April is finally over, and we’ve come to what, to me, is often the toughest time to be a baseball fan. The weather hasn’t yet turned. Your schedule isn’t yet relaxed for the summer. The… Read more »
Columns/Features
Forty-one years ago, a group of desperate men made a desperate decision. The American League lagged far behind the National League, in terms of average attendance, perceived quality of play and number of star players…. Read more »
Most teams throughout Major League Baseball will play 79 intradivisional games this season. A handful will play 80. Now that the leagues are of equal size and each division contains five teams, there’s less variation in… Read more »
I could probably make three articles from this, but I’ll run through the condensed version of each finding here instead, for concision’s sake: -Late last week, Dave Cameron of FanGraphs wrote a quick post about the… Read more »
With some terrible teams, it’s fascinating to go through all the varied and excruciating ways in which they lose games. The 2014 Arizona Diamondbacks are not such a team. Unlike, say, the most recent Houston… Read more »
The Arizona Diamondbacks’ season is essentially over. The sooner they recognize that, the better off they will be. On Tuesday night, the Chicago Cubs thumped Arizona 9-2, pushing the Diamondbacks to 5-18 on the season…. Read more »
Believe it or not, I don’t spend all of my time expanding a meager idea into a 2,500-word blah-fest. I learn plenty of new things about baseball every day, so once a week, I’m going… Read more »
Look, MLB power rankings are stupid. I could broaden that and say that all power rankings are stupid, but: At least in football, one can take the time to smartly build a list, without having… Read more »
In baseball, you get a million chances a year to do something right. A regular player comes to bat 600 times. An ace hurler faces 1,000 batters. A rangy shortstop touches the ball 800-plus times…. Read more »
No team is off to a faster start in baseball’s annual autumnal free-agent free-for-all than Ruben Amaro’s free-wheeling Philadelphia Phillies. Carlos Ruiz got a three-year, $26-million deal Monday, six days after Marlon Byrd got $16… Read more »
It’s a strange balancing act, in modern baseball, to try to win every season without overreaching and losing the base of sustainability. Some teams have been methodical, aggressive and fortunate, and have built strong teams… Read more »
That the Atlanta Braves were desperate to escape Turner Field should not have surprised anyone. The Braves are one of baseball’s stodgiest, stingiest franchises, operating under strict budgets thanks to relatively uninterested corporate ownership. They… Read more »
Baseball fans, and baseball teams, for that matter, overrate pitching. There’s no point in my leading this piece with any other thesis. I think the details of what is to come make for an interesting,… Read more »
The offseason hasn’t really even begun yet, for most MLB teams, but the Cincinnati Reds are already having a weird offseason. It started when, seemingly the day after giving manager Dusty Baker a vote of… Read more »
Sandy Alderson became general manager of the New York Mets in October 2010. The team had just completed a 79-83 season, and the shine was very much off their 2006 team’s apple. Whispers of financial trouble… Read more »
I have a theory about baseball right now: Every team is getting better. The league is making leaps and bounds forward in terms of total talent, and the level of play is rising faster than at… Read more »
Every team in baseball is the subject of at least one book that, if one is to call oneself a fan of that team, rates as a must-read. The Oakland Athletics have Moneyball. The St…. Read more »
Vin Scully does a straight-shot commercial during Los Angeles Dodgers games, promoting the team’s official partnership with 76, the gas-station chain, It’s a long-standing relationship, but if the people who run that company really want… Read more »
The 2013 Boston Red Sox put the lie to every weary narrative the mainstream baseball media has tried to shove down the throats of baseball fans over the past few years. They won without an… Read more »
It’s dark in the hole in which the Chicago White Sox find themselves, and the hardest thing about climbing out might be this: They’ve never really been down here before. The Sox last won fewer… Read more »
“A Balanced Schedule” is my daily feature, sort of an around-the-league-in-30-days thing. I think it’s fun and enlightening to keep tabs on all 30 MLB clubs, but it’s too tough for most fans to do… Read more »
I’m doing an end-of-season rollout bonanza, with some new features and types of posts that will become a regular part of Arm Side Run going forward. This one is called “Teach Him a Cutter!” but… Read more »
This is just a quick post to introduce a new feature, here at Arm Side Run. I’m calling it “Weaver’s Ghost,” in honor of Earl Weaver, the best tactical manager in MLB history. Weaver literally wrote the… Read more »
