LEARN & IMPROVE

Become a fan of Major League Baseball for any significant amount of time, and without a doubt you will run across the term collective bargaining agreement, or CBA. While it may seem like a rather legalistic term, that’s because … it is. The Collective Bargaining Agreement is a written contract between MLB as a business […]

New words and phrases are added to the baseball lexicon all the time, and some of them sound rather militaristic, like WAR, OPS+, or launch angle. Fans mostly can guess what launch angle means in the sport, but let’s explore it in depth. Baseball’s launch angle is the vertical angle that a baseball leaves right

In modern baseball, the term gets thrown around by young players, parents and coaches alike: “in the dugout” must be heard innumerable times over a season. Yet not every baseball fan is truly aware of what the dugout really is, where it came from, and modern uses. A dugout in baseball is the area where

In today’s hurry-worry living, many phrases get shortened to save time or for convenience, including in baseball, unfortunately. For instance, the combo of Cooperstown baseball is exactly how a lot of people refer to different things in that little town in central New York state. The term Cooperstown baseball could easily reflect many things, but

The baseball term designated hitter has been adopted into American lexicon, to describe developments off the field. Like a person with a very special skill who gets asked to serve a work team temporarily. Or a wealthy (and generous) friend to bring along for a night on the town. But just for baseball, exactly what

Even for the newest fans of Major League Baseball, it doesn’t take long for them to wonder, “What the heck is a trade deadline? Followed up, inevitably, by “When is it?” The MLB trade deadline traditionally is July 31. However, for 2022 due to a player’s strike before the season, the deadline was moved to

In the baseball book “Moneyball,” the author laments poor statistics used through the 20th century to judge defensive play: “The statistics were not merely inadequate; they lied,” he wrote. Out of this, around the turn of the century, came defensive measurements like Total Zone. Total Zone in baseball is a statistical measurement of defensive performance

Of all the distinctive terms used in Major League Baseball, “Designated for assignment” must be near the top of the list for the hardest to explain to new fans. When a player is declared this, often stated as “He was DFA’d,” what exactly does it mean? Designated for assignment refers to a player’s contract, and

Baseball statistics have been an essential part of the game since the very beginning, and fans are always looking for new ways to evaluate their favorite ballplayers. Popular statistics like home runs, batting average, and RBI have been around for a long time and are still popular today. However, fans have begun to use newer

When Major League Baseball introduced Statcast cameras to all 30 stadiums in 2015, it was the beginning of a new era in baseball analysis. These devices allowed MLB to measure aspects of the game we could previously only evaluate with the eye test. In particular, Statcast has had a tremendous impact on how we assess