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 »
With the regular season over, it’s the most exciting time of the year: we get to find out which predictions or projections from our preseason contestants were the most accurate. Apparently there are some playoffs… Read more »
The Oakland A’s have been doing a lot of remarkable things. Whether it’s Matt Chapman‘s otherworldly defensive play at third base, Khris Davis leading the league in home runs, or the phenomenal production of a… Read more »
Out of the Park Developments released the nineteenth iteration of the most robust baseball simulation game on the market this spring. It may not be revelatory to review a game that hit the market three… Read more »
Aaron Nola could be crowned the Philadelphia Phillies MVP for the first half with his latest performance on Sunday — a succinct bundle of emphatic personality and competitiveness. In a show of insistent work and… Read more »
If there were a race for analytical departments in MLB to make themselves intriguing amidst a “rebuild,” the Tampa Bay Rays are, subjectively, in the lead for their willingness to redefine the traditions of baseball… Read more »
Even with a comparatively down free agent market this last winter, Tyler Chatwood exceeded many contract predictions when he signed for $38 million over three years with the Chicago Cubs. Despite a fairly average career… Read more »
Andrew Benintendi has hit at every possible opportunity. He batted .564 as a high school senior in Ohio, becoming the National High School Player of the Year. After a respectable but unspectacular start to his… Read more »
Herein lies the second installment in which I tried to find the one batter and pitcher who had a slash line which best matched the all-time numbers for the team they played for. (Read Part… Read more »
A week or two ago, one of the Cubs’ beat writers – I don’t remember who – noted on Twitter that Ian Happ had just hit the franchise’s 14,000th home run. Having never really considered… Read more »
I’m not a dad. But I am old enough that baseball, as it’s played today, looks different than how it did when I was younger. Meaning the conventions I grew up with aren’t really contemporary… Read more »
I’d like to preface this by saying this is not my idea. It’s Ben Lindbergh’s idea. Ben, ever the scholarly gentleman, suggested that an avenue for exploring the debut appearances of major league players would… Read more »
There are very few things more satisfying than the “jump” in checkers. And it’s rare when you can incorporate a kids’ board game into Major League Baseball, but Phillies GM Matt Klentak and uber-agent Scott… Read more »
About four years ago I was pitching batting practice to my then 11-year-old son’s team. One of his teammates, a nearly fully-grown 12-year-old (who, in his sophomore year of high school, already committed to play… Read more »
I worked on a movie that came out last week (note: you should see it, it is really funny). The premise of the film is that three parents venture out to stop their daughters from… Read more »
We’re a week into the 2018 MLB season which, for all its walk-offs, extra innings, home runs, great pitching performances, and great pitching performers who hit home runs, is in the way of free agency… Read more »
