We all know what a rebuilding baseball team is supposed to look like. An underperforming team trades away its best players – the ones with expensive contracts who could be more valuable to competing teams;… Read more »
Simon Gutierrez and Scott Ross collaborated on this preview. The 2016 Red Sox were a testament to both the articulately blunt machinations of legendary wheeler-dealer Dave Dombrowski and the delicate, thoughtful construction of the… Read more »
This year is the 25th anniversary of the Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat,” which first aired Feb 20, 1992 – it was the 17th episode of season three. As any fan of the show… Read more »
Inspired by FiveThirtyEight’s regular Slack chats, Brandon Lee, Nick Strangis, Ross Bukouricz and Darius Austin got together to do a different kind of 2017 Cubs preview through the medium of Facebook.
This is the first in a series of articles that, in honour of the upcoming World Baseball Classic next month in cities all over the world, will attempt to create an all-time team of major… Read more »
In 2016 the Cincinnati Reds scored 716 runs. That isn’t so bad. In fact, that’s more runs than some of the playoff teams in 2016, namely the Giants and Mets. That’s the good news. The bad… Read more »
This offseason, if you looked at a notification of a trade or a free agent signing, it seemed like there was about a 50/50 chance that it was the Braves doing something. So, true to… Read more »
Just prior to the 2016 season, Washington Nationals fans heard the news that Wilson Ramos had undergone laser eye surgery. I’m sure that for most people, news of a player undergoing a relatively small surgery… Read more »
A rebuild is a tricky proposition for a baseball team, particularly for a small market club without the locked-in revenue of a large TV deal to get them through the lean times. The club needs… Read more »
If there’s one thing I wouldn’t want to be twice, zombies is both of them! -Ed Wood Jr. The Los Angeles Dodgers are beginning to feel like baseball’s most surprising letdown every year. The 2016… Read more »
On the late afternoon of Thursday, April 9, 2015, Tony Wright settled in to his usual seat in the middle of Row B, Section 319 at pleasant Petco Park in San Diego. Section 319 had… Read more »
The first part of our daily series of season previews. Brandon Lee and Darius Austin collaborated on this edition. What can we ask about the Padres? We know the rotation might be one of… Read more »
Eric Roseberry and Mark Sands join Ryan Sullivan to look back on the co-host changes at Effectively Wild, then discuss extra innings, the Reds, the Nationals, the PECOTA projections for 2017, and Eric’s own On Baseball Writing podcast.
The Society for American Baseball Research (“SABR”) recently announced the finalists for its 2017 Analytics Conference Research Awards, which “recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the… Read more »
When you’re a kid and you watch a sport, you can develop strong feelings about particular players. Sometimes these feelings can be positive, bordering on the obsessive. Others, almost in the realm of loathing. Often,… Read more »
Baseball is a sport played over half the year, and with almost daily games for over six months, the importance of any one individual game is muted. One loss in April doesn’t fill fans with… Read more »
We’re officially less than a week away from pitchers and catchers reporting, which means this will be the final installment in this series that has hopefully given readers some distractions in the malaise leading up… Read more »
Tim Raines, one of baseball’s most prolific base stealers, was finally picked to be a member of the 2017 Hall of Fame class. It was a long time coming for the Montreal Expo great, but… Read more »
I take it as a sign that I have not completely failed as a father that my 11-year-old baseball-obsessed son’s favorite player is Jackie Robinson. And so it was with some excitement that I shared… Read more »
In the midst of a BttP staff discussion on the merits of Field of Dreams, I found myself on an IMDB list of ‘baseball movies’ (in the traditional sense, not the Sam Miller definition). The… Read more »
I love sports cards. Specifically, hockey and baseball cards. I started my collection in the mid 80s as a 7-year-old, when I taped my cards into photo albums, putting my heroes on display for me… Read more »
The last few Wednesdays we’ve been counting down to pitchers and catchers reporting with some of the best that baseball has to offer. In the first installment, we looked at Clayton Kershaw, baseball’s best ballparks,… Read more »
Josh Blum, Matt Nekrich, and Scott T Holland join Ryan Sullivan for the latest wrestling episode, this time to discuss NXT Takeover: San Antonio and the 2017 Royal Rumble, and to look ahead to WrestleMania.
Over the past few seasons, Major League Baseball has instituted new rules and practices to shorten game times because they believe a shorter game will bring in new fans. The changes have decreased game time… Read more »
Nineteenth-century ballplayers had some of the most colorful nicknames you’ve ever seen. There was Pussy Tebeau and Candy Cummings (I am not making these up), Ice Box Chamberlain and Twitter’s favorite: Old Hoss Radbourn. Some… Read more »
Welcome to an interpretation of the extreme from the 2016 Major League Baseball season! I’m going to look into the best and worst performers at several of handpicked statistics from the past season. First, though, let’s go through the… Read more »
Last week, I reviewed some players that had poor seasons for various reasons, attributing most of them to poor luck. Sometimes baseball isn’t kind to its players, but the inverse can also be true. If… Read more »
Last Wednesday we started to count down the days until pitchers and catchers report by looking at some of the best the sport of baseball has to offer. We had the young hitting talent in… Read more »
Hall of Fame results day arrived on January 18. After months of waiting, the ballots (which made it through snail mail) were counted and the results officially became public. Ryan Thibodeaux did an excellent job… Read more »
Starting rotations are not evenly balanced. A quick look at a team’s depth chart will show that most rotations petter off near the back end, and some have massive gaps between ace and #5. Fans… Read more »
