"One look at his body will remind you that conditioning could become an issue."

I'm not sure I understand what this means. I clicked on the link which is a basically home video quality of a dancing shirtless Dustin Pedroia. He could be ripped or flabby, but its impossible to see in the video. I know that Pedroia is renowned for attending the Athlete's Performance Institute in Arizona each winter and for being a hard worker. Can you please clarify, Will? Thanks.

"SP Daisuke Matsuzaka: Anyone thinking that the Sox overpaid now? He's only getting better."

I do!

"He's only getting better" is an interesting analysis considering his *90th* percentile PECOTA projection still has his ERA increasing (to 3.26), while his weighted mean puts it at 4.45. His walks shot up last year, his K's were down, and he was extremely lucky. But he did have a good WBC....

Is it just me or is BP flirting a lot more with objective analysis then it used to?

Does Pedroia’s max effort type of swing make him more susceptible to ab and oblique stains/pulls? Thanks, Tom

I'm not sure why we should ignore the ramp-up in IP for Lester. No matter what the reason was for his jump in innings, his body still had to endure something it hadn't in previous years. So why should we be giving him a special allowance?

"Remember, an older player who can hit but not run often begins hitting more homers."

I haven't heard this before. It makes some logical sense, but is there analysis to prove it?

there have been a lot of comments lately with some sort of outraged tone claiming there's some sort of BP 'consensus' that the writer is issuing and that it's at odds with what the commenter feels should be BP 'consensus'

just chill the f#@#$ out already. the writers don't run everything through some mainframe that judges whether it fits some particular paradigm. They're writers, expressing their own ideas. Sure, they have been assembled by like minded people and write for a like minded audience. They're also human baseball fans, just like us and it's their INDIVIDUAL talents and voices that make this site what it is. No one comment or article reflects some massive shift in BP philosophy or policy and those philosophies aren't written in as hard a stone as many of the commenters seem to think. Stop being so touchy!

Sorry, Lefko - your comment pushed me over the edge to which other far more egregious comments pushed me.