Last week, Felix Cespedes, an 18-year-old pitcher for the DSL Phillies, threw nine perfect innings, striking out 14. For that, he got a no-decision, leaving him at 0-4 on the season. As I noted last week, Cespedes has been dealing all season, but the run support just hasn’t been there. Finally, after another fantastic outing, […]

Drew Stubbs, Cincinatti’s first round pick in 2006 from the University of Texas, is working towards a September call-up with the Reds. Stubbs is an athletic and skilled centerfielder with speed to burn. This season he has stolen 42 bases in 49 tries (good for an 86 percent success rate) and his defense rates as […]

A couple days ago, I took a look at the big league debut of Orioles’ top prospect Chris Tillman. The results were mixed, as he flashed good stuff, but his location was poor and he allowed 3 home runs. At the end of the post, a commenter remarked that, anecdotally, he had thought that Tillman’s […]

In February, Sean (“Chone”) Smith applied his TotalZone defensive metric to the last few years of minor league data. The resulting numbers confirmed some opinions, questioned some conventional wisdom, and helped us better understand the relationship between fielding at various levels of professional baseball. Sean or I will probably go further in depth when the […]

Major League News for August 3 Player News Yesterday’s Results Today’s Games Standings Top Minor League Performances You can always find the most recent THT Daily at http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/content/thtdaily/ Player News Player Headlines are courtesy of Rotoworld Edinson Volquez underwent Tommy John surgery Monday morning, according to Ed Price of AOL Fanhouse.Volquez is likely to miss […]

This was originally going to be a top-ten list. Then I thought I would be cute and have one item for each month of the year. Unfortunately, the only notable annual occurrence on my baseball calendar for May is “Royals go on a long losing streak and consign themselves to another wasted season”, which is […]

Today, my recap of the 39th annual SABR convention goes up here at THT. I like it, but there are some random notes/news I didn’t have a place in the article. (Well, I could’ve put them in, but it was running long enough as is). Without further ado, here are some minor, random notes from […]

Late Saturday night, SABR member Paul Brewer had an intriguing idea: why not establish a non-geographic chapter of SABR. Existing chapters are geographically centered because traditionally notions of community are centered at fixed locales. The internet has changed the equation, and Paul thought maybe Baseball Think Factory, which has herded numerous members into the organization […]

Most Cardinals fans out there know how special of a player Colby Rasmus is. He hits for power, doesn’t strike out that much, shows very good baserunner ability, and plays excellent defense in center. So far this year, he has contributed 2.4 Wins Above Replacement according to FanGraphs, which ranks him amongst some the best […]

One of the more minor moves lost in the insanity of the 2009 MLB Trade Deadline was the swap of first baseman Casey Kotchman and Adam Laroche. LaRoche himself was recently traded to the Red Sox from the Pirates; and they immediately swapped him for Casey Kotchman of the Braves. On a value scale, this […]