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 [...]

Last year, Sir David Cameron of FanGraphs, in his infinite wisdom (read: Overreactionary flair for the dramatic), wrote how the St. Louis Cardinals deserved a big “Huzzah!” for their persistence sticking with Skip Schumaker at second base. Now, almost two years through the great Skip Schumaker experiment, the question remains, was the Cardinals move a [...]

If you happen to be a general manager of a fantasy team and your reaction to an imaginary reporter asking you about your league’s playoffs is the opposite of how Jim Mora would respond, then this article is for you.
We know Jim Mora’s Colts’ weren’t talking about playoffs, and were “lucky to just win a [...]

While a writer can make a career responding to Ozzie Guillen’s various rants, I generally refrain from responding to his inflammatory remarks. I know they’re largely made either from legitimate passion or cunning manipulativeness, but I couldn’t ignore his latest cracks about Latino players playing second fiddle to Asian players.
After all, now he’s picking on [...]

The flux capacitor is running, and we’re heading back to the Futures Game. The first edition covered the first five pitchers for the US team, and this round breaks down the final five. The opening quintet lasted six full innings, leaving just three remaining frames for the second half of the US pitching staff.
The pitch counts [...]

The crew over at Baseball-Reference does an excellent job of putting together posts using the site’s amazing Play Index tool to find interesting stats and factoids about the game. This quick post is an homage to the great work they do over there:
Last night, the Seattle Mariners scored less than 2 runs for a Major [...]

Tim McCarver made an analogy on Saturday that sparked a media firestorm not seen since the similarly controversial Titus Flavius Josephus compared 1st century Rome’s decadence to that of Old Testament cities Sodom and Gomorrah while he was covering chariot races at the Flavian Amphitheatre.  
The Jewish historian made his comments in regard to the newly built Colosseum in Rome, a historic stadium [...]

The top of this year’s draft was not as arm-centric as 2009, when 9 of the first 12 picks were pitchers, and 19 of 32 overall. This year the top dozen were balanced at six bats and six arms, and the trend continued throughout the first round, finishing with 15 pitchers among the first 32 [...]

“Today (today, today, today)… I consider myself (self, self, self)… The luckiest man (man, man, man)… On the face of the Earth!”
Forgive Lou Gehrig for making such a bold statement. If he knew that someday a pitcher would exist that was older than dirt, threw an 80-mph fastball (sometimes), and was unhittable, he would have [...]

I was watching some M’s and Cubs action on Thursday (pity me, I’ll take anything I can get at this point), and some things really had me scratching my head. Maybe there are good explanations, and feel free to comment letting me know what I’m missing, but here we go:
Rhetorical Question I:
Setting: Mariners @ [...]