Let’s start from the obvious: Losing Joe Nathan for the year is a bad thing, maybe even a very bad thing. However, if losing the closer completely derails what appeared to be a very promising season, then chances are that the odds of playoff success weren’t that high in the first place.
The Twins are in [...]

I’m not great at identifying players based solely on their line, but in this case, anonymity is exactly what’s needed to compare these two outfielders.
At age 23:
Player A: .255/.309/.380 9 HR 26 BB 72 K for an OPS+ of 73 and an EqA of .236 in 135 games
Player B: .284/.308/.425 12 HR 12 BB 92 [...]

It’s been three weeks since the Twins “signed” Joe Mauer to that 10-year, $220 million extension, and since that evening— when the rumor was debunked—things have been very, very quiet. Not that the lack of information should be that surprising, Mauer isn’t exactly a lover of limelight and his agent, Ron Shapiro, is more Johnny [...]

It hasn’t gained the publicity of the post-Moneyball OBP revolution, but there is a change slowly making its way through baseball. It started with the Rays, the Rangers continued it, and now the White Sox hope that they can become the next team to ride an improved defense to a better finish in their division.
The [...]

After Game 163, I went on Marty Andrade’s podcast and said what I’d been thinking for a long time: We’ve judged Bill Smith too quickly.
His first winter on the job, he was essentially handed something of a crisis in the making. Torii Hunter was asking for an unholy sum of money and Johan Santana was [...]

Among the things that struck me with the arrival of 2010 was a new found excitement for the opening of Target Field.
As a lifelong Twins fan, I spent many a night twisted half around in my seat to face home plate instead of somewhere between second base and the centerfielder, phenomenal seats for the Vikings [...]

Even though Chone Figgins, Placido Polanco, and Pedro Feliz have been signed to play third base, the market is far from depleted. Free agents from Adrian Beltre to Troy Glaus are still teamless, which would be more surprising but for last year’s Type-A debacle, where players like Orlando Hudson and Juan Cruz remained on the [...]

It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that Kelly Johnson was non-tendered by the Braves, after all his 2009 season was a poor one and he had all but lost his job Martin Prado. What should be a surprise is that he was let go just 10 hours before the deadline as the Braves were [...]

The free-agent market officially opened last week, ushered in by a flurry of important signings that could truly change the game. Or a general malaise, one of the two, I forget which.
Anyone who studies market trends in baseball can tell you that a high volume of deals get done as the windows are closing, not [...]