“Welcome to EW Rewind. This is going to be a regular feature here. Our intention is to go back through the full catalogue of old episodes of Effectively Wild, and recap them for you. We’ll run through the episode a little bit, highlight any of the show’s meta elements that hit a high note or appear for the first time in a given episode, and (there will be some content here) refresh the topic or topics to some extent.”
“Surely the Royals would not be upset in recreating the roster that was responsible for them winning the pennant. If I were the GM, I would not have spent $30 million on Billy Butler. On the other hand, I can potentially make a trade with the Boston Red Sox, for, who we will call for now, Billy Butler Light.”
“I realized this article would need more than my opinion on the matter, and as much as I would like to bask in my own self-perceived glory, I decided to reach out to three writers to give this subject a broader prospective instead and maybe learn a thing or two myself.”
“The trip was advertised as 6 games in 6 days; Los Angeles -> San Diego -> Anaheim -> Stockton -> Oakland -> San Francisco. At the time it was just a cool idea that none of us took too seriously, but it was something I thought about until 3 months later when all of the stars aligned and I pulled the trigger on my birthday.”
An introduction.
“Since Major League Baseball began expanding, in 1961, only one player has hit between 10 and 23 home runs in each of his first nine seasons, according to the Baseball-Reference Play Index. That player, Nick Markakis, agreed to a four-year, $44-million deal with the Atlanta Braves Wednesday. “
“I don’t have an overarching deep-dive in me tonight. A bunch of small moves with very low potential impact happened on Tuesday, driven by the deadline at which teams had to decide whether they would tender contracts to their pre-arbitration and arbitration-eligible players or release them into free agency. Nothing big happened. It would be a disservice for me to write two or three thousand words for you about anything that happened. I’ll just run through the three moves that stood out, offering up the analysis I think each move deserves.”
“Monday was an interesting day in Major League Baseball, with a handful of very small moves and one big one that stood apart. Beyond the actual moves, though, there was an unusual abundance of interesting speculation, tidbits and non-transactions. A couple of those stood out to me, as well, so I’ll quickly run through my thoughts on them here.”
“The Toronto Blue Jays acquired Josh Donaldson from the Oakland Athletics for Brett Lawrie, Sean Nolin, Kendall Graveman and Franklin Barreto Friday, leaving the baseball world a bit baffled. The most common thesis I saw from the pundits, as I scrolled through my Twitter feed late that night, was ‘I don’t get it.'”
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 »
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 »
