Mariners 7, Yankees 4: Cliff Lee throws his third straight complete game. How Nick Swisher managed to hit two homers off him I have no idea, but West Virginia boys who go on to Ohio State are cunning and resourceful by nature. Phil Hughes got beat up. I’m sure all sorts of people will be […]

This is a feature I hope to be able to contribute weekly by highlighting one or more college players from the Cape Cod Baseball League. This week I’ll focus on Kolten Wong from the University of Hawai’i. Wong will be trying out for Team USA later this month but he has played for Orleans in […]

If you want a list of hottest hitters in the Majors right now, Josh Hamilton should be number one on the list. And I’m not saying that because he has a 21 game hitting streak. If I was, I would have said he is tied for first with Jose Guillen (of all players) for hottest […]

Relax – this has nothing to do with politics. Then again, it doesn’t have too much to do with baseball, but .. .. As some of you out there in readerland may have heard, Robert Byrd, the 92-year-old U. S. Senator from West Virginia just died. This gives me an excuse to do something I […]

The 2010 episode of interleague play is now complete. While the National League managed to tighten to margin somewhat in this final week, it wasn’t enough, as the American League prevailed overall by a tally of 134 wins to 118. Interestingly, the Pythagorean record indicated by the leagues’ comparative runs scored (1,168 for the AL […]

To be a Pittsburgh Pirates fan is to experience frequent heartbreak and heartburn. Surely, not all is hopeless. The current front office, led by GM Neal Huntington, scouting director Greg Smith and director of player development Kyle Stark, has made a concerted effort to invest in young, cost-controlled talent. Pittsburgh opened a state-of-the-art training facility […]

Athletics 3, Pirates 2: Kurt Suzuki should have been out number three in the eighth inning, but Pirates’ catcher Jason Jaramillo dropped a pop foul and two pitches later Suzuki hit the game winning dinger. Losing like that would be a total back breaker for Pirates fans if their bones hadn’t been ground to dust […]

Having just spent an entire post “putting down” Sandy Koufax, I’d thought I’d follow up by examining the question of whether Sandy Koufax’s peak was the best of all time. Instead of referring to WAR or WSAB, I decided to use “Situation-Adjusted WPA” or “Game-state adjusted wOBA” or some mouthful like that. It’s just WPA/LI. […]

Early in the year, Boston was being eaten alive by the opponents’ base stealers. The Red Sox allowed 36 stolen bases in their first 16 games, with only one runner caught stealing. This was capped by the Texas Rangers stealing nine bases off of Tim Wakefield and Victor Martinez in the game on April 20. […]

A few years ago, I wrote an article called The Best Pitchers of All Time. It was an admittedly grandiose title, one intended to get lots of hits from search engines and that sort of thing. The article itself was a vehicle for rolling out a variation of Bill James’ Win Shares system I had […]