Whenever the younger half of a brother-brother tandem is called up, the comparisons are unavoidable. Billy and Cal Ripken, Jose and Ozzie Canseco, Jason and Jeremy Giambi, and, of course, Ryan and Steve Braun. Most recently, we’ve had the combination of B.J. and Justin Upton, one of the least one-sided brother tandems in MLB history. With the Oakland Athletics’ recent call-up of 24-year-old Jemile Weeks, younger brother (by four-and-a-half years) of Milwaukee’s Rickie Weeks, we may see yet another balanced brother combination. Jemile is poised to put together a solid big-league career, but he’ll be doing it with a different approach than big brother beyond just his switch-hitting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in April, we took a look at every pitcher who had thrown the slider more than 40% of the time during the past three years. The results weren’t pretty. The “Slider Group” was more likely to have major surgery on their arm or on their shoulder than the general pitching population. They also hit the DL more than average. To say the least, the pitch seems stressful.

Since the slider cutoff was so high, and the innings minimum non-existent, our 25-pitcher sample was made up entirely of relievers. Now with Brett Anderson reporting some general elbow soreness and a hefty slider percentage (41.1%), it seems like a natural time to ask the follow-up question: Do we see the same propensity for injury, both major and minor, among starters who favor the slidepiece? Did that pitch gobble up Anderson’s elbow ligaments like they were so many miniature hamburgers?

Read the rest of this entry »

Wrapping up the series on trade targets, today we’ll look at a few catchers who might be available (and perhaps even desirable!) for teams in contention. With the Diamondbacks surprisingly in the race for the National League West (at least for the moment), Miguel Montero isn’t on the table (if he ever would have been), and he probably would have headed up this list. Leaving out the multitudes of generic backup catchers (the Jose Molinas and Matt Treanors [Treanor!] of the world), there isn’t much out there. Among the contenders, the Giants need to fill a Buster Posey-shaped hole and the Red Sox probably want to improve on the Jason Varitek–Jarrod Saltalamacchia Duo of Yuck. Here are four catchers might be available and/or could draw varying degrees of interest.

In no particular order…

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve already run through first basemen and designated hitters, corner outfielders, and middle infielders who could be available at the trading deadline. Today, we cover five relievers who could be switching teams over the next two months.

PLAYER: Heath Bell
TEAM: Padres
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Cardinals, Indians, Phillies
CONTRACT STATUS: $7.5 million, free agent after the season
PROJECTED WAR: 1.3

Bell is pretty clearly the best “proven closer” on the market, and he’s likely the best overall reliever as well. Even though his K/9 is down to 7.0 this year, his swinging strike rate of 9.1% indicates that it’ll increase a bit, even if it doesn’t get all the way back to his gaudy 11.1 rate from 2010. To compensate, Bell’s ground ball rate is up to 51% this year — an especially nice quality to keep were he to exit spacious PETCO Park.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
Read the rest of this entry »

The month of June marks the unofficial beginning of the trade season, and so we thought it would be helpful to run down a list of which players might be for sale at some point this summer. But, rather than just run down a list of potential trade targets, we thought that we would spend the week discussing the most interesting players at each position and have compiled a list of the best players available at each spot, along with their expected production going forward and notes about which teams might be possible fits as buyers. We hope you enjoy the series.

Kicking off our week of looking at trade targets are the players who will be acquired primarily for their work with the bat: first basemen and designated hitters. Note that there might be some overlap across the posts as some players can handle multiple positions.

Here are five realistic trade candidates at the position(s), based on projected WAR over the rest of the season, contract status, the state of their current employers and the needs of various potential contenders.

PLAYER: Billy Butler
TEAM: Royals
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Angels, Rays
CONTRACT STATUS: Four-year, $30 million deal through 2014
PROJECTED WAR: 2.1

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for interleague play, again. Even moreso than the interminable disputes about which “style of play” is aesthetically superior, complaining about fairness of the presence/lack of the DH in away games, perhaps the most contentious debate among many fans (contentious despite the overwhelming evidence on one side) is that interleague play proves that the American League has been significantly stronger than the National League for at least a decade, no matter what this fine representative of the Best Fans in Baseball believes:

The American League’s domination of interleague for an extended period of time is good evidence for its superiority, whatever the causes of that superiority might be. However, some will point to individual players as being independent demonstrations. For example, Matt Holliday was a great hitter with the Rockies through 2008. He started the 2009 season in Oakland and “struggled” relative to what he’d done before. Some people attributed that simply to him being a product of Coors Field (sigh), but when he was traded to St. Louis, he started raking at almost the same level. It must be the league, right?

Or how about Pat Burrell, who came off a number of successful seasons in Philadelphia, signed with Tampa Bay, then bombed so badly for a season-and-a-half the Rays let him go for nothing in 2010. He then signed with San Francisco and tore the cover off the ball to help the Giants on their way to a World Series Championship.

Naturally, it is silly to argue from individual cases to a league-wide issue. However, I wondered if taking all the cases like Holliday’s and Burrell’s and putting them together might show us something about the relative strength of leagues, both now and in the past.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Lame Beggar
I am unable, yonder beggar cries,
To stand, or move; If he say true, he lies.
   -John Donne

One of the MLB’s most backward leagues, the National League Central, appears primed for a face lift. The weakest NL league is within reach of establishing itself as dominator and shaking its beggar reputation.

The Houston Astros, presently undergoing an ownership change, have become bedfellows with rumors about the Rays de facto general manager Andrew Friedman and the Rockets’ shrewd GM Daryl Morey.

Meanwhile, the Cubs have already undergone one faux-firing this season (last week, an internet rumor spread like whipped butter on the toast that is Twitter, proclaiming the Cubs had fired GM Jim Hendry) and the team is now fighting the odds to have a winning season. The rampant speculation with the Cubs has formed the central narrative that Hendry faces a win-or-be-gone season, and this year’s sub-.500 start has alerted the gravediggers.

What could a regime change in Houston and Chicago mean for the NL Central, a division burdened with excess teams and limited success? Possibly a lot.
Read the rest of this entry »

Following the 2005 season the Red Sox made a move that, while unpopular, appeared to benefit them in the long run. Beloved member of the 2004 World Championship team, Johnny Damon hit free agency. He had spent four mostly solid years in Boston, though 2004 was the clear highlight (.373 wOBA). After negotiations led to a less than desired offer from the Sox, Damon signed a four-year, $51 million contract with the Yankees.

With Damon out of the picture, the Red Sox moved onto another target — a younger player who perhaps represented the potential of a young Damon. And so they traded Edgar Renteria, after one terrible season, to the Braves for top prospect Andy Marte, whom they then flipped to the Indians for Coco Crisp. Given Crisp’s track record at the time, it was hard to find fault with the move.

Read the rest of this entry »

It happens every year. A manager gets an itchy trigger finger early in the season and buries a guy before he even gets a chance to earn the faith the manager put in him to start the season. This year is no different, and with an idea sparked from Eric Seidman’s piece yesterday on Brad Emaus — an article that the Mets completely ignored when they waived him today — I present the 2011 Brad Emaus All-Stars.
Read the rest of this entry »