Among the many side effects of MLB’s full-throated embrace of sabermetrics has been the rise of the bullpen in October. The old way of thinking — riding your headline starters until their arms could take no more — gradually gave way to the new prevailing tactic — shielding your starter from going through the opposing […]
It was less a baseball game, by the sixth and seventh and eighth innings, than a conference-room presentation, with the pitches as bullet points and the batters walking to the plate and jogging back to the dugout, screen-left, like slideshow graphics. “Taking It For A Spin: The Outsized Efficacy of the Breaking Ball in the […]
As of this week, there are now two instances in MLB history of a player making the All-Star Game as both a pitcher and a batter — and both belong to Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels. Ohtani became the first-ever double-duty All-Star last season, during a year that was unlike anything we had […]
Since the start of the 2019 season, Lucas Giolito has been one of the best pitchers in all of Major League Baseball. In 284.2 innings of work, he has pitched to a stellar 3.57 ERA and 3.46 fielding-independent pitching mark, and he ranks eighth during that span among pitchers in FanGraphs’ wins above replacement with […]
Just over a month ago, the Houston Astros pulled off the biggest move of the season: In a deal reported minutes after the trade deadline had passed, the Astros acquired Cy Young winner Zack Greinke from the Diamondbacks to form baseball’s best rotation alongside Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, the two likeliest Cy Young candidates. […]