Great breakdown by Olbermann, though his equating 1960s dollars with today's dollars is pretty dumb. The point would still stand though.
Could Starlin Castro be run out of town?
Castro was dropped to eighth in the batting order last night, right about where he belongs based on his numbers this season. Not surprisingly, Starlin Castro is a little frustrated with his season. Per the Sun-Times: Sometimes you have a tough season and you want to please everybody. But when you listen to everybody, it’s not right. You have to …
Series Preview: Reds (65-52) at Cubs (52-65)
The Reds have had a great season, and all they have to show for it is looking up at two teams above them in the standings. At least they have a relatively solid grip on that last wild card spot, though that (thankfully) isn't as great of a position as a team would like. Joey Votto is having another MVP-worthy …
Just a slight weapons malfunction (Technical difficulties PSA)
We’ve been slammed by spambots for the past few days (if not months), which has caused the recent sluggishness/downtime of the blog. We’re migrating over to a new hosting service that offers better protection against these kinds of shenanigans. Everything should be cleared up in the next 48-72 hours, but don’t be surprised if comments, etc. disappear in that span …
Series Preview: Milwaukee Brewers (43-61) at Chicago Cubs (48-55)
I've been out of the country for the last two weeks so I didn't catch any games, since they were all on at 2 AM or so. I feel SK's pain. I did catch the last few innings of last night's game and was amused to hear Len and JD talking about how this is the first time in a while …
Series Preview: American League (107-94) at National League (94-107)
Team overviews Since the usual would make no sense, I'll list the top three players as well as the team that leads the league in that category. Players with an asterisk did not make the ASG roster. NL Team NL 1st NL 2nd NL 3rd AL Team AL 1st AL 2nd AL 3rd wRC+ 110 (Cardinals) 162 (Buster Posey) 157 (Paul Goldschmidt) …
Daily Facepalm 7.10.13
Cubs 'closing in' on deal with Taiwanese RHP Jen-Ho Tseng MLB.com's Jesse Sanchez says the Cubs are close to a deal with the Taiwanese pitcher, who is ranked 29th in mlb.com's list and 23rd on BA's. For a while he projected to be the #1 prospect in this year's class, but he scuffled a bit this year. GW points out …
Series Preview: Anaheim Angels of Disneyland (43-45) at Chicago Cubs (39-48)
On June 9th, the Cubs (25-35) and Angels (27-36) had very similar records, and things weren't looking so rosy for the Angels. Since then they've begun digging themselves out of their hole, going 16-9 over that span including two road series sweeps…and climbed into third place in their stacked division. Angels Cubs wRC+ 109 (5th) 89 (23rd) BSR -2.8 (17th) …
Series Preview: Pittsburgh Pirates (52-32) at Chicago Cubs (36-47)
The Pirates now have the best record in baseball. Let that sink in for a second. Will they be able to avoid the second half collapse that they suffered in the previous two seasons? They've got a big hurdle to clear right now in the middle of the season, as four of the five pitchers expected to be in the …
Diving into Starlin Castro’s 2013 numbers
It's safe to say that it's been a disappointing season for Starlin Castro. 82 games into the season, Castro's -1.4 fWAR makes Jeff Francoeur look like a valuable major league player (J.C. Bradbury nods approvingly). What is so different this year? MB posited to me a few weeks ago that pitchers have been pitching differently to him this year, and the …