Yesterday’s Daily Prospectus was about two-thirds written when I realized I was going to have to throw it out. It was a rant about the Blue Jays and their handling of Tony Batista, and included a comparison to their 1999 decision to demote Jose Cruz Jr. in the middle of a pennant race. Unfortunately, that…
One of the more unlikely record-holders in baseball history is Bobby Thigpen, whose single-season mark of 57 saves, set in 1990, has never been seriously challenged. The record has the scent of a accident all over it; the White Sox closer shattered the previous record of 46 saves, set by the Yankees‘ Dave Righetti in…
OK, so the mistake I made was not reiterating my position on the All-Star voting, and simply including a pointer to last year’s article. Lazy mistake. Here’s the relevant quote: Regardless of how you define the term, though, it seems obvious that this is what the All-Star Game is about: seeing the best players in…
I’m a little amazed at the gap between the two leagues right now. I think if you put together a list of the top 50 players in the game, some inordinate percentage of them would be in the NL. This is tempered somewhat by the AL having the two best players in baseball in Pedro…
Yes, that’s right: All-Stars. A year ago, during the inaugural season of The Daily Prospectus, I explained my rationale for selecting my All-Stars in early June, about a month before the actual teams are announced. I believe the All-Star Game is for the true superstars of the sport, and my selections do not hinge primarily…
Right now, 30 major-league organizations are making decisions that will impact the success of their franchise over the next few years, and in some cases, for a decade or more. Unlike the football and basketball versions, though, the annual draft of young talent doesn’t receive national television coverage or make men with good hair and…
Part One This continues our update on how the first round of last year’s draft is performing this season. We’re not assigning grades or drawing conclusions. For a look at a draft from a few years out, I highly recommend John Sickels’s piece on the 1996 draft, available from ESPN.com. Billy Traber, Mets. Traber is…
The annual "First-Year Player" draft is occurring as you read this. Baseball’s draft, unlike the football and basketball ones, brings in players who don’t make an impact at the major-league level for a few years. Even the most polished college draftees do not generally appear in the majors for at least a year. Even if…
One of the those short-attention-span days… The Orioles are just 6 1/2 games out of first place in the AL East. They were actually playing .500 ball until becoming the latest victims of the Seattle Freaking Demigods a week ago. Now, a good chunk of their season has come at the expense of the Devil…
About two week ago, I was feeling pretty smug, having watched the Cubs drop seven in a row to fall out of first place in the NL Central. I was pretty sure their April was fluky, the product of good months by random retreads like Jason Bere and Jeff Fassero. Mind you, I had a…
While sporadically entering data for a follow up column on the Walk Gap, the following arrived in my inbox. Suffice to say Mike Rice does more justice to the topic than I can, so I’ll turn it today’s column over to him: I read your article on the "Walk Gap" last week and decided to…