The Atlanta Braves have outrighted right-handed pitcher Kenshin Kawakami to Double-A Mississippi. Were Kawakami’s 7-12 record and 3.86 ERA “good enough” for the Braves in 2009? Clearly, they’ve blanched at his 1-10, 5.15 line from 2010. But is that a reasonable response? As MLBTR points out, Kawakami’s 2010 peripherals were very close to the line […]

Actual words from the Rawlings website about the Rawlings Gold Glove award, and a bit of editing to update it. “Just over 50 years ago, a Rawlings sales manager named Elmer Blasco made the observation that well over half of the pros in the game wore a Rawlings glove. It didn’t take him long to […]

Recently, Bill James released the The 2011 Bill James Handbook. You can imagine my delight when, in the book’s annual section on managers, I read the following bit on page 362: Hey, I’ve never done this before, but I’m going to use this space to endorse a book, sort of. Chris Jaffe has written a […]

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I thought I’d pass along Gary Bedingfield’s Baseball in Wartime website, where you can find everything from biographies, book reviews, MLB players who served in the military in WWII, and so much more. For all you veterans out there, thank you for your service.

The Mets hire Paul DePodesta, ESPN fires Joe Morgan and sabermetric baseball fans are dancing in the street. Bud Selig claims that yes, Abner Doubleday did invent baseball and MLB awards a Gold Glove to Derek Jeter and those same fans are now in the bar, muttering in their beers. Progress or not?

Today, the New York Yankees celebrate shortstop Derek Jeter’s fifth Gold Glove. Specifically, infield coach Mick Kelleher had the following to say of Cap’n Jete’s work in the field: It has all come up to a very high level. Whether he’s fielding ground balls right at him, a slow roller going to his right on […]

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to the Hardball Times Annual 2011: The Hardball Times Annual proudly displays statistics you won’t find anywhere else, Batted Ball Stats. Even web sites like FanGraphs and Baseball Reference don’t provide what you can find in the Annual. I like to think of these numbers as a […]

The San Francisco Giants have successfully dispatched another major league season and with Disneyland just a few hours south, one would hope that the victorious Gigantes can find a more exotic celebratory destination. But while the Giants hit the awards circuit, baseball writers plow on sans fresh material. Enter the retrospective World Series Edition. There […]

As many out there in reader-land likely already know, Sparky Anderson – Hall of Fame manager – recently died, due to complications from dementia. I feel obligated to say something about Anderson having written a book on baseball managers that covers Anderson (among others). A few general observations: He’s younger than you think. He was […]

I was inspired to create a one-time special section in this year’s Hardball Times Annual. Due to all of the good material we were receiving related to fielding statistics, it made sense to create a section devoted to this hot topic in sabermetrics. Five terrific articles were submitted that seemed to fit together like a […]