The 2013 Los Angeles Dodgers’ season breaks up nicely into three segments. In segment one, injuries to Hanley Ramirez, Matt Kemp and Zack Greinke conspired with disappointing performance from their back-end starting pitching to threaten the… Read more »
The St. Louis Cardinals are the more talented team in their 2013 NLDS showdown with the Pittsburgh Pirates. That’s difficult for an impartial observer to dispute. While Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen might be the best… Read more »
Technically, the 2013 MLB postseason kicked off Tuesday night in Pittsburgh. The Pirates beat the Reds 6-2. With that, Cincinnati went home, the third team under the new two-Wild Card format to be eliminated from… Read more »
Andy Van Slyke kept yelling, imploring him to move in, but Barry Bonds stood stone-still. The best player in Pittsburgh Pirates history, Bonds’s one weakness was an outfield arm that rated roughly average, not a… Read more »
David Price could easily have let the Texas Rangers live inside his head. Entering Monday night’s Wild Card tiebreaker, Price had been miserable against Texas, and downright awful at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. I ignored… Read more »
Over the last four years, no two teams have played more pleasing head-to-head baseball than the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers. They play what the unfortunately crass Twittersphere calls baseball porn. (It may… Read more »
So, you want to watch the world burn, too, eh? Excellent. Come on inside. This is the situation. With 11 (or 12, in some cases) games left in the 2013 season, six teams have at… Read more »
This is the debut of a new feature here at Arm Side Run, one which may become the entirety of the blog if it works. It’s called The Rotation, and the plan is to touch… Read more »
I do this not to belittle Eric Karabell, whose tenure on the Baseball Today podcast was a delight and whose writing I quite enjoy, but because it has to be done. On the Baseball Tonight podcast… Read more »
One hundred twenty-four starting pitchers have thrown at least 100 innings in Major League Baseball this season. Of those, just 16 are 24 years old or younger, in terms of official baseball age. Matt Harvey… Read more »
The canary in the coal mine, for me, was Bryce Harper. Although just 20, Harper is one of the game’s bright lights, a potentially transcendent talent. He has top-of-the-scale power, but also a firm grasp… Read more »
The Red Sox took two out of three from the Dodgers over the weekend, becoming the first team in two and a half months to beat them in a series. By doing so, they held… Read more »
Anthony Rizzo is having a profoundly strange first full season in the Major Leagues. The Cubs first baseman signed a seven-year contract extension, ensuring he’s a long-term part of the team, but he’s hardly established… Read more »
We who follow baseball tend to drastically overrate and overstate our certainty about its future. It’s just the way of the world. So much data is now available to fans and pundits from every spot… Read more »
Look, I get it. A revolution that doesn’t happen in a hurry, that doesn’t come from its participants’ hearts in an uncontrollable rush, is not much of a revolution. It takes passion to create change,… Read more »
It’s August, which for many fans is the month of what George Will called baseball’s “long gathering of summer heat.” This is the time when the pageantry of the All-Star break and the intrigue of… Read more »
The Braves beat the Mets 4-1 Wednesday, maintaining a staggering 15-game edge in the NL East. They’re going to the playoffs, and while the loss of Jason Heyward (on a terrifying hit-by-pitch that broke his… Read more »
Baseball in the AL East gets a bad rap. The length of Red Sox-Yankees games, which results from a confluence of factors both worthy (both teams take long at bats, look to draw walks and put… Read more »
For an eighth-round pick who got less than $100,000 to sign in 2009, Paul Goldschmidt had an impressive cup of coffee with the Diamondbacks in 2011. He notched 18 extra-base hits and 20 walks in… Read more »
The Dodgers are still, if you count the games up right, one of the hottest teams in MLB history. The truth, though, is that The Streak (not consecutive games without a loss, but a sustained… Read more »
Ryan Dempster got his comeuppance Tuesday for throwing at Alex Rodriguez Sunday night. Major League Baseball suspended him for five games. Guess the pance wasn’t coming up as much as we thought. Dempster will also… Read more »
The news seemed to come from nowhere, and given what we’ve learned since, perhaps it did. The Chicago Cubs unexpectedly dealt David DeJesus to the Washington Nationals for a player to be named later, after… Read more »
On the first pitch he saw, Miguel Cabrera simply uncoiled. It wasn’t difficult, and it wasn’t majestic, and it wasn’t terribly impressive, since Bruce Chen was on the mound, but just like that, Cabrera had… Read more »
With the Minnesota Twins mired in a third straight slog of a season, it’s more than tempting to look for a silver lining in the storm. Sure, help is on the way, but the team… Read more »
Although an active and even hectic trade deadline period is a source of great joy to engaged baseball fans, I don’t know that it’s an absolute virtue. Player movement keeps the game fresh and exciting,… Read more »
It seems a remote possibility, but Jeff Samardzija should absolutely be on a roster other than that of the Chicago Cubs by the passing of Wednesday’s non-waiver trade deadline. That’s the one trade I’m eagerly… Read more »
On Tuesday night, the Milwaukee Brewers traded Francisco Rodriguez to the Baltimore Orioles for infield prospect Nick Delmonico. That’s convenient, because I had been meaning for a couple of days to talk about a certain… Read more »
The Washington Nationals were as close to a unanimous pre-season favorite to win their division as baseball has seen in 20 years. Despite the Braves’ splashy two-Upton winter, Washington got the plaudits from the punditry. Multiple… Read more »
Two major stories broke within 20 minutes of one another Monday afternoon. First, the Cubs finally finished trading Matt Garza, getting in return three prospects and a player (or two) to be named later from… Read more »
With just under 10 days left until the trade deadline, there are 13 bona fide contenders and buyers, and four fringe teams who better fit a buyer’s than a seller’s mold. Here’s what each of… Read more »
