This time last year, optimism was in abundance in the Steel City. The NL was sharply divided between have and have nots, and the Pirates sat closer to the haves. With former MVP Andrew McCutchen… Read more »
Season Previews
It’s a beautiful Saturday night in April, and you can think of ten different places you would rather be. But propriety and parental obligation find you walking into your kid’s school spring fundraiser. You do… Read more »
The only thing that went right for the Giants in 2017 was that the Dodgers didn’t win the World Series. Even then, THEY CAME VERY, VERY CLOSE. Before the season, the Giants were unanimous favorites… Read more »
I haven’t been asked to produce a season preview for four years. My last effort, a team-by-team dissection of League One, English football’s third tier of professional soccer achieved a little notoriety owing to its… Read more »
Previously on “Nick Strangis previews the Arizona Diamondbacks”, I suggested that the 2016 Diamondbacks resembled a real life Shrodinger’s Cat – they were simultaneously a young-ish team with loads of untapped talent and incredible upside… Read more »
In a city with multiple professional teams and overlapping devotion, winning a championship elsewhere buys everyone a little more time. Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles for winning their first championship in the NFL’s post-merger era…. Read more »
I hope Mike Trout is happy. His Philadelphia Eagles, who play in a different state than the one he’s from even though two teams play in New Jersey because Eagles fandom makes no sense and… Read more »
The 2017 Braves were supposed to have been a tanking team, like the Phillies and Reds. But they spent only 15 days in the cellar, none after May 10. This is not to say that… Read more »
On May 20, 2017, Carlos Martinez was scheduled to get the ball against the visiting, scoring-challenged San Francisco Giants. It was good timing. After blanking the Cubs for seven-plus innings on Opening Night, Martinez hit… Read more »
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” — The Who, 1971 The 2018 edition of the Cincinnati Reds look a lot like the 2017 vintage. The same holes, the same questions that… Read more »
If the Boston Red sox were a car, it would be a Subaru. Pretty popular, good gas mileage, roomy, durable. Solid, above-average ride. Not sexy though. Reliable. But not sexy.
My friend Rob Mains already touched on the Orioles and Royals’ ability to confound sabermetric prediction models. The team was back at beating their projections for a sixth straight year, albeit by a measly two… 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 Washington Nationals of the 2010s are a great baseball team. They have been a great baseball team since the beginning of the Bryce Harper Era in 2012. In four of the six seasons Harper… 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 »
I present to you an audience-participation season preview, featuring the reigning World Champion (the entire city of Chicago entered a World Series hangover on November 3, 2016 and has not admitted that 2017 even happened)… Read more »
Towards the end of the fourth Die Hard movie, an aging John McClane faces off against an F-35 Lightning fighter jet whilst driving a cumbersome truck. Naturally, McClane wins this battle. While the movie was an… Read more »
A year after coming within a rain delay and a Jason Heyward motivational speech (price tag: $21 million) of winning the World Series, the Indians had a good 2017. They: 1) set the record for… Read more »
When previewing a team’s season, it’s important to envision the scenarios in which that team makes the postseason. The issue with doing that in this preview is that the Marlins have no realistic scenarios in… Read more »
Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to… Read more »
See the schedule of our published and upcoming team-by-team previews.
As the Orioles and Royals became famous for confounding sabermetric prediction models (Starting rotation and an ability to get on base? We don’t need no stinkin’ starting rotation and an ability get on base!), the… Read more »
So you just spent eight grueling months hitting, throwing, and catching a chunk of mud-rubbed hide across the country, all the while dealing with injuries, a devastating natural disaster in your home city, and one… Read more »
For the third year running, our review of preseason predictions and projections is back, crushing all the hopes of those baseball writers who never wanted to make predictions in the first place and would rather… Read more »
This is the third season of BttP’s prediction and projection tracking, and once again we’re bringing you our All-Star Break check-up on the teams that have most confounded the preseason expectations. Below are three teams… Read more »
After months of ill-advised attempts to predict the future, the 2017 season is already here. We can soon get on with the business of actual baseball, and all those reluctant predictions by prognosticators – such… Read more »
Bryant Snyder and Kyle McCarthy collaborated on this preview. The Yankees are spoiled. They’re brats. The team made the postseason every year from 1995-2007 (and had the best record in 1994 until the strike… Read more »
For Pirates fans, 2016 was an unwelcome reminder of the franchise’s post-Barry Bonds past. For the first time since breaking the 20-year streak of losing seasons, Pittsburgh finished under .500. This was particularly unwelcome since… Read more »
AD and Mark Sands collaborated on this preview. Despite extended absences from the team’s two young sluggers, J.D. Martinez and Nick Nicholas Castellanos, deciding to allow Mike Pelfrey to pitch 119 innings, using Mike Aviles… Read more »
The 2016 Rays were a disaster, even by the measure of the franchise’s boom or bust track record. After being picked by PECOTA to be the projected division winner, they finished last in the AL… Read more »
