From the strange mind of Richard Dansky: Tony La Russa has the same sort of unholy fascination with Nick Stavinoha that your average Lovecraft protagonist does with the Necronomicon. No good can come of it, there’s a lot of consonants involved, and in the end, everyone’s reduced to a sort of mindless gibbering.

Cleveland Frowns does not like the Cliff Lee trade, but it’s for bigger picture reasons, not necessarily because of the return realized by Mark Shapiro: But it becomes harder and harder to care about how these trades pan out as it becomes easier and easier to be sure that any real star developed by the […]

As anyone who reads “And That Happened” on a regular basis knows, I’m a box score fetishist, and because of it, I’ve often thought of Henry Chadwick — the man credited as inventing the box score — as the feature’s patron saint. Except it’s not quite that clear that he did invent the box score. […]

Yankees 6, Rays 2: Via Facebook, I leaned that Jason from IIATMS and I made the almost simultaneous observation about Joba last night: that he clearly watched Mark Buehrle pitch last week and decided that he was going to be a fast worker too. He was pretty clunky looking at such a pace, but you […]

On Monday Daisuke Matsusaka spouted off. Yesterday, Terry Francona and John Farrell spouted back. Today, we may have achieved detente: But it appears that, contrary to speculation, this relationship can be salvaged. During his weekly radio appearance on WEEI’s “Dale and Holley Show,” Francona said he spoke to the starting pitcher on Wednesday morning and […]

MooseinOhio has a friend named Mike, who has followed the Indians for decades and decades. His friend reacted somewhat colorfully to the news of the Cliff Lee trade, and all involved were gracious enough to share that reaction with the rest of us: Only Cleveland would trade the reigning Cy Young Pitcher who is currently […]

Because Lord Haw Haw always seems to rile you people up: #sfgiants in serious talks for freddy sanchez. bowker, frandsen, guzman 3 of many names being discussed. Sanchez would actually be a really good pickup for the Giants.

Sorry for the silence over here. Kind of a crazy day, as I pinch hit for the travelling Aaron Gleeman over at CTB. I had figured it would be two or three sleepy posts, but then Lee gets traded, the Pirates and Mariners trade a good chunk of their junk back and forth, and J.P. […]

All of the cool kids are on their way to the SABR convention in D.C., so I’m doing a little extra duty over at the Blue Network this morning: Vin Scully, legend; Bill Plaschke, idiot. Dustin Pedroia will tell you: length doesn’t matter. Nats Park gets more expensive. Dice-K is starting to get the beatdown […]

Padres 3, Reds 2: If the recaps suffer a bit today it’s because I was at a bar saying goodbye to a good friend last night (a friend longtime ShysterBall readers will remember, actually). Mark and I used to work at the same law firm together, and once I left at the end of last […]