Starting pitching tactics in baseball’s postseason, which starts today, often differ from those of the regular season. Because of the off days needed for travel between cities in a playoff series, pitchers typically enjoy more rest. That allows teams to lean on their best pitchers more than they can in the regular season. For instance, […]
When Major League Baseball finally starts its 2020 season on July 23, it will be a very different kind of campaign than any we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Not only will it be much shorter than usual (60 games per team instead of 162) and feature a strange mix of division and interleague matchups, but […]
It’s tough to find a more successful baseball club over the past decade-plus than the Tampa Bay Rays, owners of a 1,035-901 record — fifth-best in MLB — ever since their stunning breakout in 2008. The Rays went to the World Series that season and made the playoffs in three of the five years that […]
It takes an entire 25-man roster to make a winning baseball team — just ask the defending-champion Boston Red Sox. Sure, Boston had plenty of top-line talent at its disposal, but it also got key playoff contributions from the likes of Steve Pearce and Nathan Eovaldi, neither of whom was especially heralded when the Red […]
After the Tampa Bay Rays made Brendan McKay the fourth overall pick in the 2017 draft, they brought him to Port Charlotte, Florida, site of their minor league and spring training operations, for a debriefing. McKay had received first-round grades as a hitter and pitcher at the University of Louisville, where he was the program’s […]