I wrote a blog entry over at The DL Informer this afternoon, speculating that Harden’s pitching arm soreness was not due to the long plane rides to and from Japan. Turns out I was right – and that it wasn’t the Latissimus Dorsi, it was the rotator cuff.

The best baseball stats website just got better as Sean Forman added more robust splits to Baseball Reference. Some of Sean’s splits weren’t quite working before, but they are now. Plus, there are some great new splits, such as performance broken out by the criticality of the situation (otherwise known as Leverage Index), the type […]

Athletics Nation with some crakerjack blogging on Rich Harden’s latest injury, which is being reported as back soreness. As an A’s fan, the comments in the thread basically sum things up for me.

With Derek Jeter hurting, the Yankees and their fans are mulling over their options. The emerging consensus, which I agree with, seems to be to keep Alex Rodriguez at third base and use Wilson Betemit at shortstop if this is a short term injury.

With Francisco Rodriguez’s injury status looking negative, Tim Dierkes thinks you might want to look past the obvious replacement candidate in Scot Shields and pick up Justin Speier.

White Sox fans are feeling pretty good right now, for good reason. In this nice little post by the Cheat, you can discover, among other things, that the White Sox’s five-game winning streak is their first since 2006.

In case you were wondering why some popups give infielders a heck of a time, these two physics professors have the answers. (Hat tip: my friends at SABR)

Minor league data has arrived over at FanGraphs. As if you needed another reason to waste possibly harmful productive hours there.

MGL goes back and does some modeling on intentional walks, trying to figure out some parameters to apply to figuring out when/if it’s a good idea.

Pinstripe Alley gushes of Joba’s raw stuff, in particular his curveball. I’m still unconvinced he’s as good as they want him to make him out as far as starting potential, but he’s certainly a huge asset to New York.