Well, the season’s less than half an hour old, and we’ve already got a few firsts of the year. The first hit of the season fittingly belongs to Hideki Matsui, a double up the right-center gap. The first strikeout victim of the year was Alex Rodriguez, on a 2-2 pitch in an at-bat where he […]

The 2004 season is officially underway. Victor Zambrano’s first pitch to Derek Jeter is a called strike on the outside corner. It’s 5 a.m. and I’m not even tired. There’s not much better than the first game of the season.

The THT writers have been discussing award predictions for 2004 recently, and Matthew Namee noted that one of our consensus picks was at risk: “The latest word on Prior is that he could be out for a month, which would just about kill his Cy Young chances.” It’s a good thing Matthew used the qualifier […]

In its preseason preview today, the Chicago Tribune focused on managers, calling this the “Golden Age of Managing” (registration is free). I don’t mean to quibble, but this article bugs me for a couple of reasons. One, the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were truly the Golden Age of Managing. In those days, there were […]

Mike Webber pointed out this hilarious blurb from the Expos comments in the March 22 edition of The Sporting News: 3B Tony Batista hits popcorn kernels every day to help him focus at the plate. A teammate soft-tosses the kernels from the side. Batista has been doing this for more than a year. Hitting coach […]

The Mets and White Sox traded a couple of players yesterday. Timo Perez, who no longer fit on the Mets’ roster was dealt for Matt Ginter, who’s been on and off the ChiSox’s roster over the past few years. Perez was always an enigma to Mets’ fans. He certainly looked like a ballplayer, and he […]

As I’ve mentioned here before, I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and have always been a die-hard Wichita State Shockers fan. My all-time favorite sports team, though, is the Dodgers. So you can imagine my excitement when my beloved Dodgers picked WSU superstar Darren Dreifort #2 overall in the 1993 draft. Of course, since then […]

The Yankees and Devil Rays will open the season in Japan in a few days, but that’s not all… Jason Stark explains: Both played games Thursday in Florida. They don’t play again until Sunday, when both play exhibition games in Japan. Then they play exhibitions Sunday and Monday against Japanese teams, play games that count […]

If you’ve ever wanted to become an instant expert on the Toronto Blue Jays, now’s your chance. Kent Williams has just completed a massive three-part magnum opus on the 2004 Jays on Batter’s Box. Check out Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. There are entire $30 baseball books out there with less content (and […]

This is really exciting to me. Andy Clark has developed a graph, based on some original work by Colby Cash, that displays the basic pitching prowess of all qualified major league pitchers (strikeout, walk and home run rates). You can look up all qualified pitchers in the history of a franchise, or all qualified pitchers […]