Baseball Historians

As far as the Tigers are concerned, the spring season is officially over.  They wrapped things up with a 3-3 tie in which most of the regulars were gone by the third inning and all of the scoring for both sides was done by the fourth.  Mike Maroth had a not so great outing in [...]

I completely missed this yesterday, but Vance Wilson joins Kenny Rogers on the disabled list with a sore right elbow.  Fortunately there’s no structural damage but it hasn’t healed like the backup catcher thought it would so he’ll miss the first couple of weeks of the season.  Mike Rabelo will take his place.  He had [...]

This may come as somewhat of a surprise, the Blue Jays top a list of talent production.  Since the 1995 season, they’ve had more baseball player seasons then any other team in baseball with close to 90.  It did bring up a painful memory though and that is that Michael Young is a Blue Jays farm [...]

The Pirates were previewed not once, but twice today.  The Hardball Times and Baseball Prospectus both did their season previews today and as usual, there’s not a whole lot of optimism. 

Man, we take our son to the mall for dinner and some play and all hell breaks loose.  While I was gone, the Tigers inked Carlos Guillen for four more years and for $48 million.  This is about what I expected as Guillen has turned himself into one of the top shortstops in baseball with [...]

The Hardball Times does their season previews in a five question format.  The Yankees are so important, they get not one, but two columns and the end result is TEN questions.  It all means squat though.  Yankees win the World Series this year, bet the house, no doubt about it.

Will Carroll is reporting (based on a Free Press report) that the problem with Kenny Rogers arm is now a blood clot.  There’s still not a lot of details (like whether the clot is actually in his arm or not) so it’s hard to come to a guess as to how soon Rogers will be [...]

Baseball Prospectus recently updated their Postseason Odds report, which is a lot of fun, to reflect their PECOTA projections.  The Tigers come in at third place in the AL Central but they have a great then 31% chance of making the playoffs.  One in three doesn’t sound all that great but it’s better then the [...]

Alright, I’ve started a new blog. Brian’s decided to put together a network of minor league baseball blogs and I’m throwing my hat into the ring to cover all of the Reds minor league affiliates. So for all of your Reds minor league baseball needs, I encourage you to stop by Reds Minors. [...]

According to this press release, random copies of Sunday’s Chicago Tribune will contain huge poster sized schedules for the Cubs and White Sox.  You can view pictures of the schedule by clicking this link.  These look very cool and they’d look even cooler on my wall.

I’m pretty disgusted with the way the Twins rotation turned out.  I can’t say it much better then this and don’t have a lot to add.  I mean, is that a championship rotation?  That’s asking for an awful lot from your offense with guys like Ponson and Ortiz out there.  Sigh.

Chad Durbin put up some nice numbers today in his final start of the spring.  He threw 5 2/3 shutout innings and gave up five hits and two walks with two strikeouts.  Of course he’ll be taking over for Kenny Rogers as we figure out what’s wrong with him.  Fernando Rodney gave up the only [...]

The Baseball America Prospect blog recently took a look at the White Sox spring training camp as it winds down.  They talk about all of the interesting prospects who made waves this spring and they also talk about John Danks and Josh Fields in the “hot” category.  I haven’t talked about it yet, but Danks [...]

Baseball Prospectus profiled Austin Kearns today.  Man, this guy has a pedigree.  Seventh overall pick and a top prospect for the Reds in the early part of the decade, Kearns then caught the injury bug and never got back on track.  He’d show flashes like he did in the first half of last year but [...]

There’s no doubt that Delmon Young is a player that Devil Rays fans can get excited about.  He joins a talent laden outfield that includes star Carl Crawford.  What’s even better news is, this shouldn’t be the end of it.  As this Baseball America story points out, Evan Longoria and Reid Brignac should anchor the [...]

Baseball Prospectus has started unveiling their Top 30 team list with the bottom thirty and lets just say, the Reds don’t make a very good showing.  They predict only the Nationals and Marlins will be worse then the Reds with the Royals and Devil Rays being just ahead of them in the standings.  He has [...]

MiLB.com previewed the Braves minor league system today.  They profile players at each of the Braves minor league teams, give us some potential players who have fallen under the radar, has a 2006 draft recap and then they predict that Eric Campbell and Jo-Jo Reyes will be the top minor league players in the organization.  [...]

Alright, I don’t know if this is a pre April Fools joke or what, but AM1270 is talking on the radio right now about Kenny Rogers hitting the DL.  I haven’t been able to find anything else on this, but as soon as I can, I’ll let you know.
***UPDATE***
The Big Show on AM1270 is saying [...]

Larry Borowsky previewed the Cardinals over at the Hardball Times today. He starts with some thoughts on last year and then asks five key questions the Cardinals need to answer to contend in 2007.  He talks about the offense, Jim Edmonds and Braden Looper as well as the team’s front office.

Rob Neyer talks about new Marlins centerfielder Alejandro De Aza today on his blog.  The youngster will skip Triple A and go right into the fire this season.  Hopefully he pans out like the Marlins rookies did last year.

Joe Distelheim previewed the Cubs today over at the Hardball Times in a five questions column.    He starts with a discussion on the manager change and gets around to a discussion on Alfonso Soriano and then closes with whether the Cubs will be any good this year (sure they will).

Baseball America took one last look at the Royals spring camp from a minor league perspective on the prospect blog.    There’s a focus on Alex Gordon but Billy Butler and Joakim Soria also gets some love.  They close with some bad news on Justin Huber (no where for him to go) and also talk about [...]

Lisa Grey previewed the Astros at the Hardball Times today.  In the column, she asks and answers five questions that talk about everything from the starting rotation to what effect Craig Biggio’s quest for his 3,000 hit will have on the team.  She even throws in a bonus question on Roger Clemens.

The Reds keep on winning and you hope this carries over into regular season.  Adam Dunn was one of the big hitters and he hit his fifth homerun of the spring en route to a two for three day.  He drove in one and scored twice.  Edwin Encarnacion also went year with a solo shot.  [...]

The spring season is winding down, and at this point in the year you have players putting their time in, yet also not going to hard in the event they get hurt.  There’s just three spring games left, and then the fun begins.
Gary Sheffield had the big hit of the game yesterday.  He hit a [...]

Not sure why I think this is newsworthy but he’s a former Tiger farmhand with one of the coolest names around.  Former Tiger minor league catcher Maxim St. Pierre was picked up by the Royals this past off season, and now they’ve shipped him to the Brewers for Ben Hendrickson.  Pierre is now 26 never [...]

Minor League expert John Sickels profiled Fraklin Morales today.  He has the left hander at a B+ rating but he does say there’s a good chance it could improve.  This is a solid look at one of the Rockies top prospects.

The A’s were shut down today in a 2-0 loss to the Angels.  All four A’s hits were singles in what was a complete shut down.
The good news is, Danny Haren had a nice start for the A’s.  He lasted only 4 1/3 innings, but he gave up just one run on six hits with three strikeouts [...]

This is a huge surprise but Mark Prior is going to start the season at Iowa to build up his arm strength.  There’s reason to be optimistic because Lou Piniella said that Prior has made some progress and the hope is that he continues to improve in the minors.

Sometime, reality can be stranger then fiction.  Ugueth Urbina, who’s mom was kidnapped and ultimately released a couple of years back, is now going to serve 14 years in a Venezuelan prison for attempted murder.  This has been in the works for about a year and a half now.  At the time, I didn’t like [...]