Today is an important day on the baseball calendar, although you might not see or hear that mentioned anywhere else. At some point this evening, likely around 10:30 PM Eastern, the seventh game of the night will wrap up and the 2024 major league season will cross over into its second half, technically speaking. Half…
Baseball is truly a game of goops and gunks. Clubbies prepare pearls with Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud. Position players paste their bats with pine tar and pamper their gloves with leather conditioner. Trainers soothe sore muscles with Icy Hot or Tiger Balm, and coaches spray the field with foul streaks of tobacco juice. Between…
By June of 2013, Baltimore’s beat writers had established their favorite in-season stat to track: Manny Machado’s rapidly rising doubles count. Machado was in the midst of his first full season in the majors and on pace to make a run for the single-season doubles record. He finished the season with 51 (a several-way tie…
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports Back in January, I expressed grave concern over the state and direction of the Washington Nationals. They’d followed their World Series title with four straight last-place finishes, jettisoned most of their good players, and watched a series of prospects flame out. It wasn’t just a matter of waiting for Dylan Crews…
This week marks the halfway point of the 2024 regular season. We’re out of silly sample size season now, having moved on to wondering which teams will add at the deadline and which will start building for tomorrow. Season-long leaderboards are populated with the best players in the league, just like you’d expect. The White…
(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) The St. Louis Cardinals invested a lot in their starting rotation, given their issues in that area last year. They brought in ace Sonny Gray, plus veterans Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson. Still, many analysts predicted a rough season ahead for them given the elevated average age on the roster….
The Dodgers played their final game in Brooklyn on September 24, 1957. They won 2-0 behind rookie Danny McDevitt, who scattered five singles and never let the Pirates get a runner past second base. They’d finish the season on the road, never to return. Five days after their season ended, the USSR launched Sputnik, the…
Carlos Carrasco will be coming off of his best start of the season when he takes the mound tonight for the Cleveland Guardians against the Baltimore Orioles. Last Friday, the 37-year-old right-hander surrendered a lone run while logging seven strikeouts and allowing just four baserunners across six innings in a 7-1 win over the Toronto…
The two of us were part of the FanGraphs contingent in Phoenix for the 2024 MLB Draft Combine last week. The first half of the week consisted of showcase events like batting practice, infield and outfield drills, and a game featuring many of the high schoolers in attendance. The back half of the week consisted…
