Late on Thursday night, something caught my eye as it came across Twitter: the Durham Bulls had beaten the Pawtucket Red Sox 4-3 to take a 2-1 lead in the Governor’s Cup Final (aka the International League final or the Triple-A semifinal). I remembered seeing an e-mail from earlier in the day that the Bulls would […]

There aren’t many specific baseball dates that I remember from my childhood. I have plenty of baseball memories, of course, and I could go on for hours recounting them. I can’t really peg very many of them to specific dates on the calendar though. As I sit here in 2014, there really are only two […]

On Monday, one day after Mother’s Day, Jon Paul Morosi wrote a eulogy for the 2014 Tampa Bay Rays, wondering if it was time for them to blow up their roster and aim for the future. Amazingly, it was not the earliest 2014 eulogy written for a 2013 playoff team; SB Nation’s Steven Goldman beat […]

At this point, the formula for building a perennial contender on a small-market budget is well-established: build around a strong core of young players and have a continuous supply of talent coming from the minors. That minor league talent can be used in any of a number of ways; it can supplement the big league […]

It’s not a secret that baseball fans of all stripes loves prospects; between the lengthy minor league process and the degree of mystery that surrounds even the best young minor league baseball players, baseball’s prospects are different than college football or basketball players or junior hockey players. This phenomenon is not limited to bad small […]

From 1994 through 2007, I attended almost every home opener in Pittsburgh at PNC Park and Three Rivers Stadium. Home openers are a weird thing when you don’t have much hope for the upcoming season; you’re excited that baseball is back, but it’s hard to be truly optimistic about what’s in front of you, as […]

It's been apparent since the earliest days of the 2013 WBC that the team from the Dominican Republic was the best team in the tournament, and now they have a trophy to prove it. With a 3-0 win over Puerto Rico on Tuesday night, the Dominican Republic officially claimed their first WBC title and in […]

When the Dominican Republic and the Netherlands faced off on Monday night in the second WBC semifinal, the game pitted the tournament's best team in the Dominicans against the tournament's best story in the upstart Dutch. As it turned out, the undefeated Dominican buzzsaw was too much for the Cinderella Netherlands team. The DR rode […]

A double elimination tournament is vastly different than a typical best-of-seven baseball playoff series, and so less than 72 hours after their best and most complete game of the 2013 World Baseball Classic, Team USA's stars are headed back to their Major League camps while Puerto Rico is on their way to the semifinals. That's […]

It took seven years, but we finally got a matchup between the Dominican Republic and the United States of America in the World Baseball Classic. It was worth the wait. With a spot in the final round on the line, the Dominicans rallied in the top of the ninth in front of a frenzied crowd […]

The semifinals of the World Baseball Classic are halfway set. With Netherlands second upset over Cuba in four days, Japan and the Netherlands will play tomorrow morning to determine seeding, then travel to San Francisco and await the two qualifers from the double-elimination pool of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the United States, and Italy.  […]

After a third straight rough start on Sunday afternoon, Team USA found themselves in an early 2-0 hole against Canada. For the second day in a row, though, the Americans' All-Star laden lineup came through late in the game and buried their opponents. This time, the US turned a 3-2 eighth inning deficit into a […]

When Team USA woke up on Saturday morning, they faced an uncertain future in the World Baseball Classic. Thanks to their tournament-opening loss to Mexico on Friday night, it was possible that the United States could win their final two games and still not advance to the second round of the 2013 World Baseball Classic. […]