This generation’s Oakland A’s have been a boring team on the basepaths, employing an organizational philosophy that eschews the risk of a caught stealing by leaving their runners parked on the bag. This trend suddenly changed in 2009, with the A’s attempting 181 stolen bases. This marked the highest franchise total in 16 years, and [...]

Kevin Youkilis is a good baseball player. A very valuable one at that. Since earning regular playing time in 2006, he has never had an on-base percentage lower than .381 and has finished with a .958 and .961 OPS the last two seasons. That would be enough to impress you, but he’s also regarded as [...]

Kahlil Greene, former San Dieo Padres prospect, had his contract voided by the Texas Rangers on Thursday. His ongoing battle with social anxiety disorder has flipped his career upside down.

My goodness, the Washington Nationals have been bad. Since moving out of Montreal after the 2004 season, the Nats have won 343 games and lost 466 for a .424 winning percentage. They have finished dead last in the NL East in four out of five seasons, and fourth once in 2007.  In that time span, [...]

The phrase “in the best shape of his life” and its variants are a sportswriting cliche these days. Players who had disappointing performances in 2009 will show up to spring training several pounds slimmer, will have adopted a new strenuous workout regimen, and/or will have developed a new pitch or batting stance. This gives fans [...]

The great Frank Thomas has called it quits, putting the last bit of punctuation at the end of the awe-inspiring sentence he called a career. Dubbed “The Big Hurt”, Thomas terrorized American League pitching for 19 seasons, 16 of which were spent in Chicago’s South Side with the White Sox. Now that his spikes are [...]

From 2001-09 with an average payroll of only $54 million, the Minnesota Twins somehow managed to win 88 games per season on average. In those nine seasons, they earned a post-season berth on five different occasions. The Florida Marlins and Oakland Athletics are the prototypical examples of teams that achieved a lot with very little, [...]

the players are the investments of 30 Major League teams and each team has a right to ensure that those investments are able to return a profit. As Jason Rosenberg would say, “It’s about the money, stupid!”

Let me start by saying that I used to be a real big fan of Ben Sheets. Back in 2005, I traded a boatload to acquire him mid-season in my long-running NL-only fantasy keeper league. At the time Sheets was 26-years old and coming off of a breakout season with incredible ratios, including an eye-popping [...]

As Vegas Watch points out, PECOTA is the best in the business at doing what it does.