Jackie Bradley Jr. is not a terrible baseball player, and honestly he probably didn’t have a terrible 2014 season. Well at least, it wasn’t as bad as what people perceived. That, however, is due to… Read more »
The Mets started this offseason with a bang, making the first signing of a free agent, Michael Cuddyer from the Colorado Rockies for 2 years and $21 million. As a player who received a qualifying offer, the Mets forfeited their 2015 1st round draft pick (#15 overall). However, after signing Cuddyer, the Mets only added two other players, outfielder John Mayberry Jr. and rule 5 pick LHP Sean Gilmartin. They lost a few players of which most notable were Eric Young Jr., who stole 46 bases in 2013 and 30 in 2014, and Gonzalez Germen (yes, he began the offseason as a Met). Besides these small moves it has been a very quiet offseason. The team added only two pitchers (including Gilmartin), an anomaly in the league as most teams stock up on pitchers (the average team added 15 according to the WSJ).
This week’s special guest is Russell Carleton, Baseball Prospectus writer and frequent Effectively Wild guest. He joins Ryan Sullivan, to offer his insights on the effects of “the grind,” the value of managers, clubhouse chemistry, drug/alcohol addiction in baseball, and advocating for women in sportswriting. This episode does not contain #GoryMath.
The latest buzzwords are “Effective” and “Velocity.” Effective velocity (EV) is the quantification of the intuitive concept that some pitches seem faster (or slower) to hitters than they actually are if measured by a radar gun.
After a 2012-2013 offseason that involved two franchise-altering trades, the signing of disgraced-but-effective outfielder Melky Cabrera and a reunion with former skipper John Gibbons, the Blue Jays and their fans hoped that the team would be positioned to make a trip to the post-season for the first time in two decades. The 2013 Blue Jays were so well regarded that they entered the season as Vegas favourite to win the World Series.
Instead, a sell-out Rogers Centre crowd (to which I tried and failed to obtain tickets) was treated to watching new staff “ace” R.A. Dickey surrender four runs in six innings as part of a 4-1 loss to Cleveland.
Yesterday marked nine years since Twins fans lost a legendary player and Minneapolis lost its favorite adopted son, Kirby Puckett. Puckett passed away one day after suffering a massive stroke in a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, far from the public eye but never far from Twins fans’ thoughts. He left a legacy as one of the most huggable players fans will ever see, but his off-the-field problems leave fans struggling to reconcile his bright presence on the field with his dark spiral off the field.
A special Friday edition of the podcast, and the audio portion of Matt Trueblood’s farewell tour. Our senior writer will be departing the pen to join the starting rotation at Baseball Prospectus. On this episode, he joins Mikey Poley and Ryan Sullivan as they also talk about Cleveland, Cuba, surveying analytics use around MLB, and what to look for in the 2015 season. Congratulations to Matt from all of us at Banished to the Pen.
A year ago the Miami Marlins entered the season with the smallest opening day payroll in baseball ($41.8 M). They ended the season with their best player suffering a gruesome injury and with the lowest attendance in the National League. Their 77-85 record landed them fourth in the NL East.
What a difference an off-season makes. There are a lot of reasons for optimism around Miami heading in to 2015 and what follows is a 2015 season preview for the Marlins.
Are you ready, Marlins fans?
The Padres acquired a lot of talent and kept a lot of young talent. They added some depth in areas where they had been minimal. They have a near replacement level infield, which they did not improve at all (sorry Will Middlebrooks). But most of all, they really do not have a prototypical leadoff hitter.
The first episode of Banished to the Pen’s semi-regular spin-off podcast. Pro wrestling is a secondary pastime for many Effectively Wild fans, so the series starts with Eric Roseberry, Ryan Sullivan, and Ken Maeda chatting about their fandom, baseball Randy Savage, the lingo, live shows, and bloopers. Plus, Eric discusses his brief first-hand experience as a wrestler at the indie level. We hope there’s something for fans and non-fans alike.
When Oriole Park at Camden Yards debuted in 1992, the writing on the wall was clear: Cookie-cutter baseball stadiums were finished. In the years since, 21 new baseball parks in MLB have been erected. Even… Read more »
Best team in the AL or 81 wins? Who knows!
On one episode of Baseball Prospectus’s old podcast, Up and In, Kevin Goldstein bet Jason Parks “a hundred bucks” that the Yankees would finish at or above .500 for at least the ensuing 10 seasons…. Read more »
Staff writers Julien Assouline (in Montreal) and Seth Rubin (in NYC) join Ryan Sullivan to discuss the Red Sox, Mets, the evolving strike zone, and the possibility of baseball returning to Montreal.
The Philadelphia Phillies will open their 2015 season with a bold, necessary plan.
As soon as starting pitcher Cole Hamels realized what was happening, he began looking for the exits. Winning, he announced, is “not going to happen here.” He continued: “This isn’t what I expected. It’s not what the Phillies expected, either. But it’s reality.”
It’s no secret that Ruben Amaro loves winning. The Phillies don’t ever want to rebuild, and to this end, Amaro seems to demand the moon for any of his major league talent. So, for fun,… Read more »
Ever since Shelby Miller was shipped to Atlanta in the Jason Heyward trade, it has been nearly unanimously accepted in Cardinals circles that Carlos Martinez is in pole position for the fifth spot in the… Read more »
Reaching the playoffs in back-to-back years, the Pirates enter 2015 with hard-earned respectability across the country. General manager Neal Huntington, who took over the club in the fall of 2007, survived several bumps in the rebuilding process to finally see his home-grown talent reach the majors and succeed.
As offense is continually decreasing, a popular solution to increase the offense has been the shrinking of the strike zone. The solution that many have proposed is to reduce the low strike, which has been… Read more »
The Chicago White Sox were slightly below the American League average in runs per game in 2014, but they were the median team. Accounting for their (typically hitter-friendly) home park, that made them something close… Read more »
In 2014, the Cincinnati Reds were a tale of two seasons. After a victory over the Pirates on July 13 the Reds were 51-44, and firmly in the playoff race, half of a game out of a wildcard spot, and only 1.5 games out of first place in the NL Central. Well, then the wheels fell off. After that day they were 25-42, finishing with a 76-86 record.
Last Friday, the MLB pace of play committee announced some initiatives aimed at speeding up the pace of MLB games. The new rules reduce downtime after commercial breaks, reduce delays due to instant replay challenges,… Read more »
In the first installment of this series, I used obesity as an introductory analogy to offensive strikeout propensity. The subject of today’s examination, the fourth of seven pieces this week (check out Parts One, Two… Read more »
The Brewers, coming off of a monumental collapse to miss the playoffs in 2014, made two major changes over the offseason. First, the team moved Marco Estrada to the Blue Jays for Adam Lind to fill the black hole that has been first base since Corey Hart’s knees failed him in 2013, most recently filled by Mark Reynolds and Lyle Overbay. Second, they traded rotation stalwart Yovani Gallardo to the Rangers for RHP Corey Knebel, SS Luis Sardinas, and pitching prospect Marcos Diplan to bolster their bullpen, infield, and system depth.
Parts I and II in this series, on the Cubs and the Astros, are also worth your time. It’s a peculiar thing to say about the team to whom Giancarlo Stanton belongs, but the 2014… Read more »
Check out the Effectively Wild podcast’s daily team previews, and the full list of our own companion previews. On the South Side of Chicago… The Baddest part of town… 2005 seems like forever ago…. Read more »
Cole Hamels is still a member of the Philadelphia Phillies, although the situation becomes more untenable almost by the day. The Boston Red Sox remain the most-discussed potential trade partner in the market, but with… Read more »
In a widely-circulated interview last week with USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, Cole Hamels went on record to say that he’s sort of over the Phillies and their “not winning in the near future” ways. Understandably,… Read more »
If you haven’t read Part One of this series, please check it out. Today, we examine the Houston Astros, the second-most strikeout-happy team in Major League Baseball last season, and the fourth-most vulnerable club in… Read more »
Staff writers Ben Suissa (in Toronto) and Mark Sands (in Michigan) join Ryan Sullivan to discuss the Astros, Tigers, and Blue Jays, as well as the new pace of game rules.
