Pittsburgh Gazette Times, May 24, 1913:

Excessive use of the spitball has injured Ed Walsh’s digestion and has thus affected his condition, so that he has not yet reached his best form of this year, according to Dr. James H. Blair, club physician of the Chicago Americans, in a report made today on the pitcher’s condition.
...
According to the doctor saliva needed for Walsh’s digestion has been used on the ball, but with care the pitcher may be in his old time form in a month.

Obviously the ...

Baseball Fates, please note (please?): I’m just playing around here! None of these things will actually come to pass; it’s just a way of expressing how hot he’s been so far.

Miguel Cabrera finished Thursday’s game #45 with a .391 BA, .701 slugging, 1.168 OPS, 14 HRs, 55 RBI, 39 Runs, 72 hits, 129 total bases, and an OPS+ well north of 200.

The projection multiplier from 45 to 162 is 3.6, so….

  Heads up, Hack? Bourn’s gift to Miggy (plus Thursday’s daily dinger) put him on a ...

TONY RANDAZZO NO MISTER ROCK AND ROLL, MR. COMMISSIONER.

Major League Baseball should immediately adopt reforms to the umpiring system. MLB is now a $7 billion dollar industry awash in cash so the costs of these changes can hardly be the reason to defer making them.

  1. MLB should buy the umpire schools and take over the training and development of all umpires in professional baseball. The recruitment, training and compensation of minor league and major league umpires should be controlled ...

“locked-in” with Tom Tango and Morgan Ensberg!...(also check out Kevin Goldstein’s FB page which has been having a terrific back/forth)

Below you will find an unedited transcript of an email correspondance between myself and Morgan Ensberg.  This exchange is a result of Ensberg taking a position with Brandon McCarthy on Twitter, and seemingly against me.  As this thread will show, we don’t really disagree on anything, once we were able to say more than 140 characters to each other.

As ...

Remember folks, it’s Miguel Cabrera’s world, we just live in it. Except for when it’s Mike Trout’s.

A teaser:

I can’t … It’s just … that is so beautiful and hilarious. Again, that’s batting-average against from the catcher’s perspective, so picture a lefty-swinging Sandoval with his back to you over on the right side of your screen. The place you go in the strike zone is in on his hands but, for goodness sake, don’t go too far in! If you miss outside the zone and come close to hitting him, he kind of rakes those pitches. Which doesn’t make sense. But, hey, neither does Sandoval. ...Read More...

It has been nearly 16 years since Philadelphia lost Richie Ashburn, one of the greatest Phillies players of all time. The beloved Hall of Famer, who played for the team from 1948 through 1959, died of a heart attack in 1997 after broadcasting a Phillies-Mets game from Shea Stadium. His family buried him in the cemetery outside of Gladwyne Methodist Church, where all was quiet until some developers announced plans to turn the church into condos and put a parking lot next to the cemetery. ...

Light at the end of the ridiculously low-ceilinged tunnel.

The Cubs have actually played pretty good baseball when sequencing is not considered. By wOBA differential, they’ve been a well above average team. Their record is almost entirely a reflection of the power of the timing of various events.

In our Win Probability section, we track a stat called “Clutch”, which basically looks at the wins a team has gained or lost due to the leverage of the game when their positive or negative ...

Maybe Magic Johnson would like to try his hand in the Dodgers dugout?

Ted Turner was the “Mouth of the South,” “Terrible Ted” and “Captain Outrageous,” a brash, outspoken business mogul who had a golden touch.

He launched the first successful cable news network with CNN, sailed to victory in the America’s Cup and used his cable empire to turn his Atlanta Braves into “America’s Team.”

But 36 years ago this month, Turner discovered there was one thing he couldn’t do: manage his own baseball ...

Justin Turner, take notes.

Amen amen there’s a lower power.

Bold move in Seattle, as the Mariners are optioning catcher Jesus Montero to Triple-A Tacoma, reports Ryan Divish of the Tacoma News-Tribune.

Montero, whom the M’s acquired from the Yankees as part of the Michael Pineda deal, was ranked by Baseball America as the sixth-best overall prospect coming into 2012. This season, however, Montero has authored a grim batting line of .208/.264/.327 in addition to playing spotty defense in his 225 1/3 innings behind the ...

“I have [former Red Sox CEO] John Harrington’s old office. The day he turned over the reins, he was sitting at the desk and handed me his pen with a warm smile,” Henry wrote in an email.“I still have it. Red ink. I work more of my hours though in my home offices in Florida and in Brookline. But there is nothing like driving into Fenway Park to go to work. I am thankful every day that I get to do that. It’s one big reason why these rumors of a potential sale of the Red Sox are so ...

Must…let…him…tie…Bob…Purkey…in…career…wins…at…all…cost…...

Wednesday, though, Leyland got a little sentimental. After a 65-minute stoppage in the fifth inning, he let Justin Verlander go back into the game and get the two outs he needed to pick up the victory.

“Since I got here in 2006, that guy has been our horse, and tonight was a reward for that,” Leyland told FOX Sports Detroit’s Shannon Hogan after Detroit’s 11-7 win over the Indians. “I stretched it for five minutes because of what he’s ...

IKEA: Join our free loyalty program!

Despite growing calls for his demotion, Davis won’t be sent down to Triple-A before Friday’s series opener against the Braves, according to the New York Daily News.

“Maybe after the weekend,” a source told the paper.

It’s been a frustrating season for Davis, batting .147 with nine RBIs after getting off to a miserable start last year, too.

“I know I’m going to play better, especially hitting-wise. I can’t do any worse,” he said. “If ...

Milwaukee Journal, May 23, 1913:

Big Ed Walsh, twirling star of the White Sox, announced today that he has joined the faculty of a correspondence school and hereafter must be addressed as “Professor”. For a paper dollar Walsh will send out to aspirants for fame six lessons on the science of moistening the ball and putting it where the batter’s bat isn’t. Walsh starts his classes Monday.

This is not something that strikes me as a useful service. Nonetheless, I’d love to be able to read Walsh’s ...

Mescaline Mike, to me at the bar. “If you want a real sleeper for your fantasy team this year…think Vance Worley.” #mind-fogging

Vance Worley just got clobbered again, this time by the Braves. There’s no set and certain point at which a start turns into an official clobbering, but looking through Worley’s 2013 game log, I’d say this was the fifth or sixth time he’s been clobbered, in ten games. That’s an ugly ratio, and to make matters worse, recall that Worley was Minnesota’s ...

Ow. Ow. Ow. Mouthbreathers/Mindbreathers now on full tilt boogie replay. (better now)

In some ways, we take Phillips for granted. Especially his glove. I’ve watched the Reds actively since I arrived here in ’88. Bret Boone was good. Pokey Reese could be spectacular, but not always steady. No one has been in BP’s universe. (Nor in the league. How he has only 3 Gold Gloves is a black hole mystery. Darwin Barney: Hahaha.)

But his offense is the MV reason he is his team’s best player now, ...

Hitting Is Simple (and so is the manager).

Manager Don Mattingly benched Andre Ethier for the Dodgers’ series finale at Miller Park on Wednesday, saying he did so because he wanted to field a lineup “that’s going to fight and compete the whole day.”

Asked if he was trying to send a message to Ethier, Mattingly replied, “We’re last place in the National League West. Last year, at this point, we’re playing a lineup that basically has nobody in it, that fights and competes and ...

Astros snow cone vendor just doesn’t give a crap.

Only five games today? Yeesh. Well, Kevin Gausman gets his MLB debut. Or, since he went to LSU, I guess it is his debeaux.

Pedroiadolia: The psychological phenomenon of seeing wacko images on dirty uniforms.

The narratives around the two players, however, could not be different. Pedroia is almost the prototype of the over-achieving “scrappy” player. He is a 5’8” middle infielder who does the little things well. This ignores that he was also a second round draft choice who played baseball at a top baseball school. Cano, on the other hand is bigger, more athletic and does not project scrappiness at all. Throughout ...

“I scare myself
and I don’t mean lightly
I scare myself
it can get frightenin’”

Chase Utley swung for the first time in batting practice Tuesday and it did not feel right. He took a second hack, then another, and one more. That is when he went to Charlie Manuel and told him his right side hurt.

“It definitely scared me a little bit,” Utley said Wednesday.

Depending on what an MRI examination Thursday in Philadelphia shows, the Phillies could be without their second baseman and top offensive ...

Former Rangers slugger Jose Canseco posted some “breaking news” today on his Twitter account:

Breaking news this is a first folks las vegas police was just at my house i have been charged with rape by a [name withheld] from las vegas — Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) May 22, 2013

He goes on to tweet a photo of the fitness model, along with her phone number (stay classy, Jose), then suggests a polygraph to “get the ball rolling.”

“Stay tuned to another day in the life of jose ...

And not clicking on Verducci is quickly becoming another one!

1. Hitting in the major leagues is fundamentally broken

What will it take for teams to start admitting that this passive-aggressive, run-up-the-pitch-count philosophy isn’t working? Apparently almost a decade of declining results isn’t enough. Entering this week:

• The number of hits per game is down for the seventh straight year.

• On base percentage has been stagnant or down for the seventh straight year.

• Strikeouts ...

How many Votto triads of numbers have not yet been drawn?!

Several years ago, Votto was standing in the on-deck circle at Great American Ball Park while Pete Rose was watching from a box seat. The two men struck up a conversation, and the Hit King passed along a few pearls of wisdom that resonated. Among other things, he told Votto that it’s no sin to reach for the last cookie in the jar. Rose would never have amassed 4,256 hits if he didn’t have a touch of the greed-monger in him.

“Early in ...