Roy Halladay, who may very well be the best pitcher in baseball, has been placed on the trade market by Toronto Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi. Halladay, who has a no trade clause in his contract, doesn’t seem upset about the possibility of being traded.
Said Halladay: “I want to stay, but I think it’s a situation you have to evaluate. I’m really not at that situation just yet. If something does come up, you weigh your options at that point. I hate to put the cart in front of the horse and start saying ‘Do I want to do …read more

The Tampa Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees on Thursday to send the Yankees into last place. The Rays won the game 5-2 behind a strong pitching performance from Scott Kazmir and a two-run homerun by backup catcher Shawn Riggans.
The Yankees are now 20-22 and in last place in the AL East. The Rays, with a record of 24-17, are in first place.
How can the Yankees turn save their season?
1. Get Healthy
The Yankees are dealing with a number of injuries at the moment. Most prominently, the team is without Hall of Fame third baseman …read more

As I’ve watched the Arizona Diamondbacks play since the start of the season, I’ve been extremely impressed.  They are definitely for real in the National League.  While it may be early in the season, the team’s stats are superb.  Entering the day, the Diamondbacks were baseball’s leader in both runs and least earned runs allowed.  That’s a remarkable stat – even with the season in its infancy.
However, I do have a lingering questions regarding Arizona’s batting order.  The Diamondbacks top their order with Chris Young, Eric Byrnes and Orlando Hudson.  While that is an impressive trio of players, I don’t …read more

Jeff Sackmann has an article up at The Hardball Times (full disclosure: I am a contributor to THT) called “The New Inefficiency.” In it, Jeff identifies risk acceptance as the current market inefficiency. Identifying and exploiting such inefficiencies is a key strategy employed by “small-market” teams to help reduce the effect of budgetary imbalances between them and their richer counterparts.
For example, as chronicled in Moneyball, the Oakland A’s at one time were able to exploit teams’ lack of demand for players with high on-base percentage. Now that this is common knowledge, they are no longer able to use that particular …read more

New York Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson offers some insights into his philosophy at the New York Times. Fascinating stuff:
Peterson says pitchers usually agree that the four biggest elements leading to success are movement, location, velocity and change of speed. The trick is in which order to rate them.
Peterson’s goal is to get his pitchers to appreciate that location comes first. Then comes change of speed and movement, with velocity bringing up the rear. That ranking comes as a surprise to some pitchers, Peterson said, because they have had years of receiving their most positive feedback for throwing hard.

My latest article is up at The Hardball Times. It’s about finding cheap relievers who can get the job done for a lot less than guys with maybe a little more name recognition. Just one more way a team without unlimited resources can help itself…

First off, I’m way late in thanking Scott Goldblatt for pinch-hitting for me while I was cavorting about the central California coast during the World Series. Second, if you don’t know who Scott is, he’s an Olympic gold and silver medalist who also runs the excellent swimming blog Timed Finals. I confess, when it comes to swimming, once I get past “be sure to put on a life preserver before getting into the pool” I’m pretty much lost.
That said, there is a post up at Timed Finals called “Science Says Athletes Perform Better At Night” that caught my eye. It’s …read more

Ian Thistle at Giving 110 Percent takes a look at Boston Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon and what the future might hold for him. Despite Papelbon’s tremendous success in his first full season (0.92 ERA, 0.776 WHIP — are you kidding me?), he was a starter throughout the minor leagues and there is talk that he may move back into the rotation in 2007.
A lot of guys who are starters in the minors come up to the big leagues and become closers. Mariano Rivera and Billy Wagner are two that immediately leap to mind. Wagner, in particular, was a stud …read more

Red Hot Mama wants to know what’s wrong with the A’s. She’s coming at this from an unusual angle — it’s not the winning she has a problem with, it’s the apparent failure of the franchise to capture the imagination of Bay Area baseball fans:
There’s no doubt that the A’s have had a prodigious number of wins with the resources they’ve had in the Moneyball era. But what has it gotten them? A baseball team is an entertainment business; a group of professionals putting on a show while patrons spend money on concessions and souvenir t-shirts.
I can’t presume to speak …read more

Purple Row takes a look at what the Colorado Rockies need to do this off-season to improve their chances in 2007. In addition to examining where the club is now and where it’s headed, Rox Girl also looks at the events of the past several seasons to figure out how the Rockies got into this mess in the first place.
She’s got some ideas on how to make things better, but my favorite part is her “frustration at people that think that throwing money at a problem is the quickest and best solution” to whatever ails an organization. Several so-called small-market …read more