On Friday, the Cardinals announced they had signed outfielder Jim Edmonds, bringing one of their most high-profile player of the last 15 years back home to roost in St. Louis. Well, maybe. It’s a minor league deal, meaning Edmonds isn’t on the 40-man roster and isn’t guaranteed anything beyond the opportunity in spring training to […]

Yesterday, reports came out that the Rangers are (again) exploring the idea of trading Michael Young to the Colorado Rockies. Since his role became diminished this offseason, Young’s current contract and unwillingness to play as “Super-Utility Man” could become a problem for the Rangers as next season plays out. Of course, this is mere speculation, […]

Ah, it’s that time of year when baseball news is scarce. This week there’s the usual retiring of baseball players who everyone thought would retire and actually did. These always bring about the standard, “Is he a Hall of Famer?” discussions. Then there’s this year’s countdown to Spring Training , fully equipped with its own […]

This has been on my to-do list for a long time. I’ve updated our Glossary, including a short discussion of replacement level and definitions of some advanced sabermetric stats, such as Clutch. I hope you’ll find this useful. Let me know if you have suggestions for other items you’d like to see included in the […]

Vladimir Guerrero has signed a one-year, $8 million contract with the Orioles of Baltimore. According to Enrique Rojas of ESPNDeportes, the deal includes performance incentives and is still pending a physical. The Orioles have loaded up on practically every power-hitting free swinger available to them on the free agent market this offseason. The question is […]

The truth is, most of them have been up for about a month now, but we finally put up the last batch this morning, and now, in addition to over 9,000 projections, major league playing time forecasts, and MLEs, THT Forecasts subscribers also have access to well over 1,000 player comments written by some of […]

The Hardball Times has been around a long time, and we’ve printed a lot of cutting-edge baseball research over the years. Unfortunately, those old articles can be hard to find, given that there are over 10,000 pieces on the site. So we’ve decided to make it easier for you. Here is a list of all […]

The surge of non-information around the Albert Pujols contract negotiations is hardly interesting. Both parties have upheld their stance on keeping quiet about the progress (or lack thereof) of negotiations. Let’s face it, it’s all rather boring. But with a little outside the box thinking, there are a few possibilities no one mentions. Think of […]

I am alternately amused and irritated when I read stories on the internet that tell how “Sudden Sam” McDowell got his nickname. They usually say that he received the sobriquet from other ballplayers, who said something like, “His fastball arrives at the plate all of a sudden…” Sports Illustrated, for one, has that fable in […]

There’s been a big brouhaha lately about home field advantage in sports. This has been caused by the publication of a new book, Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won, in which the authors claim that biased umpiring accounts for most of a team’s home field advantage. I believe […]