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The Chicago Cubs traded relief pitcher Arodys Vizcaino to the Atlanta Braves for second baseman Tommy La Stella Sunday. Vizcaino took a very long time to get healthy after Tommy John surgery in 2012, and… Read more »
Posts by Matthew Trueblood
I like to think, generally, that I’m above a line-by-line takedown of a foolish, obsolete blowhard raging against the light’s refusal to die with him. I’ve started such things in the past, and have always… Read more »
I’m fascinated by teams’ distributions of runs scored. I check it out every year, follow closely certain trivial tidbits (the Twins tied the record for times scoring exactly four runs in a season, with 35;… Read more »
There was a report on Tuesday night that the Chicago Cubs were “in talks to acquire” Jordan Zimmermann from the Washington Nationals. The report cited no sources by name, did not identify the players Chicago… Read more »
In 2014, Joe Mauer pulled nine percent of his fly balls, according to StatCorner. That was the lowest figure in MLB. The second-lowest figure was 12.3 percent. In fact, that 2014 figure for Mauer is… Read more »
Michael Cuddyer signed a two-year, $21-million deal with the New York Mets Monday, a few hours before the deadline at which he would have needed to formally accept or reject the one-year, $15.3-million qualifying offer… Read more »
Each promotion a professional baseball player receives has enormous risk attached to it. Each rung of the ladder is a little farther a reach than the one before it. By the time a player is… Read more »
With Joe Maddon officially installed as the new manager of the Cubs, I want to take a minute to go over just what sort of doors he opens for the team in 2015. How He… Read more »
Last winter, Ervin Santana hit some mitigated imitation of free agency, coming off a terrific season with the Kansas City Royals. He’d thrown 211 innings and posted a 3.24 ERA. At 30 years old, he’d… Read more »
On the last night of the Bud Selig era, I completed my metamorphosis into the kind of fan he sought to create. As the ball leaped off Alex Gordon’s bat, bounded to Gregor Blanco and… Read more »
You may not think Jeremy Guthrie and Tim Hudson amount to appointment television. You may not harbor warm feelings for the chaos that produced a World Series between two sub-90-win teams. You can’t deny, though,… Read more »
The Royals own Jake Peavy. Look, I know that’s a sabermetrically controversial statement, and I don’t suggest that it’s provably or predictively true, in some macro way, but certain Royals have hit Jake Peavy very… Read more »
For baseball fans, this is the time of year at which to confront a difficult, searching set of questions. Is an ability to come up biggest in big moments a skill? Can certain players, through heightened… Read more »
Game Three of the World Series went to the Kansas City Royals. Here’s how it happened, in a few highlights and bullet points: Before the game, I went to the mattresses for Nori Aoki, whom… Read more »
Jarrod Dyson will start in center field for the Kansas City Royals in Game Three of the World Series Friday night, his first start since Sept. 20. It’s Ned Yost’s response to the Series’s change… Read more »
Prior to Game Two of the World Series, Zachary Levine wrote a superb preview for Baseball Prospectus. Its chief premise: this will be a bullpen game. It couldn’t have turned out to be more true,… Read more »
The lineups are out for Game Two of the World Series, and Salvador Perez is still in there, batting seventh. Immovable it seems, despite being 5-for-37 in the playoffs. Despite having batted .229/.236/.360 in the… Read more »
The San Francisco Giants pounced James Shields on Tuesday night, and Game One of the World Series was out of reach the moment they did. The Kansas City Royals were never going to score more… Read more »
The World Series begins Tuesday night. It’s the first and only series of MLB’s 2014 Postseason that airs on free television, but unlike the Super Bowl or the Olympics, the World Series is not often a… Read more »
Almost every team who qualified for the MLB Postseason this year did so with the help of an out-of-nowhere, breakout star. The Baltimore Orioles had Steve Pearce, whom even they released in April, but who… Read more »
Honesty compels me to report that Games Three and Four of the American League Championship Series were sort of boring. Sure, Game Three stayed tied until the bottom of the sixth inning, and sure, both… Read more »
Pitchers Make Mistakes The first 15 pitches St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher John Lackey threw to San Francisco Giants batters on Tuesday were four-seam fastballs. It was the darnedest thing. Lackey isn’t a guy who… Read more »
In American sport, the playoffs are always a time for heroes. I should amend that. The playoffs are the time for heroes. A tremendous player can be cast as somehow deficient if he never meets his usual… Read more »
There’s one 30-game hot streak to which the Kansas City Royals owe their presence in the 2014 MLB Postseason. It came in late July, after a brief stumble out of the All-Star break, when the… Read more »
While I’m warming to the idea of the dual Wild Card system (this may be some A’s-Royals afterglow; forgive me), I’m not wild about the concept of reducing an entire baseball season to a single… Read more »
I’m not a fan of the second Wild Card. I dislike the feeling of artificial drama, and for a long season of baseball games to come down to one arbitrary contest feels wrong to me…. Read more »
If you’ve had a conversation about baseball during the last year, you have probably heard some variation on a too-common theme: “God, and the games are SOOOO LOOOONNNNGGGG. What are we gonna DO?” First of… Read more »
The Detroit Tigers are fighting for their playoff lives, hoping an impressive in-season transaction will be enough to wash out the ill effects of an off-season move they never should have made. The Seattle Mariners… Read more »
In 2013, at age 27, Chris Davis created 142.8 runs for the Baltimore Orioles, according to Baseball-Reference. That was a shockingly good number. In fact, it’s the 14th-highest number posted by any age-27 player since… Read more »
Jose Fernandez is hurt, and Baseball Twitter is in tears. Jose Fernandez is hurt, and the Miami Marlins’ hope of contending this season is gone. Jose Fernandez is hurt, and everyone is sad. Except me. Honestly, I’ve felt… Read more »
