From Jerry Crasnick’s Reds’ preview at ESPN: But the Reds win out because of their surplus of arms. Edinson Volquez, Johnny Cueto, Aaron Harang, Bronson Arroyo and Micah Owings make for one of baseball’s best 1-through-5 starting contingents. As astute Reds fans and Scrabble devotees have pointed out, you can take the first letters of […]

This is a link to the baseball page at the New York Times. Today the top nine (9) stories are about the new stadiums stadia in New York. I don’t think V-J Day got this kind of coverage. My favorite one is “Two New Baseball Palaces, One Stoic, One Scrappy.” How can a building be […]

The Merc’s Mark Purdy has a wish list for the Giants’ and Athletics’ seasons. Among the wishes: I want A’s catcher Kurt Suzuki to get an offer to endorse Suzuki motorcycles — and turn it down in favor of a Harley-Davidson endorsement. (And why hasn’t Harley-Davidson thought of this, anyway?) I want the Giants to […]

Today will be the last day for a long time in which the first post of the day will be “Today at THT.” Why? ShysterBall readers who date back before last October know why: the return of “And That Happened,” this blog’s quaint little daily recap feature. It resumes with the ballgames come Monday morning. […]

Purveyors of the knuckly arts are, above all else, survivors: Scott Baker’s Opening Night assignment has been called off. And so has the Philip Humber-R.A. Dickey roster competition. The right-hander was placed on the disabled list today after he experienced some stiffness in his right shoulder while pitching against Class AAA Norfolk on Wednesday. Baker […]

Last year the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bruce Jenkins ran a two-part piece in which he argued that teams should put more thought into their pitch counts, developing evaluation systems and protocols to determine when a pitcher is truly getting tired rather than simply impose a hard number of pitches on everyone. That’s actually a pretty […]

With the recent escalation in A’s relocation/ballpark news, it’s important to remember that generalists like me are dilettantes at best. Any time there’s an issue of any complexity, the blogosphere produces a focused star to really jam on it, and the star with respect to the A’s relocation drama is the New A’s Ballpark blog, […]

One of the bulwarks of the American justice system is that the ends of a prosecution — putting someone away for doing something wrong — do not necessarily justify the means of doing so. In fact, I would argue that the means are often more important than the ends, particularly in high profile cases which […]

We’ve gone over this about 1,378 times already, but guys like Wallace Matthews insist on saying that Joba Chamberlain would be more valuable in the bullpen than he would be in the rotation. Thankfully, Jason takes him to task, once again deploying the principle behind the name of his blog to good effect: With all […]

I’m not a big eater at ballgames. I almost always eat something elsewhere before going into the ballpark, so if I do get something during the game it’s usually a hot dog just for the hell of it or some peanuts to munch on or, if it’s really hot, maybe a small dish of ice […]