While we’re of a mindset these days that all of the power hitting since 1993 or so is a function of PEDs, hitting for power can be, to some extent, a choice. Sure, PEDs happened (and are happening) and small ballparks and other things have contributed greatly to increased power numbers, but players making a […]

People talk about the Winter Meetings for weeks before and after they happen, but no one ever talks about the owners’ meetings. Why is that? Well, it’s probably because the press reports on what it can understand. GMs may make a lot of money and some of them are bona fide celebrities, but they still […]

In a great big goody bag of an article, Peter Bernstein at ESPN the Magazine looks at the most and least cost-effective teams of the past ten years and figures out just how much spending correlates with winning. A passage to keep in mind as you prepare to shift from winter Yankee outrage to spring […]

The best line I’ve seen so far on the twenty-eight guys who didn’t vote for Rickey comes from Ray Ratto: We have no compelling defense for the 28, although Corky Simpson, who was pilloried on the Web for omitting Henderson, at least had the stones to say so. The other 27 remain silent, hidden and […]

ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick has Derek Lowe “leaning strongly” towards signing with Atlanta. I know four years is a long contract for a 35 year-old, but he’s young blood compared to Smoltz and Glavine. I know $60M is a lot of money, but $15M a year is around what Mike Hampton was making, so we’re used […]

Former Pirate, Tiger, Met, and Cub Richie Hebner has been and will continue to be the manager of the Frederick Keys in the Orioles’ system. This doesn’t exactly qualify as big news, but I offer it for those people (myself included) who can only picture him playing Virgil to Josh Wilker’s Dante in last year’s […]

Alex Brissette passes along an article about a political scientist named Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and the world of game theory (or, as they prefer to call it, rational choice theory) which, if you think about it a bit, parallels the story of Bill James and sabermetrics minus the humor and plus real world consequences. […]

Most folks got to this yesterday, but around 3pm my boy got all of the Hot Wheels out and made a big parade in the hallway with them and, well, that was pretty cool, so I played too. Anyway: A new report by the Justice Department’s inspector general finds that a lawyer for the U.S. […]

Braves GM Frank Wren, when asked whether he pays attention to the criticism he’s received from the web: Said Wren, speaking of the reason he strategically avoids such sites: “It’s not unlike talk radio, and I’ve stopped listening to talk radio. I don’t think the average sports fan calls talk radio, nor do I think […]

I was on youth bowling leagues for 13 years, and even then I never saw patches this bad before. I know that teams are looking to cut costs, but delegating graphic design to a team of monkeys who kinda know how to use MS Paint is no way to put the franchise’s best foot forward.