Pablo Sandoval signed a five-year, $95-million contract with the Boston Red Sox Monday, making him, in all likelihood, the highest-paid free-agent position player of the winter. He’s a solid player, but given his body type,… Read more »
Arm Side Run
You’re going to be talking to your brother-in-law about Jon Lester on Thursday. I might be wrong about that, but if you’re reading this, odds are you’re a baseball fan, and if you’re a baseball… Read more »
Note: Beginning sometime early in December, my new home will be banishedtothepen.com. It’s a collective of listeners to Effectively Wild: The Baseball Prospectus Daily Podcast, who want to put our own thoughts out there for… Read more »
Note: Beginning sometime early in December, my new home will be banishedtothepen.com. It’s a collective of listeners to Effectively Wild: The Baseball Prospectus Daily Podcast, who want to put our own thoughts out there for… Read more »
Note: Beginning sometime early in December, my new home will be banishedtothepen.com. It’s a collective of listeners to Effectively Wild: The Baseball Prospectus Daily Podcast, who want to put our own thoughts out there for… Read more »
Francisco Liriano has fanned 24.7 percent of all the batters he has faced since the start of 2012. In none of the three seasons did he strike out fewer than 24 percent, and in none… Read more »
Catchers, second basemen, shortstops and center fielders are hitting better than they have in at least 50 years, relative to the total offensive production in Major League Baseball, according to Baseball-Reference.com and its Play Index…. Read more »
The Atlanta Braves had a .305 team on-base percentage in 2014. They badly needed to find and add some players this winter who would ameliorate that issue, and in particular, they needed left-handed batters, guys… Read more »
Russell Martin agreed a five-year, $82-million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays Monday, putting a neat bow on a very quick foray into free agency for Martin. The runners-up for his services (and, by unsubstantiated… Read more »
Occasionally, MLB teams make moves that not even I feel like analyzing in 1,000-plus words. A few moves over the past several days have caught my eye, but haven’t grown into ideas so grand that I wanted… Read more »
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 »
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 »
