Category: Baseball
MLB Draft Pick Inks Record-Breaking Bonus Deal
(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) To say there are high expectations by the Colorado Rockies for rookie Charlie Condon is an understatement. The slugger was chosen in the draft’s first round on Sunday after starring at third base for the University of Georgia, though he is expected to be an outfielder at the big league…
Star pitcher to undergo season-ending surgery
(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) The Washington Nationals revealed devastating news on Friday when the team revealed that All-Star right-hander Josiah Gray is set for season-ending surgery. Gray suffered a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow, though the extent of the damage will not be fully known until he goes…
Revisiting the Top 100 Prospects of the Zips
All-Star Week is the traditional midpoint of the baseball season — though not the mathematical one – and with the MLB Draft adding a bunch of new prospects to the minors, it’s a good time to look back at the ZiPS prospect list from this past winter. Some prospects have excelled in the majors and…
A Fresh Face Takes the Top Spot in MLB’s Power Rankings
(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) As MLB gets set to start the second half of the season, fans have had a few days to reflect on the first half as well as the All-Star Break, which served as a good showcase for all the league’s incredible young talent that has come up through the…
Hitting Analysis: The Small-Sample Rejects’ Swing Analysis
Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports Have you ever had a friend enthusiastically recommend that you watch a TV show and then say, “It takes a few episodes to get going, and the timeline gets weird at the end, and one or two of the main characters can be kind of annoying, but other than that…
The 2024 Designated Hitter: Analyzing Replacement-Level Players
Tim Vizer-USA TODAY Sports At last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contenders. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective….
Top Five Highlights and Lowlights in Baseball This Week: July 19
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) this week This is a strange week for the column. The All-Star break cut into the number of games available to watch; mathematically speaking, fewer games means fewer chances for weird things to happen. I took a weekend trip and didn’t watch any…
Leading Off: The Second Half of the Baseball Season Begins
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love. It’s amusing that we consider this morning the start of the second half of the Major League Baseball season, considering 1,449 games have been played, with…
Analysis of Effectively Wild Episode 2192: Evaluating Perspectives on Both Sides
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the highlights of the All-Star Game, a hypothetical scenario where Evan Longoria comes out of retirement, the newly announced 2025 regular-season schedule (including Tokyo contests and a “Rivalry Weekend”), a conspiracy theory about baseball movies, players influenced by Gameday 3D, the timing of Martín Maldonado’s DFA, and the potential…
MLB Franchise Secures Agreement for Construction of State-of-the-Art Stadium
(Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire) If Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg is not the worst venue in Major League Baseball, it occupies a spot near the bottom of the list. For many years, fans and players complained about the substandard structure even as showcases sprang up in other cities across the MLB landscape. And there’s…