“Right or wrong
Weak or strong” (enough…Neiled out)

Teams did just fine back in the olden days when virtually every member of the bullpen was capable of preserving a ninth-inning lead.

No MLB reliever had a 30-save season until 1965, and there were no 40-save seasons until 1983.

Only 42 relievers had 40-save seasons over a six-year period from 1982 through 1988.

From 1989 through 2012, a span of 24 years, a total of 328 relievers had at least 40 saves in a season.

The designated closer is ...

Today, we will discuss games like A’s vs. Red Sox, Cards vs. Nats, Jays vs. O’s, Yankees vs. Rays, D-Backs vs. Giants and, perhaps best of all (going by record), Braves vs. Rockies.

Or we might just discuss Doctor Who, whether feathered dinosaurs look cool or stupid, and whether a Oriole could beat a Blue Jay in a actual fight… because BBTF is WEIRD.

NBC said Sunday it is aware of sportscaster Al Michaels’ arrest for allegedly driving under the influence in Santa Monica but declined to say whether it would affect his work with the network.

Greg Hughes, a spokesman for NBC Sports, told Associated Press that the network had been “in contact with Michaels.” Hughes declined to elaborate.

A longtime announcer on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” Michaels was arrested at about 10 p.m. Friday, booked into jail and released on his own recognizance ...

VOTTO WAS THE least concerned about his homer drought — he had one until hitting one Saturday and another Sunday. Nor was manager Dusty Baker concerned.

“I can understand the concern about not hitting home runs, but I don’t feel obligated to hit home runs to quell everyone’s concern,” said Votto. “I’m not concerned about the home runs. The Reds pay me to be good. That’s all I try to do and if I go through a little bit of a homer drought I try to fill in with other things.”

...

You have to imagine what it was like being Don Carcieri in the harsh winter of 2010. As Rhode Island’s governor, a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, he had come into office seven years earlier as a business executive turned politician, vowing to retool the state’s corroded economy.

But that winter, Rhode Island was on the precipice of economic ruin. Its unemployment rate was pushing up against 12 percent — fourth worst in the nation — and three of its cities were ...

Hope this gets up in time…

I once named one of my jerkball teams “Monty Stratton Got A Raw Deal”. #stand

Mike Mills rose from a chair and strolled out to his car, but not to fetch a musical instrument to perform songs from the catalog of R.E.M., his seminal alternative-rock band. A fantasy draft of Masters golfers, involving Mills and a dozen others at a house not far from Augusta National Golf Club, had just concluded. And with baseball games in the East winding down, Mills was retrieving a laptop to take stock of his ...

A guy who hits 20 home runs in Colorado is not a home run hitter. Fowler shouldn’t get caught up in his recent home run spree.

“He’s absolutely a guy who could hit 20 home runs. I thought that the first time I saw him hit the ball in spring training. Just the distance of his hits in BP,” said Bichette, in his first year as Rockies hitting coach. “He had a good year last year, got that under his belt, and now he’s ready to really take off. He has all the tools to be a tremendous player. He wants ...

Somebody is going to get traded eventually. When you have surplus in one area and a shortage in another, it’s the only sensible thing to do.

“I understand why people connect the shortstop-outfielder and on a low level find a way for that to help both teams,” Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak said Friday. “But the reality is we have just gotten to the point we wanted with our farm system — with more elite talent back and set to contribute to the major-league club. I’m not in the ...

Losing is a disease. Do the White Sox have a head cold or something more serious?

Shoulder injuries are tough. We’ll see how he holds up when he starts pitching games for real.

“He’s continued to look good,” said Mark Newman, Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations. “With shoulder surgeries, there are always things that slow you down, but he’s constantly been getting better and healthier. We’re still counting on him.”

The pitching motion isn’t what’s going to cause Tim Lincecum to break down as the scouts once feared. It’s age that’s going to cause the pitching motion to break down and that’s going to lead to Terrible Tim Lincecum. In the meantime, maybe in the death throws of his youth, we’ll see glimpses of The Freak we all remember.

Wow, this sounds like a eulogy when it couldn’t be further from the truth. Tim Lincecum remains a good pitcher. He was a great pitcher tonight. The Giants won the game in ...

Suddenly 11 baserunners per 9 innings is Porcello-bad.

In a game like baseball, patience pays. It’s not a good idea to jump to a conclusion too quickly or base a decision on too few facts. I offer this bit of advice based on developments in this season’s four-start performance of Stephen Strasburg.

After his first start, in which he pitched seven shutout innings and permitted three hits, USA Today called it “the first step in vindication for general manager Mike Rizzo, who took much of ...

No mention of Bob Heise & Dave Berg’s Uncertainty Principle of Hitting. Odd.

ESPN analyst Curt Schilling said, “There are more power arms than I’ve ever seen before. Ever.”

Padres special assistant Brad Ausmus offers no firm data on the subject, but a theory that “teams seem to be rushing young hitters to the majors in an effort to save payroll.”

Marlins bench coach Rob Leary echoes that sentiment, saying, “There are a lot of hitters in Major League Baseball who are just cutting ...

Rivera pitched in his 1,057th game, one shy of Mike Timlin for seventh on baseball’s all-time games pitched list. He got his fifth save of the season and the 613th of his career.

Wait, what?

MIKE TIMLIN is 7th on the all-time games pitched list?!?!?!?

Like ... EVER??

Whawhawha???

Every team’s uniforms, pixel style. Updated. [...] My fourth annual pixel uniform thingy. Features all this of season’s uni changes.

The Oakland Athletics have seen more than 200 more pitches than any other team in baseball through the first few weeks of the season and have the league’s highest walk rate at 10.8 percent. The Houston Astros have struck out a ridiculous 27 percent of the time, leading the Majors by far and looking good enough to obliterate the MLB record. The Boston Red Sox are second in each of these categories. And the Atlanta Braves are going yard in five percent of all of their plate appearances (not ...

Introduction - The day I found Hit Tracker (now-named ESPN Home Run Tracker) was a life-changing experience for me. At first I perused the site as normal people are wont to do, looking at the longest homers, finding hitters who are getting a little lucky, and reading about the physics of pokes.

Then I started to, well, do my thing. The first research I did on this data set was to create the Home Run Damage statistic, which I still feature on my personal blog, Steal of Home. Next, I confirmed ...

Michael Roth pitched his first game above rookie ball on April 9, working five innings for the Class AA Arkansas Travelers. Three nights later, after a game in Frisco, Tex., Roth was called into an office with Manager Tim Bogar and the pitching coach, Mike Hampton. He had no reason to expect what was coming.

“I kind of thought I was in trouble,” Roth said over the phone last week. “I was like, ‘Oh, God, what did I do?’ ”

Roth had done enough in that game — and had enough rest ...

It may be hard to understand how all of this happened without understanding the ancient, one-sided rivalry that exists between Rhode Island, a state of just 1,000 square miles, and Massachusetts, which squeezes Rhode Island on two sides like a vise. Massachusetts is the land of the Red Sox and the Kennedys; Rhode Island makes do with the Red Sox’ Class AAA affiliate in Pawtucket and has a history of rampant political corruption.

Going back to the 1980s, Massachusetts developed a high-tech ...

The Washington Nationals are putting third baseman Ryan Zimmerman on the 15-day disabled list because of a strained left hamstring and promoting prized prospect Anthony Rendon from Double-A for his big league debut.

Earlier than the Nationals would prefer, but it worked out OK for that Harper kid.

Even Grandpa Al Lewis is in shock.

David Ortiz encapsulated all of the emotion and passion that was present in Saturday’s pregame ceremonies at Fenway Park when he took to the microphone.

In Ortiz’s first game back, he thanked the city and law enforcement, and also dropped the f-bomb stating, “This is our [expletive] city.” Red Sox nation didn’t seem to have a problem with the sentiment, and neither did the Federal Communications Commission.

Julius Genachowski, the chairman of ...

Baseball legend Willie Mays and the San Francisco Giants announced that Mae Louise Allen Mays, Willie’s wife of 41 years, passed away peacefully in her sleep Friday morning in the couple’s Bay Area home after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 74-years-old.

Mae and Willie were married in November, 1971. Late in life, Mae waged a 16-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She remained in their family home with Willie until her death.

“Mae died peacefully and without pain,” ...

Ruben: Handbook of the Elementary.

GM Ruben Amaro is shocked — shocked! — that his team isn’t drawing walks.

Via Kevin Tresolini:

  “I think it’s ridiculous that we’ve had no walks in three days,” general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said. “I cannot believe it. More importantly, it’s about not just walks, but producing, and we haven’t done that. We haven’t gotten hits, period. We haven’t gotten hits with runners in scoring position, we haven’t gotten hits to lead off ...

Home was not home
Your room was home
A corner was home
The place they weren’t, that was home

We now know you

Jim Rice
When Jim Rice hit the Hall of Fame ballot after his 16-year career with the Red Sox, the debates got ugly. Rice was feared, argued his supporters; Rice was overrated, a beneficiary of Fenway Park, argued his detractors. During most of Rice’s career in Boston, Fenway was a terrific hitter’s park, the traditional Fenway of “no lead is safe” lore. Overall, Rice hit .320 with ...