurring question:

a. Who will be the four teams making it to the League Championship series (ALCS & NLCS) in 2025?

b. What two teams will actually make it to the World Series?

c. How many games will the WS go?

d. Which team will win the WS?

e. What are the reasons that team will win?

Prize: One ticket to the 2025 All Star game or the 2025 World Series.

Contest #5 – Make a specific, detailed, and prescient prediction about the 2025 MLB season. The winner of this contest will be chosen by the 2025 MillersTime contestants.

Prize: Join me for a Nats’ game in DC, or I’ll try to join you, if possible, for any regular season game elsewhere. In either case, I’ll buy the tickets. You can buy the food and drinks.

Due Date for Submissions: March 27th

(The season will actually begin with the Toyko Series between the Dodgers and the Cubs on March 18-19 at the Tokyo Dome. The traditional Opening Day in North America will be March 27.)

“A Fast Ball Isn’t Enough Anymore”

03 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

538, baseball, Fastball, Michael Salfino, MLB, MLB. Predictions

A Fast Fastball Isn’t Enough Anymore

Fastballs-4×3 — J.D. Martinez eats fastballs for breakfast.

Illustration by FiveThirtyEight; Getty images

Baseball creates an endless evolutionary cycle where hitters and pitchers battle to find an edge and maintain it. The periods where one side or the other seizes control have often been measured more in decades than years. Earlier this decade, pitchers gained the upper hand and they did so — at least in part — by throwing baseballs really, really fast. The pendulum has now swung back toward the hitters in the past couple seasons, and only time will tell whether that was the result of the ball itself or some other factor. Regardless of how this unfolds, one thing is clear: Those really, really fast pitches are no longer making hitters look silly.

While more pitches than ever have been coming in at 95-plus mph,¹ today’s hitters have seemingly adapted, gaining the supernatural ability to hit these pitches. Last year, according to ESPN Stats & Information Group, hitters faced 110,529 fastballs traveling 95 mph or faster. That’s an increase of 124 percent from 2011, when hitters saw the fewest such fastballs in the period (starting in 2009) for which this data is tracked, and a spike of 32.6 percent from 2016. But the returns are diminishing as blazing-fast heaters become the norm. In 2017, 28,749 plate appearances were decided² on a 95-plus mph fastball, and batters’ on-base plus slugging percentage against them was .734. That’s 80 points higher than in 2014, when OPS against these pitches hit a low of .654, and the high mark for the period in which the velocity data is tracked. Hitters produced home runs on 2.8 percent of plate appearances decided by 95-plus mph pitches in 2017, also the highest since 2009, and an increase of 75 percent from a low of 1.6 percent in 2014. Weighted on-base average, which more precisely assesses the value of every plate appearance, also spiked against 95-plus gas last season, and players were less likely to make the kind of soft contact that can lead to easy putouts.

(Ed.Note #1: To see 538’s chart of how MLB hitters have fared against fastballs of 95-plus mph, by on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS), 2009-2017, go to this site.)

This is a one-sided development. Think of these hitters like the cheetah evolving enough speed to catch a gazelle: This advantage doesn’t mean they can’t also catch slower prey, and MLB hitters are feasting on slower fastballs, too. In 2017, batters across the league were almost as good at hitting fastballs that came in at 95 mph or above — .734 OPS — as they had been in 2014 at hitting midrange fastballs — .754 OPS on fastballs between 92 and 94 mph. And on fastballs under 92, big league hitters sported a .906 OPS last year. In other words, hitters have gotten better at handling all species of fastball.

Of course, some are better at it than others. Over the previous two seasons, the king of smacking fast fastballs, according to wOBA, was J.D. Martinez, now of the Red Sox. In 128 plate appearances decided by fastballs at 95-plus mph, Martinez hit .360 with a wOBA of .542 (far above the league average of .327) and a 1.314 OPS that includes an .830 slugging average, courtesy of a Ruthian 10.9 percent homer rate.³ (For reference, among active players who had at least 100 plate appearances decided by fastballs of 95-plus mph, Brandon Moss was second in the league in home run rate on these pitches over the last two seasons, and he was more than two points behind Martinez at 8.7 percent.) The Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo isn’t far behind Martinez in wOBA (.457) among active players, and he posted a 1.059 OPS in plate appearances decided by high-octane pitches. And while pitchers understandably try to muscle up to retire Joey Votto, one of game’s greatest hitters, the Reds’ future Hall of Famer is undeterred — he managed a higher on-base percentage (.479) and a nearly identical slugging average (.563) in 217 plate appearances against pitches at 95 mph and above as he had against all pitches in those two seasons (.444 OBP, .564 slugging).

Pitchers do find that pure velocity can still put some hitters away, of course. Fans wondered why the Rays gave up on Corey Dickerson this spring, but in 2016 and ’17, the current Pirate had one of the biggest drops in production⁴ (his OPS fell by 475 points) against high-octane heat compared to fastballs thrown at 94 and below. Trevor Story of the Rockies struggled after a record-setting debut in 2016, and it seems like teams have figured out that the hard stuff can get him out, as his OPS drops by 441 points against 95-plus mph fastballs compared to slower heaters. And there’s Chris Carter, who had 113 plate appearances decided by 95-plus mph fastballs in the previous two seasons, and who posted an OPS that was 609 points worse against the fastest fastballs (1.053 against fastballs up to 94 mph compared to .444 against fastballs at 95-plus mph). That helps explain why the player who hit 41 home runs for the Brewers in 2016 is currently a proud member of Salt Lake Bees.

Michael Salfino is a freelance writer in New Jersey. His work can be found on Yahoo and the Wall Street Journal. @MichaelSalfino

(Ed. Note #2 – If you haven’t seen 538’s on going predictions, updated after all games have been completed for that day, Check out their latest MLB predictions.)

10 of These Predictions Will Come True

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2015 Millerstime Baseball Contests, baseball, MLB. Predictions, Nationals, Playoffs, Prizes, Red Sox, Rookie of the Year, Wild Card, World Series, Yankees

I’m not sure if the contestants in this year’s 2015 MillersTime Baseball Contests are geniuses, fools, frustrated writers, or wannabe comedians (see #s 28, 32, and 43, for example).

You decide.

Judging by previous years in this contest, at least 10 of the predictions below — Question #2 in this year’s contest — will come true.

Which 10, of course, is the question.

If you predict how many actually come true, you will also receive a prize — a t-shirt proclaiming you a MillersTime Baseball Contest Winner. Send your guess (the number of predictions that will come true) to me at samesty84@gmail.com or put the number in the Comments section of this post. Multiply winners are possible, but you only get one guess/prediction.