As many of you know, my baseball loyalties lie with the Yankees. The Evil Empire often catches a lot of flack for acting like, well, an Evil Empire. I’ve defended them time and time again on the internet, to my friends, and to my eternally pessimistic dad. But when the Yankees send this letter to […]

The scuttlebutt is that the Philadelphia Phillies are set to sign Placido Polanco to be their third baseman. On a two-year deal, this is a pretty nice signing by the Phi— wait, it’s three years? At $18 million? With a mutual option for a fourth year? What is Philadelphia thinking? Let’s look at the good […]

Passing along an email I received from Cory Schwartz from MLB Advanced Media (and yes legal types, he’s not only OK with passing it on, but emailed me just so it would get passed on): MLB.com, the Official Site of Major League Baseball, is seeking stats stringers in these markets for the 2010 season: · […]

As a Red Sox fan I felt it necessary to chime in on the talks of Dustin Pedroia possibly moving over to shortstop. The idea of a player moving from second base to shortstop goes against conventional wisdom, particularly Bill James’ defensive spectrum, although several player have made the move recently with success. I think […]

The Tampa Bay Rays acquired catcher Kelly Shoppach from the Cleveland Indians Tuesday for a player to be named later. Shoppach, who will turn 30 next April, got a late start in being a backstop, only seeing his first major league action in 2005 as a 25-year old for Boston. He headed to Cleveland in […]

If you saw my recent post on the payroll disparity between the Yankees and Twins, you’ll recall that I used a visual approach called “word clouds.” I’ve used this in other situations, such as comparing base stealing between the Angels and Red Sox (back in the ALDS). A few of you noted that in the […]

The White Sox signed Andruw Jones to a one-year contract worth $500,000 last week. While the White Sox aren’t done making moves, don’t be surprised to see Jones put together over 300 at-bats. The White Sox intend for Jones to be a backup player, although I have a hard time thinking Jones was willing to […]

Steve Lombardi of Was Watching posted a review of the THT Annual. Steve has read and reviewed the THT Annual for several years, and he said that “this year’s edition is just as good, if not better, than the editions from the previous four years.” This is the first online review of the book I’ve […]

Maybe you noticed that my last article, “Medium and hort-term pitching memory,” has been removed from the site. While trying to elaborate an answer to one of the comments, I discovered an error in my code that generated the results that were published. After re-running the correct code, different conclusions came up; which I will […]

Another month, another discussion on the Hall of Fame worthiness of Ichiro Suzuki on Baseballthinkfactory. I skimmed through and didn’t see much said that hasn’t been said before, though this quote by Colin Wyers made me think: Because, let’s be honest – the question of if Ichiro belongs in the HoF is basically a question […]