Defensive Indifference

Following in the footsteps of Kendry Morales, Livan Hernandez, and others before him, top Cuban baseball star Dayan Viciedo has recently defected to the United States, joining relatives in Miami.
Despite being only 19 years old, Viciedo is apparently considered the best baseball player in all of Cuba. He started playing in the top Cuban league […]

Now that enough of the season has been played so that sample sizes are starting to be somewhat meaningful, I thought I’d write about a few minor leaguers who have come out of nowhere and potentially catapulted themselves from obscurity to the land of legitimate prospect-dom. These are all players who were either unranked by […]

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 […]

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 […]

ESPN’s Jayson Stark, who generally seems to be a relatively sane, rational human being, has picked the Atlanta Braves to win the World Series in 2008. Apparently this is the trendy ’sleeper’ pick for this season, and if you really want to go out on a limb, I guess the Braves are as good a […]

Before he has even played one regular season game for them, the Tigers have signed Miguel Cabrera to an 8 year extension worth $153.3 million. The contract is the fourth largest contract in MLB history, and will be finalized once Cabrera passes a physical.
In general, I would argue that a contract of this length is […]