I’m off to a running start this week, with new stuff up at Baseball Prospectus and Pinstriped Bible today. The BP piece assembles a bunch of take-home points from the three games I spent at Yankee Stadium over the past week, watching the Yanks duke it out with the Rays and Red Sox. I’ve got [...]
Real Quick Like
It’s been a busy week so far, and it’s only getting busier. Here’s what I’m selling:
• A quick follow-up to my recent Phil Hughes take, re-examining some of my earlier assumptions in the wake of more data. It turns out I was wrong about which pitches of his are leading to more groundballs, and which [...]
What’s Eating A-Rod?
For the Baseball Prospectus/ESPN Insider soup du jour, I join forces with Will Carroll to examine Alex Rodriguez’s struggles, which saw him benched for Friday and Saturday’s games amid an 8-for-55 June swoon that dragged his overall line down to .212/.370/.462. Here’s a taste:
The schadenfreudians might believe that Rodriguez is receiving a cosmic comeuppance for [...]
Young Guns, Old Clip
Last week’s WWZN Young Guns radio hit, discussing Russ Ortiz’s short-lived lead over namesake David in the 2009 home run rankings, the possibility of the Blue Jays remaining factors in the AL East, the sudden power outbursts of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, and other fun stuff. The segment was recorded via iPhone while I [...]
Mo’ Manny, Mo’ A-Rod
Baseball Musings’ David Pinto picks up the link from my last post and wonders if teams will stand pat in the face of the Dodgers losing Manny Ramirez for 50 games:
The Diamondbacks fired their manager, so does a change of field leadership improve the team? Do the Giants try to trade for a bat to [...]
The Replacement Killers
Another one of my Baseball Prospectus pieces syndicated on ESPN Insider, this one on trying to quantify what the absences of Alex Rodriguez and other stars would cost their teams in terms of runs and wins:
When the news on Alex Rodriguez’s hip injury broke last week, the Baseball Prospectus crew brainstormed a few possible solutions [...]
Chatterboxscore
Friday’s Baseball Prospectus chat was one of the most enjoyable ones I’ve done in recent memory, the happy coincidence of a fun time of year, a good batch of questions, and a lack of the technical gremlins which have created a distraction in every one of my chats in recent memory. A few anwers covering [...]
It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Coverage
In addition to flattering me with some choice casting, El Lefty Malo (a/k/a Alex Lash, a mentor from way back) raised a provocative question in this post last week: is sabermetrics anti-labor?
One thing about our sabremetric era that doesn’t get discussed much: it’s inherently anti-labor. “Efficiencies” is not a word workers want to hear from [...]
The Dumbest Article in the History of Stupid, and other A-Roid Tales
The Alex Rodriguez story took a new turn on Monday evening, as A-Rod submitted to an exclusive interview by ESPN’s Peter Gammons in which he admitted to using steroids from 2001 to 2003 while a member of the Texas Rangers. While the interview was relatively softball — the hand-picked Gammons is about as threatening as [...]