With yesterday’s announcement that the Astros would move to the American League in 2013 and that with that move would come constant interleague play, it’s clear that Major League Baseball will look very different in 2013 and beyond than it has since interleague play was introduced in 1997.  The new arrangement leaves lots of questions: […]

Last night, the Baseball Twitterworld was set on fire with a series of Tweets that claimed that the Miami Marlins were about to make a huge splash on their third day of existence by signing shortstop Jose Reyes. People RT’d the initial reports and the quick denials and speculated whether the Marlins would move Hanley […]

Flags fly forever. The St. Louis Cardinals went on a magical run that transformed them from wild card also-rans on September 1st to World Series Champions on October 28th. Now, though, GM John Mozeliak is facing a winter full of uncertainty. Tony La Russa retired immediately after the World Series and Albert Pujols will be […]

For a couple of years now, I’ve been thinking that Ed Wade’s “try to win now with a team full of lackluster vetrans” plan was going to backfire on the Astros. I’d say that 106 losses and a massive roster purge at the trade deadline counts as a backfire. The Astros are expected to have […]

If you would’ve asked me to write a post-mortem for the Cubs’ season in April, here’s what I would’ve written: “An overpaid roster of veterans that aren’t nearly as good as they were five years ago will occasionally play good baseball, but more than likely find themselves in the bottom half of the NL Central […]

It was a tale of two seasons for the Pirates in 2011. In their first 100 games, the Pirates went 53-47 and found themselves tied for the NL Central lead. In the last 62 games, they went 19-43, clinching a 19th consecutive losing season and falling to fourth place in the Central. So which Pirates […]

A year after winning the National League Central, the Reds sat home and watched their two division rivals play in the NLCS. So what happened? Why did the Reds fall from their place in first? Do they have the pieces in place to take advantage of the Brewers and Cardinals if both of their big […]

The Brewers went all-in in 2011, emptying out the farm system for the pitching they’d desperately been craving to supplement their Braun/Fielder led offense. It almost worked, too, getting them just their second playoff series win in franchise history and their first-ever NLCS berth. They fell short, though, dropping the NLCS to their division-rival Cardinals […]

I don’t even know where to begin.  In Game 6 of the most exciting World Series in who knows how many years, the Rangers found themselves holding a 7-5 lead with Neftali Feliz on the mound, two outs, and two strikes. David Freese delievered a two-run triple just out of Nelson Cruz’s reach (if we’re […]

Shortly after 8:00 PM on the East Coast, Rafael Furcal lined out to Adrian Beltre to begin Game 5 of the 2011 World Series. Shortly before midnight, Lance Berkman swung and missed at a ball that kicked off of Mike Napoli’s shin-guard. Napoli chased the ball down almost to first base and flipped the ball […]

There’s a reason that you can’t just look at pitching matchups and decide how a playoff series is going to play out. Randy Wolf seemed like the weak link in the Brewers’ rotation before the NLCS started, but tonight he turned in the strongest start Milwaukee’s gotten the entire series and helped the Brewers level […]

When you really get down to it, every single baseball game is a composite of discrete events. The team that makes the most of the 27 outs allotted to them wins, the other team loses. Often, the final result hinges on just one or two of those individual matchups, with less than a handful of […]

It’d be a stretch to call Game 3 of a 1-1 series a must-win game for any team. According to WhoWins.com, 35 different teams in MLB history have come back from 2-1 series deficits, which is about 29% of all of the teams that have faced such a deficit. Not an ideal position to be […]

Just a few years ago, the NL Central was the best division in the National League. The Astros and Cardinals met in back to back League Championship Series in 2004 and 2005 and the Cardinals took home the World Series in 2006. Since the Cardinals beat the Tigers for their tenth World Series title, though, […]

When the St. Louis Cardinals sent Colby Rasmus and a few other players to Toronto for a package headlined by Edwin Jackson, Mark Rzepcynski, Octavio Dotel, their focus was clear: Win now. However great of a player Colby Rasmus might grow into, the sum of the parts from the trade would help them more in […]