The Rangers face a difficult decision about extending Josh Hamilton, but the decision to acquire him wasn't easy, either.
While looking toward the future with our comprehensive slate of current content, we'd also like to recognize our rich past by drawing upon our extensive (and mostly free) online archive of work dating back to 1997. In an effort to highlight the best of what's gone before, we'll be bringing you a weekly blast from BP's past, introducing or re-introducing you to some of the most informative and entertaining authors who have passed through our virtual halls. If you have fond recollections of a BP piece that you'd like to nominate for re-exposure to a wider audience, send us your suggestion.
With hindsight, it's easy to see that the Rangers won the Hamilton-Volquez trade. At the time the trade happened, though, that wasn't obvious, as indicated by the contemporary review reproduced below, which originally ran as part of a "Transaction of the Day" column on December 27, 2007.
An examination of how baseball's increasing strikeout rate has impacted the game, torn from the pages of BP's next book.
Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers, edited by Steven Goldman, is the sequel to Baseball Prospectus’s 2006 landmark Baseball Between the Numbers, a book that gave many their first taste of state of the art sabermetric thinking in the years after Bill James and Moneyball. BP now returns with a sequel that delves into new areas of the game, such as how to evaluate managers and general managers, the true effects of performance-enhancing drugs, how prospects are recruited and developed in Latin America, and more. The book is now available for pre-order from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and should ship ahead of its official release date of April 3, 2012. Today, we present the first of two excerpts from the book.
The Twins have been bitten by ineffectiveness and the injury bug this year, but it didn't take a magic 8 ball to foresee some of their season's troubles.
I touched on the Twins a bit over on the SweetSpot on Thursday morning, but they're a fun topic, and I can expand on it here. My hope is that you're willing to indulge me, even as the Twins retreat from San Francisco after a pair of losses to the world champs. They're 15-5 this month, so they still rate as one of baseball's hottest teams, and in a division where nobody's a good bet to win 90, they're worth listing among the living.
Something old, something new, but in the end, it's always been about me and you.
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The last couple of weeks have had me on my seat's edge. The season has arrived, and for all sorts of reasons I've been stoked with anticipation. Admittedly, I already got to enjoy a long trip to the Cactus League, which left me even more interested in the Cubs and Sox in a year that already figures to provide exciting races in every division.
In a remembrance of things past, the daily transaction churn winds down with the end of spring training.
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The book tour may be done with, but there are still going to be events at which you'll have plenty of opportunities to mingle with some of your favorite BP contributors. This coming Thursday night, March 31, is one such occasion. Through my volunteer work as a director on the board of Equality Illinois, we've partnered up with Sluggers in Chicago on 3540 N. Clark Street to create a casual evening's fun to celebrate the first night of the season, from 6-9 pm on March 31.
The leading fifth man's bid to stick gets zeroed out.
TEMPE—While Randy Wells has been pitching quietly and consistently to put himself at the front of the pack racing to be first past to pole to provide answers at the fourth and fifth slot, there's still the question of whether or not Andrew Cashner's going to wind up as the fifth man.
From Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez to a weekend of Cactus action in Cubs camp.
Today's to be a notes column, both to cover a series of Cubs-related stuff after four straight days of catching Club Quade, and to comment on the conclusion of the other aria within the Mets' opera.
Getting flushed from Flushing might seem like no easy matter, not when price was an object, not when the rules require the employment of some sort of ninth player somewhere on the field, and not when convention demands that it involve some warm body standing between the shortstop and the first baseman. But none of that could spare Luis Castillo the axe. With the daintiness of Anne Boleyn on the block, the Mets' second baseman was prepped, placed, and whacked, with almost inevitable celebrations.
Last night's bullpen disaster was no Surprise surprise.
Last night's Rangers contest provided news good and bad for Ron Washington's ballclub. Perhaps the most important item of business was gotten out of the way first, as C.J. Wilson looked close to ready, coping quite well with pitching from the stretch and dealing with putting eight of 22 batters faced aboard, allowing just two runs. Adrian Beltre hit his first homer of the spring, while Chris Davis ripped a double and a homer off Jason Hammel. If everything about this time of year is about reps and building up strength, then no worries, right?
Transaction Analysis: Trading Up from Dickerson to Morgan
Surprise Me!