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August has seen a lot of good pitching performances - Tim Lincecum has a 1.96 FIP, CC Sabathia has an 8.00 K/BB rate, and Ryan Dempster hasn’t alllowed a single home run all month. All these guys are carrying their pitching staffs and performing extremely well.
However, it’s hard to argue that anyone has been as good as Ricky Nolasco this month, especially in terms of ...
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MLB
C.C. Sabathia
The Phillies and Cubs are set to square off tonight at Wrigley Field with quite the interesting pitching matchup: Joe Blanton vs. Rich Harden . For those who recently came into contact with that memory-zap gizmo from Men In Black , both pitchers were members of the Oakland Athletics for the last few years. Both were also sold to the highest bidder, so to speak, back in July.
Harden, ...
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MLB
Oakland Athletics
Joe Blanton
Rich Harden
Philadelphia Phillies
Chicago Cubs
When the Dodgers acquired Manny Ramirez , it was commonly accepted that adding a middle of the order slugger to their offense would help improve their run scoring and allow them to make a push for the NL West down the stretch. For the first couple of weeks after the trade, it worked out great - Ramirez hit .424 with a ton of power, the team scored 77 runs in 16 games, and they went 10-6 in ...
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MLB
Los Angeles Dodgers
Manny Ramirez
Arizona Diamondbacks
Welcome class, to How to Rush a Prospect 101. Your teacher’s name will be Mr. Ricciardi.
The Toronto Blue Jays traded veteran outfielder Matt Stairs to the Philadelphia Phillies yesterday and added top prospect and outfielder Travis Snider to the 25-man roster. Snider, 20, was the club’s No. 1 draft pick in the 2006 draft out of a Washington state high school.
Stairs, 40, ...
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MLB
Matt Stairs
Travis Snider
Toronto Blue Jays
Philadelphia Phillies
Carlos Beltran has had one extremely interesting career so far. In about nine years he has gone from prospect oozing with potential to productive rookie to possible hall of fame track performer to the most clutch playoff hitter ever to the most sought after free agent to the most overrated and derided player in New York to 40-HR power on a division champ. That has all led up to his current ...
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MLB
Carlos Beltran
New York Mets
Leading up to the 2007 MLB amateur draft, there were three Puerto Rican players considered to be head-and-shoulders above their fellow country men in terms of potential: Reynaldo Navarro , Neftali Soto , and Angel Morales . All three players were chosen in the third round and were considered raw but talented. Let’s see how each one fared during the 2008 season.
Reynaldo Navarro, ...
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MLB
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Quick, name the catcher with the most home
runs in the American League. No, not him. Not
him either. Give up? Try Kelly Shoppach . Yea, I know, Kelly Shoppach . Last night he hit his 17th home run of the season, and if the Indians were looking ...
The Arizona Diamondbacks have two Cy Young contenders in Brandon Webb and Dan Haren , the two front-of-the-rotation horses that are trying to carry them to the playoffs despite an offense that has struggled to score runs after a hot start. While the excellence of the top two has gotten plenty of notice, don’t look now, but after a rough first half, Randy Johnson is reminding everyone ...
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MLB
Randy Johnson
Arizona Diamondbacks
Following last night’s absolutely insane game between the Phillies and Mets, Ryan Howard staked claim atop the NL leaderboard with his 35th home run of the season. With a little over a month to go in the season it seems perfectly reasonable, especially given his projection, to expect six or seven more dingers, which would put him over 40 for the third straight year. This year ...
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MLB
Ryan Howard
Philadelphia Phillies
Tangotiger is conducting the 6th annual Scouting Report by the Fans for the Fans . Go fill out a ballot and contribute to baseball’s best collective knowledge project!
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MLB
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There’s no doubt about the fact that CC
Sabathia is the prize of the free agent pitching
crop this winter. With his dominance since moving to the Brewers, and that Cy Young award he picked up last year, Sabathia is at the top of nearly every ...
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Yesterday, we talked about the possibility that Albert
Pujols is in the midst of his best season,
but that his performance has gone largely unnoticed due to our general expectation that he will be, well, awesome. In the discussion thread, one of the ...
The story of the 2008 season is obviously the success of Tampa Bay, though skeptics remain, with most prediction markets expecting the Rays to bow out early in the playoffs despite their sustained success. Among mainstream media analysis, a common critique of the Rays is that their bullpen isn’t full of guys with long track records of success, and with Troy Percival ’s health in ...
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MLB
Tampa Bay Rays
I have to admit that I have not been a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ moves in recent years, but things are beginning to change. The Manny Ramirez deal, which the Pirates were involved in as the third team in, netted the organization some interesting players, as did the Xavier Nady trade with the New York Yankees.
After dealing with two powerhouse AL East teams, the Pirates made a ...
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MLB
Toronto Blue Jays
Pittsburgh Pirates
Jose Bautista
Scott Rolen
J.P. Ricciardi
When the Braves traded Mark Teixeira to the Angels for, among other assets, Casey Kotchman , the analytic world of the baseball media went into a frenzy. Some analysts wondered how the Braves could get “so little” for one of the best bats and gloves in the game. Others argued that the very attractive contract of Casey Kotchman as well as his glove and potential evened the ...
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MLB
Los Angeles Angels
Mark Teixeira
Casey Kotchman
Atlanta Braves
On December 13th, Houston and Baltimore made the blockbuster deal that sent Luke Scott to the Orioles. You may have heard the trade referred to as the Miguel Tejada deal, but at this point, it’s pretty clear that Scott’s the best player going forward in that deal. Here are their ‘08 performances side by side:
Scott: .272/.369/.509, 437 PA, 1.63 WPA/LI
Tejada: ...
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MLB
Baltimore Orioles
Luke Scott
Miguel Tejada
One of my biggest baseball pet peeves is when current pitching barometers (W-L and ERA) are, on their own, used to make extreme analytical claims. I have no problem if ERA is used as one of many metrics in an analysis, or if W-L is somehow adjusted to take several outside factors into account, but on their own, they do not really tell us much. With that in mind, let’s play a little ...
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MLB
Josh Beckett
After failing to land Jason Bay at the trade deadline, the Rays put a positive spin on their lack of an acquisition to help their offense, pointing to the impending return of Rocco Baldelli as an alternative to Bay. Considering Baldelli’s medical condition, however, it seemed a bit optimistic to be counting on him for any kind of real production.
Sometimes, though, optimism pays off. ...
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MLB
Tampa Bay Rays
When I heard that Eric was planning to do a piece on Albert Pujols today, I thought it might be interesting to go back and review that fateful draft when St. Louis found the future Hall of Famer in the 13th round.
Pujols was drafted out of a small school in 1999 called Maple Woods Community College. He signed about two months after the draft on Aug. 17 and did not make his pro debut until ...
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MLB
Albert Pujols
St. Louis Cardinals
Tampa Bay Rays
Look, we all know Albert Pujols is an absolutely tremendous baseball player. He is arguably the best player in baseball right now ( Yuniesky Betancourt would give him a run), is a clear-cut hall of famer, and there are very few sane pitchers who actually look forward to facing him. A couple of months ago I wrote that he wasn’t being fairly treated in terms of both how good he is and how ...
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Shoppach Showing Off