Curt Schilling is never at a loss for words, and unlike a lot of athletes (and actors and other Famous People™) who like to sound off to the media, he often has something of substance to say. Last week was no different, when ESPN.com posted a 2,400-word essay by the Diamondbacks’ hurler, focusing on the…
The dark time between the end of the World Series and the time pitchers and catchers report has mercifully come to an end. Arms have been dragged to Arizona and Florida, and beat writers, pundits, and integrated B2B/B2C Baseball Content Provision Weasels (read: us) are looking to fill space until games start being played. There’s…
Dodgers left fielder Gary Sheffield has demanded that the team trade him, citing a lack of appreciation by the team. It’s not just any trade demand: Sheffield has indicated that he wants to be traded to either New York team of the Atlanta Braves, and that he does not plan to report to spring training…
DUE DILIGENCE "Clearly some compensation is in order. This tear is categorically old." —Gord Ash, Blue Jays GM, after getting a doctor’s report on pitcher Mike Sirotka‘s torn rotator cuff and labrum "Both sides have assumed a certain amount of risk in making this trade. Ideally, both teams are satisfied by a trade. Obviously, pending…
Reader Mac Thomason has pointed out that one of the player comments in Baseball Prospectus 2001 discussed pitchers from the current era who were locks for the Hall of Fame, yet omitted Randy Johnson from a list that included Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine. The original comment was written by me, and my…
Now that we’ve released this season’s Top 40 Prospects list, it is time to return to a tradition we started last season, to objectively evaluate our list from a year ago and see what we can learn. As we did last season, we will compare our ranking of each player with the ranking given to…
One of the principal tenets of performance analysis is the idea that a player’s statistics are affected by his home ballpark. That’s why most serious performance metrics account for the environment in which a player plays using a park factor. This park factor is generally arrived at by comparing the number of runs scored in…
TOP 40 PROSPECTS Where’s Aubrey Huff? Is he off the list because Tampa Bay hasn’t moved Vinny Castilla yet? — Kenneth Shankland No, he’s off the list because we got confused. This is as good a time as any to make a confession: in the process of compiling our Top Prospect list, we somehow got…
Over the weekend, Derek Jeter and the Yankees reached agreement on a ten-year, $189-million contract that makes him the game’s second-highest player and likely cements his status as a career-long Yankee. The deal slots him about where he should be, among the highest-paid players in the game, but behind Alex Rodriguez and in a position…
In my last Pivot column for ESPN.com, an offhand comment about the stupidity of the Brewers drew a surprisingly large number of reader e-mails, almost as many as I got about the Henry Rollins reference. One particular reader expressed the reasons for his frustration: It seems is though year after year the Milwaukee Brewers don’t…
Baseball Weekly recently ran a Bob Nightengale column that focused on some of Scott Boras’s ideas for improving competitive balance. Buried at the end of the article was an interesting quote from a major-league general manager that cited the most oft-repeated mantra of the small-marketeers. As part of the argument, Nightengale quotes Kansas City GM…
I grew up in New York City, so February to me has always meant cold, hockey, my birthday and cold, not necessarily in that order. As a young player, February wasn’t a time for baseball. Hell, some Aprils weren’t a time for baseball. And even though I now live in Southern California, where Little League…
PITCHING AND DEFENSE I wonder if you have looked at whether there is evidence that pitchers can “control” extra-base hits. By this, I mean, are there pitchers off whom batters generally do not hit the ball as hard or hit the ball on the ground? If there is no correlation between a pitcher and “giving…