Less than three years after Julio Lugo was signed to be the answer at shortstop for the Red Sox, he is no longer on the team. Lugo’s agent has confirmed that the Red Sox have designated the embattled shortstop for assignment. In 266 games for the BoSox, spanning 1,060 plate appearances, Lugo hit an underwhelming […]

Bill James has stubbornly refrained from commenting on the steroids scandal and the Hall of Fame … until now. Bill James Online subscribers can read James’ latest post, in which he finally tackles the controversy of our day. The bottom line is that Bill thinks the inclusion of steroid users into the Hall is inevitable. […]

This week I received in the mail a pre-publication, uncorrected page proof version of a new book: The Wizard of Waxahachie: Paul Richards and the End of Baseball as We Knew It, by Warren Corbett. Ordinarily, I would write a review of such a tome for THT. However, in this instance in all good conscience […]

Well, it’s official. The Phillies have signed future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez to a reported $1 million contract with another $1.5 million in incentives. The 37-year old was immediately placed on the 15-day disabled list and will head out on a rehab assignment dedicated to getting him into the Phillies rotation in early August. […]

R.J. has an important post up at Fangraphs about defensive metrics, Yuniesky Betancourt and the Royals. How can a general manager of a major league team claim that he doesn’t understand defensive metrics? Even more to the point, as R.J. notes, how can he claim that to watch Betancourt is to love his fielding, when […]

McSweeney’s has the ultimate take on baseball’s role in today’s Supreme Court hearing.

There is a new Batted Ball Report available for THT download subscribers. In this week’s Report, we use batted balls to pick apart the latest player trades. We also survey the hottest hitters of the past two weeks and examine how Texas and Pittsburgh have managed to improve their run prevention abilities more than any […]

Last night, San Diego was threatened with a no-hitter, as Giant hurler Tim Lincecum kept them from getting a hit until the seventh inning. Tonight, they were no-hit, by Jonathan Sanchez. It would’ve been a perfect game had Juan Uribe not made an error in the eighth. So far, so obvious. Let’s walk it back […]

Sportvision is taking leaps and bounds with expanding their ability to track the game of baseball. The Second Annual PITCHf/x Summit convenes in San Francisco this upcoming weekend, and if I could be anywhere other than with my newly expanded family, it would be at the summit. One of the main topics of the summit […]

The Trackman Baseball system makes its public debut for the All-Star home run derby in St. Louis. ESPN is calling its implementation of the Trackman feature “Ball Track”. Trackman is a portable Doppler radar system already in use for tracking golf ball trajectories and now being deployed in baseball. The Doppler feature of the radar […]