The Rockies don’t seem to have much of a question mark around their fifth starter as the Dodgers or the Diamondbacks. Jason Hammel is generally being conceded the job, but a discussion at Inside Pulse reminds us of the presence of Jhoulys Chacin and southpaw Franklin Morales. Morales pitched in relief quite a bit in 2009, [...]

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 [...]

Our guess is that if you found a Padres fan who woke up from a coma, he was awfully confused when looking at a newspaper last season. For those of us who weren’t in a coma, it probably still was a little surprising to see Tony Gwynn grace a Padres lineup again… especially a less [...]

Every great western features a climactic showdown, with the main characters settling their differences in a final hail of gunfire. Much like their National League counterparts, the teams of the American League West are set up for an epic final act to the 2010 season. The race is wide open to every club in the [...]

The financial world has it’s Wall Street, baseball has Oakland. At least that is what it looked like last year as GM Billy Beane added Matt Holliday for a few promising commodities and some penny stocks then dealt him mid-season for a haul that had a better 52-week outlook from their analysts. Of the three [...]

So, you want to know about the Blue Jays, eh? There are many new faces, Roy Halladay is gone and they still play in baseball’s toughest division. Since there’s no reason to drink wine in baseball, their likely trip to the cellar in the East isn’t good, and will likely register more losses at Fenway [...]

Today we begin a new regular feature here at BDD called Down the Line. This will be our little attempt to bring the baseball world closer to our readers by linking to some of the great work around the web…much like our esteemed colleague Tommy Bennett does at Baseball Prospectus. We’ll focus a little less on Sabermetrics though…you [...]

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 [...]

Injuries, clubhouse turmoil, and a disappointing second half collapse foiled the Houston Astros 2009 plans. An off-season roster re-tooling, a new manager (this time actually hired by the team’s General Manager!), and a few budding prospects has hopes renewed… but what team isn’t hopeful in March? Brian Joseph figuratively visits Houston and gives his outlook [...]

There are quite a few Asian stories for the upcoming season—a topic for an upcoming column—but many of them focus on the fate of Japanese pitchers in 2010. Some of those questions were answered with the opening of Spring Training, and I’ll run down a few of them here.
Daisuke Matsuzaka lost most of last season [...]