Slightly Better than Replacement Level
About halfway through this past Central League (JPCL) season, I wrote about the interesting career path of Xavier Batista. At the time he deserved all the praise in the world for having turned his career around. The Hiroshima Toyo Carp slugger had gone from a prospect to out of baseball to a developmental prospect again […]
Matthew Trueblood – Baseball Prospectus ($): The end of the Clint Hurdle era was a long time coming for the Pittsburgh Pirates. That being said, firing Hurdle alone is not the answer to the Pirates’ larger problems. He is responsible for losing the clubhouse and the less than desirable culture of that team. Neal Huntington […]
As the 2019 regular season closes out it’s yet another season we were lucky enough to spend with one of the best second basemen to ever play the game. He’s been among the best since his third season, and first full season, of professional baseball and he’s never really looked back. Whether he’s manning the […]
For a lot of people, Randy Messenger threw his last pitch on October 4th, 2009 with the Seattle Mariners. That was the day he walked off a Major League Baseball mound for the last time. Were this many years ago I could forgive people for thinking Messenger’s career ended on that day. It’s not though, […]
One of the ideas often put forth in baseball circles is that going from Major League Baseball to Nippon Professional Baseball will result in instant success. The general context behind this idea is that MLB players are so good that even those MLB players who can no longer cut it in that league will excel […]