A song to play while you’re reading about the Giants: “LOVE” by Kendrick Lamar, ft. Zacari. (As Kendrick uses his song about love to talk mostly about loyalty, the Giants will find out how many… Read more »
A song to play while you’re reading about the Twins: “Sometimes It Snows In April,” by local hero Prince — because a series of home dates likely to be impacted by weather may set the… Read more »
A song for a team going their own way, and to listen to while reading about the Royals: “Never Follow Suit,” by The Radio Dept. The 2018 Royals may have lost nearly twice as many… Read more »
A song to play while reading about the Mets: “Secret Garden,” by Bruce Springsteen – It’s cliche for a baseball writer to go back to the Springsteen well, but hey, if you change all the… Read more »
A song to play while you’re reading about the Marlins: “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails Some things are more important than baseball. If the game ceased to exist, we would miss it terribly, but we’d… Read more »
A song to play while you read about the Padres: “Afternoon Delight,” as sung by San Diego’s own Ron Burgundy. After the Machado signing and seeing how the team’s top prospects have performed so far… Read more »
A song to play while you’re reading about the Rockies: “Rocky Mountain High,” by John Denver The natural urge or human exploration and ambition is to go where few others have gone before. For some… Read more »
A song to play while reading about the Diamondbacks: “All We Got” by Chance the Rapper Back in 2012, the Angels were in a playoff hunt thanks to strong veteran seasons from pre-decline Albert Pujols… Read more »
Heading into the 2019 season, the Cleveland Indians look to continue their streak of Division Titles. 2018 marked their third in a row and fifth winning season since Terry Francona took over the manager’s seat… Read more »
A song to play while you’re reading about the White Sox: “Almost” by Bowling for Soup. White Sox fans went into the offseason uncharacteristically optimistic about the team’s chances to land either Manny Machado or… Read more »
A song to play while you read about the Rangers: “It’s Gonna Take a Little Bit Longer” by team minority owner Charley Pride. There was little fanfare for Arlington Stadium during its last season in… Read more »
A song to play while reading about the Angels: “Michael” (as in Trout) by Franz Ferdinand. In 1995, Hideo Nomo debuted with the Dodgers and my pee wee baseball practices were never the same again…. Read more »
A song to play while you’re reading about the Astros: “Zachariah,” by the Jesus Lizard. It’s a spaghetti Western stalk of inevitability, the soundtrack for a team that can only be contained in the vagaries… Read more »
A song to play while you read about the Mariners: Built to Spill – “Never Be The Same,” because Jerry Dipoto’s team today will never be the same as it was last week. On the… Read more »
A song to play while reading about the Athletics: “A Theme for Oakland,” by the Phenomenauts. For 30 years, the Oakland Athletics had used Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” as their victory song. That’s fine… Read more »
Thank you for checking out Banished to the Pen’s 2019 Season Preview Series! In our fifth edition, we’re pairing shorter essays with some assorted miscellany to bring you a fun snapshot of every team heading… Read more »
Baseball is a game with a rich and voluminous history. Much of that history happens to be white, which may piss some people off but is the reality of the situation. The overwhelming majority of… Read more »
Writing about the dark winter of baseball’s offseason, Bob Dylan explained: Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease. One man’s temper might rise while another man’s temper might freeze. In… Read more »
With the abundance of analytics permeated throughout the game, front offices are smarter today than they ever have been. They are equipped with real-time data that allows them to make extremely accurate projections and ultimately,… Read more »
Baseball is a game of history. History frames much of what we know and think about the game. Baseball leagues the world over are all about creating new history and establishing a legacy that will… Read more »
Via @DanHirsch: Of the 107 players to play 21+ years, 11 never had a negative-WAR season (Hank Aaron, Cap Anson, Beltre, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Stat Musial, Jim O'Rourke, Frank… Read more »
I think that all of us, myself definitely included, fall in love with dominant seasons from a pitcher. Or rather, I should say, we fall in love with a given pitcher thanks to their dominance…. Read more »
One of my favorite things to do is to spend a lazy day looking up stats. More often than not my resource of choice is Baseball Reference. The Play Index feature makes it so easy… Read more »
Orioles fans have been through a lot in 2018. They were only the third team in American League history to lose at least 115 games in a season. Manny Machado, Zach Britton, Kevin Gausman and… Read more »
Angels the magic kingdom: Trout, Ohtani, and Kershaw thirty miles south Astros bury our chances for signing Kershaw under centerfield, Tal’s Hill Cardinals best fans in baseball plus best pitcher in baseball under the same… Read more »
The 2018 season is over. On Sunday, the Boston Red Sox put the final touches on what was one of the most dominant seasons of the modern era and effortlessly cruised through the playoffs in… Read more »
For myself and other like-minded baseball fans, there are generally three websites we use for the majority of our baseball information and statistics. Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs are the go-to sites for modern analytics, while… Read more »
Every now and then I will randomly think of a player and wonder why they aren’t in Major League Baseball. More often than not it’s because they’ve retired, or haven’t made their way through the… Read more »
Ryan Verdugo is not a name that rolls off the tongue of most Major League Baseball fans. Having only played one MLB season (2012 with the Kansas City Royals), it’s not surprising that Verdugo isn’t… Read more »
I want to show OPS some love. I want to state that not only is OPS intuitive and useful, it is a good and mathematically sound statistic. In short, I want to argue against the… Read more »
