Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

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 [...]

It’s not the reason the Philadelphia Phillies lost tonight. The fact they managed just 2 runs in 16 innings was. On the other hand, the ejection of Ryan Howard by umpire Scott Barry following a bizarre mocking by Barry of Howard a few pitches before, in the 14th inning of a crucial MLB game in [...]

The pitching motion is temperamental. Throwing a baseball is physically similar to swinging a golf club, particularly when it comes to timing and sequencing of movement, and anyone who swings the wrenches knows how difficult it can be to find consistency. The slightest mechanical tweak can throw a pitcher’s delivery completely out of whack.
I submit [...]

Right around the All-Star Break, we called up “Column To Be Named Later” to be a regular feature at BDD and so far it’s mainly been a way for this writer to bring attention to what he has felt has been some poor writing/analysis about today’s game. To be fair, today’s will be used to [...]

Don’t let Carson Cistulli fool you, when you become a manager in Major League Baseball, no matter how short your future is in that position, when you’re in, you’re in. So, to answer the question from Cistulli’s recent post at Mariner fanboy blog U.S.S. Mariner, “Heck yeah!”
While a few thousand words could be spent picking [...]

To borrow a line from Tommy Boy, I could get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull’s ass, but I’d rather take the butcher’s word for it. The same applies to bad baseball teams and Joe Posnanski who grew up in Cleveland and has written about the Kansas City [...]

Much has been made of Stephen Strasburg’s innings count this season, and the fact that the Nats will not allow the phenom to surpass 160 innings (combined majors and minors). The talk quieted when shoulder inflammation sent Stras to the DL, effectively shaving a couple of starts from his 2010 total. Stras was sitting at [...]

We knew it wasn’t Z’s fault in Seattle hence Don Wakamatsu became the 6th manager to join the ranks of the unemployed this year. Here is a breakdown of who else was canned and how their replacements have done:

It’s likely the Mariners managerial change will be the last in-season move unless the Indians give up [...]

Earlier this week, Pat Andriola of FanGraphs took a shot at explaining the damage done when teams miss out on the concept of marginal utility. Like a Shaquille O’Neal free throw, Andriola’s example clanked off the rim.
To be fair to Andriola, he’s a Mets fan. After a 6-run 8th inning from a Phillies’ offense standing [...]

I’ve never been a big fan of Pythagorean W-L as a tool for any sort of analysis. There’s something of taking a cumulative statistic and applying it to game-by-game results for any sort of insight into a team’s ability or inability to achieve on the field.
Typically, I will discuss how 20 runs scored and 4 [...]