[ad_1] ` Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. The parenthetical part of the title is largely just a nod to Zach Lowe, whose ESPN basketball column inspired this one. He occasionally mentions flaws or foibles holding a particular team or player back, in lovingly GIF’ed up detail….
[ad_1] It’s not quite the dog days of summer, but it’s the time of the baseball season when the sample size is large enough that experts begin to predict winners for various MLB awards. And few garner the respect afforded to being a league MVP. Any discussion of that award in the National League…
[ad_1] 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….
[ad_1] 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…
[ad_1] 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…
[ad_1] Julio Rodríguez is having a down year with the bat. Three months into the season, the 23-year-old Seattle Mariners center fielder is slashing just .257/.308/.343 with seven home runs and a 92 wRC+, numbers that are well below the .279/.338/.495 with a 135 wRC+ and 60 home runs he put up over his first…
[ad_1] There were some significant changes in the AL playoff standings with the Red Sox and Astros making moves up the rankings, while the NL picture remains chaotic. This season, new power rankings have been introduced. The previous model did not account for the fluctuations in a team’s performance throughout the season, giving too much…
[ad_1] (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images) Paul Skenes has taken MLB by storm since being called up by the Pittsburgh Pirates just a few weeks ago, and the phenom is already 4-0 with a 2.29 ERA and 53 strikeouts in 39.1 innings of work. His peers are quickly taking notice and the universal opinion…
[ad_1] The Cleveland Guardians have been one of baseball’s most surprising teams so far this season and have shown a ton of fight on the field in the face of adversity. Unfortunately, that fight on the field spilled into the stands in yesterday’s 7-1 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays, and things got out…
[ad_1] Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports It’s been five weeks since Major League Baseball unveiled its first trove of bat tracking data. In that time, we’ve learned that Giancarlo Stanton swings hard, Luis Arraez swings quickly, and Juan Soto is a god who walks among us unbound by the irksome laws of physics and physiology….
