When the Arizona Diamondbacks met the Philadelphia Phillies last night, it was a potential playoff match-up between two division leaders, but much like their records indicate, it wasn’t much of a fight. Cliff Lee twirled seven innings of three-hit ball as the Phillies (79-42) jumped all over Joe Saunders and the Diamondbacks (69-54) 9-2. Hunter […]

I’m mostly at a loss to explain Tyler Pastornicky’s AAA line of .380/.422/.430 for the Gwinnett Braves. Well, I can explain it–his BABiP is .424–but the line is just an incredibly weird one. In his 25 AAA games, he has 14 multi-hit efforts, and he’s been as ridiculously hot as Jose Constanza has been for […]

Catchers don’t really have to hit. Because it’s so hard to find guys who can catch good pitching, call a game, understand everything going on, make good and quick throws to second, and withstand the rigors of crouching behind the plate 120 games a season, the offensive threshold for catchers is really low. Teams are […]

Brett Lawrie may not be able to field very well, but he sure can hit. Down a run in the bottom of the sixth with bases loaded, Lawrie launched the second home run of his career, his first grand slam. Lawrie’s grand slam backed Henderson Alvarez, who was making his major-league debut.  Alvarez was just […]

I swear I will make it to a game in which Devin Mesoraco plays. It may be when he’s in Cincinnati, but I will see him. For the fourth time this season, I went to a Louisville Bats game, and for the fourth time this season, I saw Corky Miller behind the plate for the […]

Any time anything happens in regard to the New York Yankees, it’s big news, and it’s not different with their prospects. If there’s a big Yankees prospect, he’s usually pretty well-known. I’m not criticizing that, however, as I think any publicity for baseball is a good thing, and the Yankees are excellent for baseball. The […]

Relievers are always in demand come the trade deadline. Teams always need an extra arm in the bullpen, and if you’re going to look outside of your organization, you want to get a good one. This July, the big name was Heath Bell, and he had been in trade rumors for close to two seasons. […]

The Ubaldo Jimenez trade is still the most befuddling trade of the weekend for me. It makes no real sense for either side. The Rockies had a top-of-the-rotation pitcher having a slightly off season, but Jimenez was still well worth his contract, which is extremely team-friendly. While bad teams sometimes sell these players off to […]

Changing things up a little this week, I’ll write a post today, tomorrow, and Wednesday detailing some of the major prospects moved over the past few days. Ed Wade stated from the beginning that it would take an impressive haul for him to trade away Hunter Pence. As the trade deadline neared, the two main […]

I’m about this close to disliking Zack Wheeler, and it has nothing to do with him. Coming into the 2009 draft, the Georgia native was my favorite prospect for the Braves’ pick, and it made a lot of sense. He was a hard-throwing high school product that the Braves usually liked, and he was from […]

Looking past the ending of the 19-inning Tuesday night/Wednesday morning affair, the most important thing that happened was the injury to Brian McCann. With a .306/.375/.514 line, McCann has been worth almost 4 wins already this season, and he’s the most valuable catcher in the MLB, according to FanGraphs, by over a win over the […]

When you start looking at prospects, you try to find guys with multiple high-grade tools. The reason is pretty simple. If the player has multiple tools, then he’ll be able to help the team in multiple ways and won’t harm it, and if one of the tools doesn’t develop as previously thought, then at least […]

Top prospects don’t always stay with their original teams. With the trade deadline “around the corner” (sorry, couldn’t help it), top prospects are also used to net stars from other teams. It’s not that the teams don’t want them anymore. It’s just that getting now production is more valuable than possible future production, and it’s […]

Behind every great rule, there are exceptions. Fielding-Independent Pitching (FIP) certainly fits that description. Essentially, FIP attempts to describe solely what a pitcher does. ERA and wins also incorporate other factors such as defense, offense, randomness, managerial decisions, and the bullpen, but FIP attempts to measure only the pitcher. It does this by measuring the […]

Sorry that this is a day late. I spent all weekend traveling between DC, Philly, and Baltimore, and there was no time for anything. Anyway, without further ado … Arizona State University develops good ballplayers. Andre Eithier, Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler, Mike Leake, Ike Davis, Brett Wallace, and the indomitable Brooks Conrad have all called […]