Posts by Matthew Trueblood

The Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals are the powerhouses of the National League, this side of World War II. Branch Rickey’s legacy lays most heavily on these two teams, one for whom he… Read more »

The quote for which Moneyball might be best known lies on page 275 of my soft-edged, creased-spined paperback copy. Author Michael Lewis asked Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane why it was that, after a long… Read more »

If I had St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny’s job, Adam Wainwright wouldn’t have taken the mound for the ninth inning on Wednesday night in St. Louis. As small a thing as it sounds, I… Read more »

With news Wednesday that Joe Girardi had signed a contract to stay on as manager of the New York Yankees, any delusions that the Chicago Cubs would find their new skipper in short order seem… Read more »

The Boston Red Sox are balanced, deep and relentless. That’s the takeaway from their American League Division Series showdown with the Tampa Bay Rays, which Boston closed out with a 3-1 win Tuesday night. Shane… Read more »

There will be no more opening the At Bat app at noon and finding anything to do but answer the phone in my office, until next April. There will be no more walking home with… Read more »

Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball, and has been the best in the National League for three years. He’s headed toward Randy Johnson and Warren Spahn territory, to a very real conversation about… Read more »

In the St. Louis Cardinals’ two losses thus far in the National League Division Series, they have scored just four total runs. The Pittsburgh Pirates have effectively shut them down since the third inning of… Read more »

The Boston Red Sox have baseball’s best offense. They’re deadly. They’re even more deadly at home, though, where their right-handed sluggers can take aim at the Green Monster. And they’re at their most deadly when… Read more »

I love the Rays. Joe Maddon is a delight, in addition to bring the game’s best current tactician. Evan Longoria is maybe the most underrated player in baseball, and one of these years, Joe Sheehan’s… Read more »

Mickey Lolich had a two-year peak. He pitched over 3,600 innings in the Major Leagues over parts of 16 seasons, but in only two did he post a sub-3.00 ERA, or any ERA more than… Read more »

The 2013 Los Angeles Dodgers’ season breaks up nicely into three segments. In segment one, injuries to Hanley Ramirez, Matt Kemp and Zack Greinke conspired with disappointing performance from their back-end starting pitching to threaten the… Read more »

The St. Louis Cardinals are the more talented team in their 2013 NLDS showdown with the Pittsburgh Pirates. That’s difficult for an impartial observer to dispute. While Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen might be the best… Read more »

Technically, the 2013 MLB postseason kicked off Tuesday night in Pittsburgh. The Pirates beat the Reds 6-2. With that, Cincinnati went home, the third team under the new two-Wild Card format to be eliminated from… Read more »

Andy Van Slyke kept yelling, imploring him to move in, but Barry Bonds stood stone-still. The best player in Pittsburgh Pirates history, Bonds’s one weakness was an outfield arm that rated roughly average, not a… Read more »

David Price could easily have let the Texas Rangers live inside his head. Entering Monday night’s Wild Card tiebreaker, Price had been miserable against Texas, and downright awful at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. I ignored… Read more »

Over the last four years, no two teams have played more pleasing head-to-head baseball than the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers. They play what the unfortunately crass Twittersphere calls baseball porn. (It may… Read more »

So, you want to watch the world burn, too, eh? Excellent. Come on inside. This is the situation. With 11 (or 12, in some cases) games left in the 2013 season, six teams have at… Read more »

This is the debut of a new feature here at Arm Side Run, one which may become the entirety of the blog if it works. It’s called The Rotation, and the plan is to touch… Read more »

I do this not to belittle Eric Karabell, whose tenure on the Baseball Today podcast was a delight and whose writing I quite enjoy, but because it has to be done. On the Baseball Tonight podcast… Read more »

One hundred twenty-four starting pitchers have thrown at least 100 innings in Major League Baseball this season. Of those, just 16 are 24 years old or younger, in terms of official baseball age. Matt Harvey… Read more »

The canary in the coal mine, for me, was Bryce Harper. Although just 20, Harper is one of the game’s bright lights, a potentially transcendent talent. He has top-of-the-scale power, but also a firm grasp… Read more »

The Red Sox took two out of three from the Dodgers over the weekend, becoming the first team in two and a half months to beat them in a series. By doing so, they held… Read more »

Anthony Rizzo is having a profoundly strange first full season in the Major Leagues. The Cubs first baseman signed a seven-year contract extension, ensuring he’s a long-term part of the team, but he’s hardly established… Read more »

We who follow baseball tend to drastically overrate and overstate our certainty about its future. It’s just the way of the world. So much data is now available to fans and pundits from every spot… Read more »

Look, I get it. A revolution that doesn’t happen in a hurry, that doesn’t come from its participants’ hearts in an uncontrollable rush, is not much of a revolution. It takes passion to create change,… Read more »

It’s August, which for many fans is the month of what George Will called baseball’s “long gathering of summer heat.”  This is the time when the pageantry of the All-Star break and the intrigue of… Read more »

The Braves beat the Mets 4-1 Wednesday, maintaining a staggering 15-game edge in the NL East. They’re going to the playoffs, and while the loss of Jason Heyward (on a terrifying hit-by-pitch that broke his… Read more »

Baseball in the AL East gets a bad rap. The length of Red Sox-Yankees games, which results from a confluence of factors both worthy (both teams take long at bats, look to draw walks and put… Read more »

For an eighth-round pick who got less than $100,000 to sign in 2009, Paul Goldschmidt had an impressive cup of coffee with the Diamondbacks in 2011. He notched 18 extra-base hits and 20 walks in… Read more »