It’s time again for the top games of the week. date game stars 06-04 Athletics @ Red Sox ** box score 06-04 Cubs @ Cardinals ** box score 05-31 Rangers @ Rays * box score 06-01 Giants @ Cardinals * box score 06-04 Tigers @ White Sox * box score The month of May is […]

Three consecutive triples? Five consecutive infield singles? It has been an interesting few days for consecutive events in baseball. That got me looking for some other consecutive events in Retrosheet’s play-by-play data and one really stands out, at least to me. On July 11, 1953, the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Browns had 21 consecutive […]

He gave up some runs and took the loss, but Lance Lynn’s debut for the Cardinals was actually pretty good. Working into the sixth inning, Lynn didn’t walk a single Giant, hit one with a pitch and allowed four base hits. Everyone who reached base scored. Digging into the game story reveals just how good […]

Albert Pujols, the player widely considered baseball’s best over the last several years, is having a season that’s not even close to the top on his own team, let alone throughout the majors. (Of course, if Pujols was having another typical year and was still far from the best player on his team, St. Louis […]

What a dead night for baseball. Only six games plus the day tilt in New York. All night my Twitter feed was filled with people talking about the NBA (15%) and the damn spelling bee (85%).  And between the two of those things I don’t think there’s any more human misery possible to unleash on […]

Dustin Ackley is on a hot streak. The 23-year-old second baseman, in his second year at Triple-A in the Marine’s system, had a batting average/on base percentage/slugging average of .355/.449/.606 in 30 May games after a sluggish .211/.336/.305 April. Two years after the Mariners made Ackley the second overall draft pick out of the University […]

Mike Fast at Baseball Prospectus has done a good job, in two articles (here and here), looking at the nuances of the umpires’ strike zones and pondering about why umpires get things wrong. Even the PITCHf/x data are almost a hindrance to discovery; based on how they are is collected and what is missing. One […]

Orioles 2, Mariners 1: I, for one, welcome our new Adam Jones overlords. Jones was the hero of the day, hitting what proved to be the game-winning home run and making an absolutely sick, sick catch. Royals 2, Angels 0: No one did bupkis until the bottom of the ninth when Jeff Francoeur reached on a […]

Fifty years ago today, the Giants and Dodgers played possibly the most bizarre half-inning in baseball history. It’s an inning I remember reading about in one of the Baseball Hall of Shame books that came out when I was a kid. It’s the bottom of the ninth in Los Angeles, and the Giants cling to […]

When the Phillies selected utility man Michael Martinez in the Rule V draft, there was little fanfare. He was seen as spring training competition for Wilson Valdez with no more than an outside shot of breaking camp with the club. Once Chase Utley hit the skids, a larger opportunity opened for Martinez and he made […]