This is how it works around here. Every year, as Opening Day nears, I dust off my crystal ball and try to predict the future, with a little column we call “The Numbers That Define Baseball.” It’s fun. It’s eye-opening. And it reminds us, every darned year, that this sport is changing so rapidly that […]
The Rays are going to look different next season. They always do. It’s pretty much in their DNA to spend their offseason days looking for ways to tweak the roster, adding talent and managing payroll by making trades and signings, often under the radar, that result in an annual churn. But how much differently? Click […]
ARLINGTON, Texas — Some baseball numbers are unimpeachable. You can argue context, you can argue era, but you cannot argue the significance of a .406 batting average. Or a 56-game hitting streak. Or 4,256 hits. More than any sport, baseball is built upon numbers. In recent years, the numbers have grown more sophisticated and the […]
Manuel Margot‘s falling-over-the-fence catch may be the video highlight that sums up Game 2 of the ALCS between the Tampa Bay Rays and Houston Astros. But Margot’s phenomenal play wasn’t the lone defensive highlight of the game. In fact, you can make a good argument the Rays’ pitching just looks even better because of the […]
Another mesmerizing postseason baseball game busted out in San Diego on Monday. The scoreboard will tell us the Rays beat the Astros, 4-2, to take a two-games-to-none lead in this American League Championship Series. But there were so many illogical and incomprehensible developments along the way, how could I not recap the Wildest and Weirdest […]
Rays center fielder Kevin Kiermaier might not be the most consistent hitter, but when you talk about his glove — oh my goodness — it’s second to none. He already has won three American League Gold Glove Awards during his six full seasons in the big leagues. The most recent came last year, when Kiermaier […]
Charting baseball games for $7 an hour with Baseball Info Solutions. That’s where Erik Neander found himself upon graduating from Virginia Tech in 2005. College might not have been everything Neander hoped it would be. A major shoulder injury in his junior year of high school shut out the possibility of playing baseball collegiately somewhere […]
SARASOTA, Fla. — Get ready: The four-outfielder alignment, a radical shifting trend that has been growing across Major League Baseball, is coming to Pittsburgh. While the former regime was not in favor… Click here to read the rest of the article on tampabay.com.