Don’t hate the messenger Rays’ fans: While there was a lot of whining about being stuck in baseball’s toughest division, Tampa Bay played down to the rest of the weaker American League, posting a 31-41 record against the AL Central and AL West. In the elite division in baseball, that’s just not going to get [...]

With the news of Joe Nathan’s elbow and Angel Guzman’s shoulder coming down the pike during this past week, Jason Frasor has become a very popular name in trade rumors. I bet most of you are asking the same question: “Who is Jason Frasor?”
Without getting too existential (Who are we, really?), I will tell you [...]

With pitchers and catcher showing up this past week and position players getting ready for their grand entrance, all kinds of stories are coming out of clubhouses in Arizona and Florida. Most of them have to do about players arriving in the best shape of their lives, with lasik eye surgery and a new found [...]

Zach Sanders adds to the perception that if you like the numbers side of baseball and write about baseball mostly on the Internet, you must be a Mariners fan. (Did they have Laptop Day at the old Kingdome or something?)  You can find @zvsanders all over the ‘net, too: here, FanGraphs and MLB Notebook all [...]

The boys over at Project Prospect and First Inning have been busy this offseason, and all of their hard work has been justified with the soon to be released Digital Prospect Guide, a completely computerized booklet of information on the top prospects in baseball.
Let’s go through the good, bad, and ugly of the DPG.
Good:

Advanced statistics, including wOBA, [...]

A while back (approximately two weeks ago) Bill “The Sports Guy” Simmons mentioned something on his podcast that really got me thinking. He said that it feels like sabermetrics were ruining baseball for him. He felt that he could not watch a game anymore without knowing a players VORP or other advanced metric, and that [...]

MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart is reporting that the Astros have signed Pedro Feliz. The deal is reportedly for one-year, and $4 million.
Feliz, a third baseman, played last season with the Philadelphia Phillies. During 2009 in the city of brotherly love, Feliz batted .266/.308/.386 with 12 homers. He also posted a wOBA of .302, with a line drive [...]

The Astros have signed Brandon Lyon to a 3-year, $15 million deal to be their closer. Earlier in the day, they let LaTroy Hawkins sign with the Brewers and traded for Matt Lindstrom, who appears to be their setup man.
This deal could be described as “bad”, and that may be putting it lightly. Why, you [...]

For the second offseason in a row, the free agent compensation system will limit the market for a handful of players. To those of you unaware of the free agent compensation system, here are some brief points to educate you.

The system is used to compensate teams unable to sign their top players leaving via free [...]

Tracee Hamilton shares this tidbit from the Arizona Fall League:
So do the players really care about the AFL championship? Nats reliever Jeff Mandel says yes.
Mandel and his Phoenix Desert Dogs teammates, champions of the East division, will play the Peoria Javelinas at 2:30 p.m. ET Saturday. The game will be televised on the MLB Network [...]