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Part two of our annual preview series. This year, we present for each team a 60-word-or-so takeaway from 2020, a 162-word-or-so preview for the 2021 season, a win prediction, and a song to represent the… Read more »
Posts by Daniel R Epstein
Houston Astros – by Daniel R. Epstein
KC Royals – by Nathan Valentine
Miami Marlins – by Jon Jacoby
A song to play while you’re reading about the Marlins: “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPz21cDK7dg Some things are more important than baseball. If the game ceased to exist, we would miss it terribly, but… Read more »
On the heels of last year’s wildly successful (and chaotic) Cubs preview, Brandon Lee, Dan Epstein, and Darius Austin brought back the Facebook chat preview to discuss the 2018 Seattle Mariners. Darius: I think the… Read more »
Of course the Yankees got Giancarlo Stanton. Retrospectively, there’s simply no other place he logically could’ve gone. The entirety of baseball reality has unfolded in exactly this way for 100 years. They pilfered Babe Ruth… Read more »
The 2017 Padres are your middle school biology teacher, suspiciously overeager to dissect a frog. Everything about this is going to be awful and scarring, but you might learn something. There is neither pretense nor… Read more »
Yankees manager Joe Girardi is as good a candidate as any to win the Manager of the Year award. Before the Wild Card game against Minnesota on October 3, he was cheered loudly by the… Read more »
October is here and so are the playoffs. It’s baseball’s most exciting time of year, unless you root for one of the 20 teams who aren’t invited. In that case, it’s a bittersweet reminder of… Read more »
My grandmother’s longtime boyfriend was a man named Smitty. Every New Year’s Eve, Smitty would go into homeless shelters in New York City and hand out cigars to the men and candy to the women… Read more »
On a lovely Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, the Mariners made five errors in the bottom of the first inning. The Yankees scored six runs and went on to win the game, 10-1. According to… Read more »
Baseball is a celebration of numbers. Players and teams break game, single season, and career records all the time. New records are set every year just to be knocked down again in the future. Everyone… Read more »
Baseball is a celebration of numbers. Players and teams break game, single season, and career records all the time. New records are set every year just to be knocked down again in the future. Everyone… Read more »
General managers are lazy. They have all season to make trades, yet they wait almost exclusively until right before the trade deadline. Slackers, the lot of them. Nevertheless, the trades came furiously during the month… Read more »
(This article is best read in the voice of Planet Earth’s David Attenborough.) In all corners of the world, species engage in elaborate mating rituals. However, the most ostentatious and complex courtship procedures may belong… Read more »
On Friday evening, Aaron Judge hit a baseball that nearly left Safeco Field in Seattle. You can watch it below if you disagree with Sam Miller and enjoy watching home run videos. The home run… Read more »
The podcast returns from a hiatus as Darius Austin, Daniel Epstein, and Brandon Lee discuss FiveThirtyEight’s fan survey and Statcast’s Sprint Speed metric, hold a draft of trade candidates, and review the Jeff Sullivan era… Read more »
Last week, Banished to the Pen readers were asked to vote on where Gary Sanchez ranks in the current hierarchy of major league catchers. FanGraphs and Baseball Reference concur that he has 4.8 career WAR… Read more »
Quickly, name the five best first basemen in baseball. Certain names probably come to mind: Miguel Cabrera, Paul Goldschmidt, Joey Votto, and others. Maybe you also thought of a few players like Justin Smoak and… Read more »
The harsh, angry sun tormented a desolate landscape. A sour wind howled through the scorched hills and barren valleys. Little life remained in the wasteland of Southern California. The once pleasant spring had been shattered… Read more »
We’re watching history in the making. Josh Tomlin is the best pitcher of our lifetimes at avoiding walks. Since 1900, only Cy Young, Deacon Phillippe, and Babe Adams have lower BB/9 among qualified starters, and… Read more »
The White Sox have agreed to terms with 19-year-old Cuban amateur free agent Luis Robert. Many consider the 19-year-old outfielder to be the best international prospect not named Shohei Otani.
MLB Trade Rumors recently ran an extensive three-part feature looking back at the 1992 expansion draft that birthed the Marlins and Rockies, found here: part 1, part 2, part 3. Expansion drafts are fascinating. Roughly… Read more »
The Yankees retired Wayne Tolleson’s number on Sunday. This is believed to be coincidental because the person who wore #2 a few years later is the franchise leader in PA, H, 2B, and SB. Also… Read more »
In this issue: Albers closes again… Ben & Jeff live show upcoming… News & previews… Mario Kart baseball
There have been many good base stealers whose speed has abandoned them relatively early in their careers. This is not Stephen Piscotty. He is only 1-5 on stolen base attempts this season. In 2016 he… Read more »
In this issue: Albers saves… News & previews… Eyewitness account of 18-inning affair… Post-Star Wars Day blowout
Is money alone sufficient to purchase a baseball team? The answer used to be yes. It probably still is. Nevertheless, the two competing bidders for the Miami Marlins are both “led” by a current or… Read more »
It’s fair to wonder how anyone could ever make contact against Aroldis Chapman. This was the final pitch of Game 2 of the NLDS: You could lose hours of your life just watching that… Read more »
Albert Pujols is going to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. He is the active leader in WAR, SLG, 2B, HR, BB, and several other counting statistics. He is not, however, the all-time… Read more »
It is generally accepted in modern baseball that versatility is a valued asset for bench players to have. Most teams carry 12 or 13 pitchers on their 25-man roster, so the few position players on… Read more »
