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 [...]

All Star festivities get a bad rap these days, but at least one event continues to grab my attention year after year: The Futures Game. The greatest prospects of the minor leagues are put on a single stage, from low-A greenhorns to polished AAA players auditioning for the big show.
The game stats are pretty meaningless, but [...]

The last four years have been tough on Dontrelle Willis. He started his Major League career with a bang, winning the 2003 National League Rookie of the Year award along with a shiny World Series ring when his Florida Marlins bested the New York Yankees in six games (thanks, Steve Bartman!). From 2003 to [...]

Prior to yesterday’s 5-3 win over the Boston Red Sox, the Philadelphia Phillies had lost 14 of their previous 19 games, a losing percentage of .737. In that span of time, the offense collectively got on base at a .292 clip and slugged .303. If Charlie Manuel instead cloned Eric Bruntlett eight times and sent [...]

For all of the criticism that they seem to get, video games really can do some good. I mess around quite a bit in baseball video games, and it helps me learn about players that I never would have heard about otherwise. While no one should use it to learn about a player’s skill (Jermaine [...]

Stephen Strasburg’s debut was so highly anticipated that the first pitch to Andrew McCutcheon was removed from the game, to be immediately sent to the Hall of Fame. Never before has a ballplayer’s debut attracted such national attention, and the expectations were impossibly high. 
Still, the rookie was unflappable. Rather than crumble beneath the Don King-shaped [...]

The Chicago Cubs and the Seattle Mariners swapped free agent blunders over the winter, with Carlos Silva heading to the North Side in exchange for Milton Bradley. From Chicago’s standpoint, the deal wasn’t motivated by a firm belief in Silva’s ability to contribute. Rather, the impetus for the trade was a combination of salary relief (the Cubs saved a [...]

Our sequel begins where the original left off, with Stephen Strasburg having just completed foot strike …
From Foot Strike to Release Point
The sequence of events is critical after foot strike, with several mechanical elements taking place in the span of about a quarter-second. It’s extremely important that a pitcher waits until after foot strike to begin [...]

…throughout the past decade. Since it can take years to find out how teams fared in making their draft selections, it doesn’t make much sense to hand out draft grades for Tuesday’s draft. But it is possible to take a look back at the past decade and assess whether teams have been successful or whether [...]

A sold out crowd… in Washington… on a Tuesday night. Such is the impact of one Stephen Strasburg, making perhaps the most anticipated debut in the history of Major League Baseball.
This is just one of a thousand articles that will be written about the rookie right-hander this week, so allow me to differentiate this piece [...]