Just finished watching Jason Isringhausen raise my already morbidly high blood pressure. Some empty thoughts: Does anyone else get the impression that Fox is horrified by the idea of actually showing either the batter or pitcher prepare for the next pitch? After every pitch, the director seemed to try to get as many camera shots…
About a month into the season, the Oakland A’s were 8-18, and the New York Yankees were primarily worried about the Boston Red Sox. As late as June, speculation was that the A’s would ship first baseman Jason Giambi to the Yankees at the deadline, as they were hopelessly behind the Emerald City Juggernaut. Well,…
One of the persistent themes in our annual book is the idea of proper use of players. Most players who we criticize aren’t bad players at all; there are very few bad baseball players that have ever made it to the high minors, much less the majors. For example, when we chide Brian L. Hunter…
Last Tuesday morning at about 7 a.m., the phone on my nightstand rang. Normally, this isn’t a big deal. It’s usually someone from the east coast who’s either forgotten about the time difference, or who’s decided that it’s time for me to get up and help them out with something. But on this morning, the…
(Editor’s Note: The promised "Heaven on Earth" feature has not been completed yet, but will run next week. Really. For now, this is a conversation that took place on Thursday, September 6 between Gary Huckabay and two long suffering citizens of Red Sox Nation. The three of us watched the 1978 one-game playoff together at…
We at Baseball Prospectus have a feature where we respond to selected e-mails from our readers. You can find this "From the Mailbag" feature on a recurring basis under the Features section of the BP main page. But today, I want to take this opportunity to respond to a few of the e-mails I’ve received…
Two weeks ago, I asked readers to put themselves in the shoes of the management of the Kansas City Royals, turn back the clock to about a week before the Jermaine Dye trade, and come up with suggestions on how to best run the franchise. Last week, I did my best to share the flavor…
Andy Pratt is a young left-handed starter in an organization that’s in desperate need of big-league pitching help. Pratt pitched well in middle-A and high-A ball in 1999 and 2000, posting ERAs under 3.00 with very good peripheral numbers, including a 195 to 42 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 164 1/3 innings. He struggled in making the…
Last week, I asked people to put themselves into the Johnston-Murphys of either Allard Baird or David Glass, prior to the trades of Jermaine Dye and Rey Sanchez, and come up with a plan of action for the Kansas City Royals. I had no idea of the scope of solutions from which people would choose…
The frenzy surrounding the July 31 trade deadline is a relatively new phenomenon. I don’t know–and am too lazy to check–whether there are more deals around deadline time now than there were, say, 10 years ago, but to my untrained eye, it sure appears as if there’s a lot more attention paid to "Deal Week"…
During my first stint living in the Bay Area, I spent a lot of time watching A’s broadcasts on local TV. There was usually one broadcast on a weekday night, and one broadcast on the weekend–usually on Sunday, preceded by Mel Allen on "This Week in Baseball." I remember back to when I was at…
Who’s more crack-addled? The Detroit Tigers for offering Roger Cedeno a three-year deal worth $4.5 million annually, or Cedeno for turning it down? Cedeno is 26, with career numbers of .277/.356/.370, and he’s perhaps a 50/15 SB/CS guy. How does this guy push your club towards a championship at that price? As a fourth outfielder,…
Debates about defense in baseball can be extremely contentious and frustrating. There’s very little in the way of a generally accepted canon of evidence upon which people will agree, and a great deal of weight is place on personal observation. That makes it very difficult to question someone’s position about a particular player without at…
Not surprisingly, after I did the ESPN chat last week, I received about 400 e-mails from people who participated or read the transcript afterwards. About 25% of those were from Derek Jeter fans/apologists, and his defense, along with that of Omar Vizquel, appears to be one of the hottest buttons in baseball. I’ll be discussing…
Ryan Ludwick is an outfielder in the Oakland Athletics system. The A’s selected him in the second round in 1999 out of UNLV, and he’s been working his way up the system by hitting for power and playing notable defense since then. Ludwick is currently in the Texas League at Midland, where he’s hitting .269…
John Sickels is my favorite baseball writer. He writes a regular column for ESPN.com, pens the annual STATS Minor League Scouting Notebook, and produces an outstanding semi-weekly e-mail newsletter focusing on the minor leagues. Sickels’s newsletter, launched this season, is insightful, entertaining, and packed with interesting and relevant information. It’s a great read for all…