The New York Yankees have less than a 3% chance of winning their division according to FanGraphs playoff odds.  They recently got swept by the Boston Red Sox in a 4-game set at Fenway park at the beginning of the month, essentially handing the AL East crown to...

Khris Davis has my back. I originally started writing this post Saturday morning and opened with a remark about Davis’s home run against the Angels in a 4-3 loss the night before and how lately it’s seemed like he has been going yard every other night.  Life...

Just last month, the Red Sox filled their need for a solid right-handed bat that could mash lefties in Steve Pearce.  While sometimes these moves can seem minor, they can have major implications as the baseball calendar turns to the fall. If the Yankees were to...

The Baltimore Orioles have been the worst team in professional baseball this season.  By position player WAR, they are last in the league; by pitching WAR, they are 24th out of 30 teams.  They currently sit 23 games back of the AL East leading New York Yankees. On...

Kyle Schwarber is known for many things in his brief, but storied (for Cubs fans, at least), career.  From his mammoth scoreboard-landing home run in the 2015 playoffs (looking at you Cards fans!) to his 2016 World Series heroics, there is no doubting that Kyle...

I am sure you are already aware that Jordan Hicks is capable of throwing a baseball very hard. Last Sunday he entered a game against the Philadelphia Phillies, and in the process of closing out a 5-1 Cardinals victory, Hicks threw the 5 fastest pitches of the 2018...

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has taken Minor League Baseball by storm and it’s looking like any day now the Toronto Blue Jays are going to call up their talented young hot corner.  Guerrero is clearly ready for MLB action, as he’s currently sporting a .407/.456/.676...

You are a GM planning on building a contending team (on a budget of course) with sustained success starting today and can only choose one of the following first baseman: Career Statistics Player AVG OBP SLG OPS HR wOBA wRC+ WAR Player A .272 .319 .478 .797 85 .341 115...

One of the bigger surprises of the offseason was the Kansas City Royals signing of free agent Mike Moustakas, their hot corner of the last 6 years, to a one-year deal for $6.5 million with a mutual option (that I feel comfortable saying will not get picked up). Many...

Most elite athletes will tell you that the hardest day of their life is the day when they are forced to hang em up.  It’s never under their own terms- these players wish they could play forever.  Even the greatest of the greats- the Ali’s, the Jordan’s, the...

Growing up as a kid, my favorite player was Dodgers closer and Cy Young winner Eric Gagne (Yes Franco loves this).  I had a Gagne jersey, a Gagne bobblehead, a Gagne poster in my room, heck I even bought the Guns N’ Roses album so I could listen to Welcome to the...

What’s up guys and Happy Saturday! This April we saw the return of the major-league season, headlined by two amazing stories, one about comebacks and one about come-ups.  There were also two pretty major contract extensions in April, both signed with the St....

Too often in sports, teams give up on players because of one bad year.  They forget potential or prior results and send them on their way.  Sometimes you can’t blame them; whether it is pressure from ownership or the fan base, teams are expected to deliver...

If you’ve been watching baseball the past decade, Jason Vargas is a name that probably rings a bell.  Vargas is a career journeyman, spending time with the Marlins, Mets, Mariners, Angels and currently, the Royals. Between 2010-2014, Vargas had 3 2.0+ WAR seasons and...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past month, you are aware of Aaron Judge’s hot start to the season, where he is slashing (.337/.435/.815).   Judge is far exceeding his FanGraphs projections, already posting a 2.5 WAR, thanks in large part to all the success...

What’s up guys and Happy Saturday! This March we saw the return of Spring Training, a stellar World Baseball Classic, and a handful of major contract extensions. Today, I want to cover some of the major contract extensions signed in the month of March and give you my...

Okay I can’t just sit by anymore, I am jumping on the Eric Thames bandwagon. Thames is already leading the Majors in home runs this year since coming over from South Korea.   I know I know, we are only two weeks into the season Gary.  But something about...

I always stuck to the basics when it came to defensive stats, but in the last few years I have abandoned errors and putouts in favor of UZR (quantifies how many runs a player has saved through his fielding prowess) and DEF (measures a player’s defensive value).  If...

Dexter Fowler became a star the day he took the field as the Cubs center fielder Opening Night in 2015.  After finishing in the Top 25 in OBP (.389) and WAR (2.6) for the second half of the season, Cubs fans finally realized what it felt like to have a quality...

Many people around the game of baseball value a hitter who rarely strikes out.  In one of our previous posts, we showed the correlation between exit velocity and strikeout rates: if you have a high average exit velocity and a low strikeout rate, odds are you are a...

With the implementation of StatCast in every Major League ballpark in 2015, baseball fans finally had a concrete answer to an important question: how hard do players actually hit the ball?  We have known for many years now how fast a ball comes in; now thanks to...

As we all know, Justin Turner just signed a huge deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers this offseason after only playing at an All-Star level the last two seasons.  While Turner has always utilized a leg kick, he explains that as soon as he put on the Dodger blue, he...

Overshadowed by the greatest player on the planet and overall poor team play, stands Kole Calhoun, a legitimate Top 5 RF in the game today.  Let’s be honest with each other: I sleep on him, you sleep on him, and he even sleeps on himself (the contract extension...

 Full disclaimer: I am removing his 2016 tenure with the Oakland A’s in this analysis.   Let’s start with the obvious: his box score statistics don’t jump off the page, and he doesn’t pass the eye test. But, Chris Coghlan’s 2014-2016 numbers with the Cubs tell me...