Defensive Indifference

One of the most surprising things about the start to the 2008 season has been Indians’ LHP Cliff Lee’s utter dominance of opposing hitters in his first four starts. Coming off a 2007 in which he posted an ERA of 6.38 in 97.1 innings, Lee has a 0.28 ERA in 31.2 innings thus far this […]

Up until tonight, Jacoby Ellsbury was having a quietly good season. He certainly wasn’t matching the fanfare he generated last year during Boston’s World Series run. So what does he go and do? Hit two home runs in another comeback win for the Red Sox and kind of spoils what I’m about to write.
Ellsbury has […]

If you watched tonight’s Red Sox-Angels game, you might have seen Jonathan Papelbon’s electric performance in the ninth inning, and you might also have seen that he hit 100 mph a couple of times on the NESN radar gun. You might also have discarded that velocity reading as juiced — if the camera adds 10 […]

Seriously, announcers and analysts need to stop this whole comparing Japanese players to other Japanese players. Let me set the scene for you. It is a lovely Monday night and the Cubs are playing the Mets. Yigael is watching the game on ESPN and I am watching the game on MLB Extra Innings (SNY, the […]

So I’m cozying in for my last few hours of work tonight when I get a message on the GChat. “I think ESPN is about to rip you off with a trip down baseball facial hair memory lane.” What what what? Yes, I was the guy behind this piece, that got plenty of play across […]

When third base prospect Evan Longoria was sent down to AAA Durham to start the season, a popular interpretation was that the Rays were simply trying to delay starting Longoria’s abritration clock so as to save money in the long term at the (possible) expense of performance in the short term.
Following Willy Aybar’s injury about […]