Heroism is in short supply, anymore. In fact, since the end of World War II, the number of people American society has called ‘hero’ has been in steady, steep, inexorable decline. Politicians used to be… Read more »
Arm Side Run
Just a few quick things this morning, issues that have my attention right now: Stop the Bellyaching About Replay: I can’t believe the number of people complaining about the expanded instant-replay system in the early… Read more »
Michael Pineda had pine tar on his hand for the first half of the New York Yankees’ tilt with the Boston Red Sox Thursday night. Baseball Twitter noticed, flooding everyone with screenshots pulled from the… Read more »
I don’t get to a great many live baseball games. I live in the Twin Cities area, which means any affiliate minor-league ball is a five-hour drive away, and the cost of going to MLB… Read more »
You’re the Commissioner of Baseball, and there’s a gun to your head. The masked man forces you to make a substantial change to baseball’s rules governing games tied at the end of nine innings. In… Read more »
Didi Gregorius is playing second base for the Triple-A Reno Aces right now, waiting for an injury or some massive failure to open a spot for him on the Arizona Diamondbacks’ roster. Gregorius was Arizona’s… Read more »
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (we have to do something about that) thumped the Houston Astros 9-1 on Monday afternoon. Mike Trout didn’t have a sensational game, and there was no singular standout performance… Read more »
Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Gerardo Parra got famous for his defensive highlight reel last season, and some defensive measurement systems credited him with 40 or so runs of value added with the glove. You should always… Read more »
An exercise in summary, inspired by Bill James: The 2014 Cubs in 25 words: The climax of the season will be the trade deadline. A young team, they’re still a year away. Yet, their talent… Read more »
Last week, Derek Jeter announced that he will retire at the end of the 2014 season. The news was a surprise to virtually no one—Jeter was hobbled and ineffective during a stunningly short stint in… Read more »
After the 2008 and 2009 seasons, Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus rated Josh Vitters as the Chicago Cubs’ top prospect. After the 2010 and 2011 campaigns, he bestowed that honor on Brett Jackson. Vitters was… Read more »
The Chicago Cubs’ bullpen was a mess in 2013. The collective 4.04 ERA posted by the relief corps ranked 25th in the Major Leagues, and only three teams fared worse in save opportunities than did… Read more »
Fifteen years ago, there were still MLB teams using 10-man pitching staffs for significant stretches of the season. A decade ago, just about everyone was using 11. Five years ago, 12 became the norm, and… Read more »
The National Baseball Hall of Fame announced its 2014 induction class Wednesday, with the Baseball Writers Association of America voting in Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas. There were many deserving names missing from the list… Read more »
We’re going to have to start calling this an Arizona three-way. Arizona Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers is making too much a habit of it. He keeps wading into complex three-party transactions, and while the motivation… Read more »
Jacoby Ellsbury and Robinson Cano are going to get the headlines. Treachery, real or imagined, wears well on a tabloid cover. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees brought back some key players last… Read more »
A well-loved son of the Second City, Curtis Granderson chose something that felt like home over actually coming home. He signed a four-year deal with the New York Mets Friday, one that will pay him… Read more »
The Seattle Mariners agreed to a 10-year, $240-million contract with free-agent second baseman Robinson Cano Friday, opting for an exclamation point, not a period, at the end of baseball’s most frantic week of off-season activity in… Read more »
The second half of this week hasn’t lived up to the hype of Super Tuesday, but has still seen a number of moves, including a run of reliever contracts I’ll break down here. They include:… Read more »
Two of the lesser moves of baseball’s Super Tuesday involved left-handed hitters nearing the end of their careers finding new homes, and although neither deal has been terribly well-received by Baseball Twitter, I rather like… Read more »
The Tampa Bay Rays have won at least 90 games in each of the last four seasons, and in five of six. Despite perhaps the worst financial standing of any team in baseball, they’re a… Read more »
No team fueled the madness that was Monday and Tuesday in the baseball world quite like the Oakland Athletics. Their general manager, Billy Beane, is arguably the game’s most aggressive, and with a roster in need… Read more »
Pesky rumors persisted for far too long, this winter, that the Houston Astros would hook free-agent outfielder and on-base machine Shin-Soo Choo. That was never going to happen. It was always going to be Dexter… Read more »
Jarrod Saltalamacchia probably cost himself $30 million during the month of October. On a national stage, with the opportunity to make a statement about his potential to be an effective, even star-level catcher just as… Read more »
Seven years never means seven years. Any cursory reading of the Bible will tell you that. Seven is an allusion, a symbol, not a number on the same plane as, for instance, six or eight…. Read more »
Whenever the Arizona Diamondbacks turn out to be the third team in a trade, I find myself wondering why they didn’t simply sit it out. The complexity of those transactions means there will nearly always… Read more »
The Washington Nationals had as miserable an 86-win season as the Wild Card Era has seen in 2013. In the run-up to the season, they drew comparisons to the 1990s Braves, the 1986 Mets and—strangely,… Read more »
Ricky Nolasco is a California native, pitched all but the last dozen starts of his big-league career in Miami and has a surname that sounds like it should triangulate a Manhattan neighborhood. As of Wednesday… Read more »
B.J. Upton hit free agency in November of 2012. In the brief time he spent on the market, before signing with the Atlanta Braves one year ago Thursday, I wrote this long, detailed breakdown of… Read more »
The free-agency compensation system in MLB is hilariously broken. Designed by the owners as a means of capping the top end of the free-agent market, but plugged as a way to keep small-market teams from… Read more »
