With the Mets having acquired only Sean Gilmartin for their bullpen this offseason, they tripled the relief pitchers they have acquired bringing in two left-handed relievers, Jeremy Blevins from the Washington Nationals and Alex Torres… Read more »
It’s down to the Wild Four of the Effectively Wild Tournament! Who advances to the championship? You decide!
The 2015 season is upon us, and people are bullish on the Mariners! No, really! They made the cover of Sports Illustrated! Felix and Robbie Cano, and they look really excited! Ok, so, to be… Read more »
The brain drain hit Tampa Bay this offseason, and it hit them hard. General Manager Andrew Friedman fell victim to the old “Dumptruck Full Of Money” gag and left to become President of Baseball Operations… Read more »
There are times in sports where a narrative or a theme gets assigned to a player, a team, or a city that seems like it takes over reality and can’t be defeated by things like… Read more »
Fairy Tales seem to end in a similar fashion–conflict resolved, happiness acquired, vague conclusion indicating permanence of victory. Real life is rarely this way. Take for instance the parallel misery of the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs. Decades of failure stacked upon each other, lined with mishaps and blunders that hold more to their franchise legends than the players themselves.
Staff writers Chris Baber and Simon Gutierrez join Ryan Sullivan to talk about the Rangers, Orioles, and Banished to the Pen’s Ottoneu Fantasy League.
Voting ends Monday night at 1 am edt — Now it’s on to the Effective Eight. Can our favorite relievers get the final 3 outs? Will Smash Mouth get back to the top of the charts? Wobbly Wobbly Gone? You decide!
Now it’s on to the round of 16. Will “Ben Isn’t Here” take Drafts off the board? Can the Fit knock over the Wobbly Chair? Will Snowpiercer slice up some Venomous Snakes? You decide!
“Not yet.”
I think of those two words when looking at the 2015 St. Louis Cardinals. Their run since 2000 (11 playoff appearances, four pennants, two World Series titles, and only one losing season) has been remarkable. The roster has completely turned over and yet the Cardinals keep on winning. As a fan, it’s been amazingly satisfying. But alas, nothing lasts forever.
Now it’s on to the second half of the opening matchups. Is The Squeaky Laugh a serious contender for the title? Can D-Backs Headlines win this meaningless game? Will the Fit and the Snowpiercer each win a checkered flag? You decide!
The following is a conceptual framework for what I hope becomes a model to help us baseball lovers better evaluate certain aspects of baseball organizations such as general managers effectiveness and farm system efficiency.
Run Production How do they score runs? Are they notably home-run dependent? Notably light on power? Is their lineup predicated on depth, or on huge production from a few stars? Runs? That’s important in baseball… Read more »
This is a continuation of my series on cookie-cutter stadiums. Read Part 1 here. In that installment I stated that Busch Memorial Stadium would be next, but for certain reasons that one had to be… Read more »
Welcome to the first round of the 2015 Effectively Wild Tournament Classic. In yet another take on March Madness brackets, Banished to the Pen has compiled 32 of Effectively Wild’s classic topics, favorite players, and most enduring/endearing running jokes.
Throughout most of its history, baseball in Montreal has been a struggle, not just on the field but also off it. In fact, just getting a suitable stadium for the team was a headache. The Expos had to play their first seven years in a Triple-A ballpark called Jarry Park, which could only seat 28,500 people. The stadium was less than ideal, it wasn’t a dome, and due to Montreal’s cold weather, many games in April and September had to be played on the road.
The San Francisco Giants must have discovered the recipe for the secret sauce. They’ve won three of the last five World Series without being the best team in the regular season for some time. They took advantage of the second wild card last season and came through a number of remarkably close games to win it all by the smallest of margins.
After taking a look at minimum and average salaries, I wanted to look at the average salary of the best major leaguers and see if the same trends applied to the top of the talent… Read more »
The past week plus has revealed a few cracks in the Nationals juggernaut, particularly when it comes to the injury front. While Yunel Escobar’s back, Anthony Rendon’s knee, and Drew Storen’s bizarre hamate bone injury all provide… Read more »
Let’s go ahead and skip the obvious stuff. The A’s usually trade all their best players for prospects, and lose in the playoffs. Last year they traded their prospects for new best players, and they lost in the playoffs.
“We’re not going to take that woe-is-me mentality. It just doesn’t serve any purpose.” Jon Daniels, Texas Rangers GM
One of the founding notions of sabermetrics has been the emphasis of the walk. Before sabermetrics, in the dark ages, people hardly paid attention to the walk. Teams would pay players based on their batting… Read more »
On this episode, editor Brandon Lee and writer Mike Carlucci join Ryan Sullivan to talk about the Padres, Pirates, pitcher injuries, and Will Ferrell taking the field.
When evaluating baseball players, we tend to look at a variety of statistics which encompass different elements of the game. We care about how a player performs at the plate, how a player performs in… Read more »
“I don’t know how much of the Padres chapter [in the Baseball Prospectus 2015 annual] is gonna survive. …The Padres chapter was all about, it was explicitly about, how the Padres just blend in and… Read more »
Several months ago in the super secret online clubhouse for contributors to Banished to the Pen, I posted to inquire if anyone would like to start a fantasy baseball league, since we all like baseball and it occurred to me that some of us might like building and destroying fake baseball teams. Within a week, one brave contributor stepped out of the shadows up to found an ottoneu SABR points league (subscription required) which we soon filled with 11 other excited community members.
I hate spring training. It’s like the calm before the storm. Filled with “coachspeak,” and “best shape of their lives” memes, I find the whole thing quite tedious. So, what is a boy to do? Let’s browse the PECOTA spreadsheet for interesting data to attempt to analyze!
I know it’s Spring Training, and statistically minded analysts and writers generally moan about how they hate Spring Training because nothing means anything and anything means nothing, but as a baseball fan, I love this time of year, because baseball!
In his excellent article on Stephen Strasburg’s contact conundrum, ESPN’s Tony Blengino puts forth a compelling argument for what is holding Strasburg back from becoming a truly elite pitcher of his generation: When he allows… Read more »
The Tigers featured the 2nd best offense in baseball in 2014, scoring 757 runs and accumulating an MLB-best 1557 hits.
The Tigers had the 2nd most extra-base hits in the majors in 2014 (506), were 4th in isolated power (.150), and 7th in home runs (155). The offense was led by superstar Miguel Cabrera, who was 10th in MLB in wOBA (.384) and wRC+ (147) and 16th in ISO (.211) despite a pedestrian (for him) 25 HRs.
