There was a time when there was no such thing as bullpens and closers. In fact saves! weren’t even an official statistic until 1969. Starting pitchers were expected to pitch the whole game, and relief pitchers were used for spot starts and multi-inning relief appearances when a starter would struggle or get injured. Things changed however… starters went from pitching
Read moreSeattle trades Edwin Encarnacion to the New York Yankees yesterday. This is a great salary dump trade, that is an odd one for New York. The Bronx Bombers already have Luke Voit at first base and Giancarlo Stanton at DH. They could of course move Stanton to LF, which seems to be their intention, but that means benching Brett Gardner
Read moreEntering the season, the expectations were that the Cleveland Indians would rather easily win the division for the fourth straight year. The Kansas City Royals, the Chicago White Sox, and the Detroit Tigers were rebuilding teams not expected to be competitive, and the Minnesota Twins were expected to at best be Wild Card contenders and at worst a .500 team.
Read moreAtlanta signed Dallas Keuchel to a most likely one year deal. This is a great signing for a team that needs a stable top of the rotation starter. Keuchel may not be an ace, but he’s capable of being one and did win a Cy Young award only a few years ago. Atlanta now has an edge in the NL
Read moreThe Chicago Cubs signed Craig Kimbrel. This is a good deal for a Chicago team that badly needed a closer. The deal is fair and barring a surprising decline, this should give them a major competitive advantage against St. Louis and Pittsburgh. I don’t think that Atlanta made a mistake not signing him due to the amount of good young
Read moreThe trading deadline promises to have some interesting players available to contending teams, but there are some players who will likely not be moved, but should be. 1. SP MAX SCHERZER, WASHINGTON NATIONALS The Washington Nationals aren’t going to the playoffs this year. They also clearly have significant areas to improve in a competitive division that includes the Atlanta Braves
Read moreI’m using Yahoo! auction values prior to the season and specifically the prices that players actually went for on average. These values can be applied to all leagues and easily translatable to draft values. This list can help in making trades and gauging value. I’m also not including player values that were lowered due to injury, as in most cases
Read moreIt’s a well-known fact in the baseball world, that teams manipulate the service time of their players in order to receive an extra year of control. Here is the explanation for how service time works and here is the explanation for how it can and is being manipulated. Naturally this is unfair to the players and keeps the fans from
Read more