Last year I wrote a column on the coolest home run hitters of all-time. These refer to people who hit especially fun or interesting homers, such as inside-the-park ones, walk-off homers, grand slams, pinch hit ones, etc. Well, today marks 20,000 days since the coolest homer of them all. Exactly that many days ago, Roberto […]

White Sox 3, Yankees 2: Rafael Soriano’s tenure in New York could not be starting worse. Last night he came in with a 2-1 lead in the eighth and gave up a two-run homer to Paul Konerko that proved to be the game winner. In the ninth Brent Lillibridge saved the day with two game-saving catches in […]

Angels 5, Athletics 0: Jered Weaver continues his early season dominance with a seven-hit, ten-strikeout shutout. Last week I said that he and Haren are like Dback-era Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. That comp was off the top of my head, but it has some validity at the moment as Weaver is the first pitcher […]

15,000 days ago, baseball quietly entered a new era. 15,000 days ago, baseball quietly entered a new era. On that day, the Seattle Pilots franchise—after just one year of existence—ceased to exist. They were declared bankrupt. The franchise is dead, long live the franchise! You see, that same day, purchasing the club was a man […]

Braves 9, Giants 6: The Braves should have had this one won in regulation, but Fredi Gonzalez apparently fell asleep while reliever Jairo Ascencio poured kerosene all over the place and lit a match in the seventh inning. Maybe the warmth made Gonzalez’s nap more cozy. I don’t know. All I know is that by […]

Twenty-five years ago today, baseball witnessed one of its greatest, and certainly most unlikely, homers of all-time. No, not the Rick Camp homer. If it was that game, I wouldn’t have used the “one of” qualifier last sentence. No, something happened 25 years ago today that hasn’t happened since. In fact, April 25, 1986 was […]

Welcome to the Easter edition of top games of the week. Please refer to the More than three decades of exciting games article to understand how the games are ranked. Remember, five stars is for once-in-a-lifetime games, four is for potentially best-of-the-decade contest. date game stars 04-20 Padres @ Cubs *** 04-21 Braves @ Dodgers […]

And with that, I have fulfilled my pop culture reference quota for the year. Steve Slowinski of FanGraphs wrote a nice piece on wOBA the other day, comparing it to OPS. In the comments section, reader Andy posted the following question: Why are strikeouts not included in wOBA? i would imagine that they have more […]

The former prospect reclamation project continues in Pittsburgh. Strange, it doesn’t seem too long ago that a skinny 19-year-old shortstop named Brandon Wood first gained attention after clubbing 43 home runs in the Cal League. The year was 2005, and the bandwagon runneth over as Angels fans eagerly awaited the next franchise-changing shortstop to arrive […]

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of change. You just . . . come out the other side…Or don’t.” – Stephen King, The Stand Hopefully, we all know […]