It’s unlikely that the Twins will boast the AL MVP in 2010—Justin Morneau had a legitimate shot given his first half and Joe Mauer has been among baseball’s best in the second half, but the full-year efforts of Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, and Josh Hamilton make it extremely tough to believe that a Twin will [...]

Garrett Atkins wasn’t the most sought-after commodity last offseason, but the Orioles were far from the only team interested in him. Now, just three months into the season, Atkins has been designated for assignment and has told the Orioles that he will not accept a minor-league assignment, meaning he’ll be out of Baltimore even if [...]

In case you’ve been living under a cave: 2009’s first overall pick, one Stephen Strasburg, is about to make his debut for the Washington Nationals.
Strasmas (hat tip to @SacksJacked) has become baseball’s newest Holliday (or Halladay if you prefer) and Tuesday will mark the first time it’s celebrated. Strasburg’s starts will still be specticles for [...]

Is umpiring an impossible job?
Wednesday night’s multiple incidents of Adventures in Umpiring—the more famous one in Detroit and the one that actually cost a team a game in Seattle—have once again brought the debate about instant replay out of the shadows and into the public spectrum. In a statement released Thursday, Bud Selig said that [...]

If the early AL voting totals told us that Yankee fans had been voting en masse, early NL voting puts Cardinals fans and Phillies fans in a dog fight for voting primacy. The AL votes were close to my expectations at all but two positions, but the NL totals are varying wildly from the real [...]

It’s now been about a month since MLB opened All-Star voting. If I had my druthers, we’d just now be passing out ballots, but, as usual, no one asked me. Instead, the first press release with voting totals emerged Monday afternoon. Until now, this exercise has been pretty academic, but once those results came in, [...]

Yes, the Twins are having bullpen issues, just like everyone expected they would.
Well, not quite. Jon Rauch has filled in admirably for Joe Nathan, posting a 1.28 WXRL so far, which is good for fifth in the American League. The closer hasn’t been the Twins’ issue, but it does relate to some of their troubles. [...]

Reading through Delmon Young’s player comments from the Baseball Prospectus Annual is like a tour of lowered expectations. They start bright as the sun: consensus #1 prospect in the game, impact bat in right field, all around stud. Then the concerns start: no discipline, swings at everything, can’t walk, etc. The trade that brought him [...]

MLB.com opened voting for the All-Star Game some about two weeks ago, which I postulated was about a month too early. There have now been two more weeks of games since they opened voting, and the teams have changed much less than I thought they would.
As always, Hitters and starting pitchers chosen via WARP-1, relievers [...]

It doesn’t take much baseball acumen to look at Roy Hallday’s start with the Phillies and be impressed. Everything that a pitcher can do for his team, he’s doing. He’s limiting runners (.98 WHIP), if someone gets on, he’s not allowing them to score (1.80 ERA and a 2.03 RA), and he’s pitching deep into [...]