2022 brought baseball fans a handful of gifts, headlined by Aaron Judge’s all-around excellence and Shohei Ohtani continuing to be Shohei Ohtani. But a few months of Albert Pujols’s farewell season were just as historic. Serving as designated hitter for his old team, the St. Louis Cardinals, Pujols put up one of the great old-guy […]
St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt is no stranger to the Most Valuable Player discussion. Now in his 12th season, he’s been a top-three vote getter in three different years (albeit all with his former team, the Arizona Diamondbacks). But this year is different. Goldschmidt isn’t just among the game’s top performers; statistically, he […]
The first moment the general baseball-watching public knew Miguel Cabrera would be special might have come nearly 20 years ago, in Game 4 of the 2003 National League Division Series. Then a 20-year-old phenom for the Florida Marlins, Cabrera strode to the plate in a clutch situation: tie ballgame, bottom of the eighth inning, two […]
First, we talk about Miguel Cabrera, who joined the 500-homer Club on Sunday in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Cabrera’s taken a very long road to join the 27 other players who’ve hit 500 home runs, and his career illuminates some interesting ways that MLB has changed over the last decade, especially in […]
In what’s quickly becoming an annual rite of summer, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels once again led the American League in wins above replacement (WAR), the single-number metric of choice for most sabermetricians when it comes to measuring a player’s all-around value. But this season, Trout’s WAR crown came attached to a more […]