Unless you were up late watching the Padres and the Cardinals Wednesday night, you probably missed a heads-up piece of baserunning. In the bottom of the ninth inning, the Padres asked Will Venable to attempt a sacrifice bunt. He was to move Chris Denorfia (the potential winning run) into scoring position. He failed. Sort of. […]

Mets 8, Phillies 0: In light the Phillies’ struggles against Tim Wakefied and R.A. Dickey (6 IP, 7 H, 0 ER, 7K), the Mets are rumored to have offered contracts to Charlie Hough and Steve Sparks, the Braves are trying to persuade Phil Niekro to come out of retirement , the Nationals have been in […]

In short, I’ll probably dispose of “Watch” and just stick with swing rates in three regions. As suggested by Tango and others, I’ve broken pitch locations down into three groups: {exp:list_maker}In Tight Zone (ITZ) Paint, Knees or Letters (PKL) Outside Wide Zone (OWZ) {/exp:list_maker} The zones are based on player height with a sprinkle of […]

Four games? That’s it? Blimey. Red Sox 6, Rays 1: Clay Buchholz continues Boston’s string of nice starts as the Sox (a) beat the Rays for the first time in five tries; and (b) move to four games over .500 for the first time all season. David Ortiz homered for the fifth time in his […]

In today’s Wall Street Journal, former commissioner Fay Vincent offers an editorial (behind a pay wall) on sports’ performance-enhancing drug problem. Vincent, reacting to the growing apathy of the public toward confessions of drug use, comments: All sports must be played according to the rules in fair competition. We use umpires and referees and other […]

We’ve just wrapped up the first weekend of interleague play for 2010. And here’s the interesting news about that: National League teams got the better of it, albeit slightly, by a 22-20 margin. Why might such an apparently inconclusive factoid be significant? Because, of course, the American League has routinely wiped the floor with the […]

When the Mets traded Scott Kazmir to the Rays in 2004, the trade was puzzling to say the least. The Mets sent away their top pitching prospect to the then struggling Devil Rays in a deal that netted them the duo of Victor Zambrano and Bartolome Fortunato. At the time of the trade, the Mets […]

Mets 6, Yankees 4: I ain’t gonna lie to you: I was watching the “Lost” finale, not Mets-Yankees. Kind of glad I missed this one too, because I just don’t think my senses could take something as implausible as the Mets taking 2 of 3 from the Bombers. Better off staying in the realm of […]

For a decade, Roy Oswalt has led the Houston Astros’ rotation. The former 23rd-round draft pick compiled nearly 40 Wins Above Replacement over the 2001-2009 seasons, and he’s off to a fantastic start for an Astros squad that can’t hit a lick. According to Fangraphs, ‘Stros batters have a collective -70.1 park-adjusted Batting Runs. For […]

Mariners 4, Blue Jays 3: Ken Griffey, Jr. with the pinch hit, game-winning RBI single.  Don akamatsu was ejected before Griffey was sent in to the game, so it wasn’t his call.  However, a source of mine secretly recorded the conversation that the remaining coaching staff had before Junior was allowed to go up and […]