The Rotation is a weekly feature here at SB Nation MLB in which we put a question to our vast network of baseball scribes and bring you the answers. This week we ask, What is the worst ongoing conversation in baseball?

While George Brett reached home safely 1583 times in his MLB career, those runs are not the subject of Craig Robinson’s recent analysis.

From the comments: How is this post not named, “Who’s on fourth?”—“No, Who’s on first. How’s on fourth!”

OK, this is a totally dumb idea.  But how would our favorite game [...] be different if there were five bases, with each of them still being 90 feet apart[?]  The infield would look something like this:

If you’ve been looking for the hitter’s equivalent of the gif of Yu Darvish throwing five pitches at once, here it is. Note that the pitches are all over the place, and not one of them is actually a strike. No matter, Cabrera will still hit it out.

It makes perfect sense. Starters having more pitches to fall back on. Relievers usually only have one or two good pitches, so the pitcher has less options to make adjustments.

This lines up well with what Jeff Zimmerman and I found regarding pitcher aging and how it differs depending on a pitchers role.

Let’s take the example of strike outs. Jeff and I found that while starting pitchers were able to mitigate against their decline in velocity–and therefore experienced a less drastic decline ...

What’s going on with Martin Prado?

Worst Baserunners through May 22, 2013
Player Net Gain
Justin Smoak -17
Martin Prado -15
Allen Craig -12
Nelson Cruz -12
Albert Pujols -10
Chris Carter -10

House of Davey, natch.

Davey Johnson says he’s giving up his razor until the Washington Nationals find their bats.

The manager apologized for his scraggly appearance before Friday’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies, but he said it had a purpose.

“If my facial hair looks bad,’’ he said, “I decided I wouldn’t shave until we started hitting.’‘

The Nationals began the day batting .225, second worst average in the majors. They are a popular favorite to make the World Series, but they were ...

Guess Seymour Siwoff’s childhood fave “Techno-Cracked” link was busted…so he had plenty of time on his hands.

Amid the Orioles hitting a season-high four homers and tying their season high for runs, Manny Machado put his name in the record book again when he singled in the seventh inning.

It was his fifth straight road game with three hits or more. According to Elias, the only other player younger than 21 with a streak of four or more consecutive road games with at least three hits was Ty ...

Don Mattingly is turning into the most hilarious cartoon character since Babe Ruth!

Meet Donnie Dark.

The Dodgers embattled manager returned home Friday night with a scowl the size of a block of empty seats in the reserved section. He conducted his pregame news conference with a tight jaw and a thin stare. For 30 surreal minutes, the nicest man at Chavez Ravine barked.

“It’s what I believe in the way the game of baseball should be played, the determination you’re supposed to play with, the ...

It’s the 10th inning, it’s a tie game between the White Sox and visiting Marlins. As such, White Sox broadcaster and devoted rooter Hawk Harrelson was in a state of percolating tension and in no mood for the umpiring pratfalls of Angel Hernandez.

So listen as Hawk reacts—“reacts” as in “core reactor meltdown”—to a plainly incorrect call by Hernandez, in which the latter convinces himself that Alex Rios is out at first despite plain visual evidence to the contrary ...

Thanks to JB. ...Read More...

We have an early leader for “least plausible excuse of 2013.”

Miami Marlins pitcher Alex Sanabia says he didn’t know it was illegal to spit on the ball, the way he did Monday against the Philadelphia Phillies.

I made the link go to the scoreboard for today’s games. Let me know if it works.

The Yankees just can’t catch up to all these injuries. Less than two weeks after he returned from a fractured right forearm, Curtis Granderson suffered a fractured fifth metacarpal (left hand) in his left hand when Cesar Ramos hit him with a pitch in the fifth inning. No word on a timetable for his return, but it’s same injury Alex Rodriguez had last season. He missed six weeks. Crud.

Granderson, 32, actually stayed in the game to run the bases before being removed the game after the ...

Uhh…to give John Hart more face-time to mindlessly say “look” and “listen”?

Even more striking than the distribution, though, is the absolute level of talent. Three wins, a reasonable expectation for what this year’s Mets and Yankees first-rounders will do in their careers, is about the value a decent and unexceptional player like Daniel Murphy will have in a good year. It’s a really nice hot streak, a misplaced stroke in a ledger. It makes you appreciate just how rare high-end baseball talent ...

One, two big schools
All the worlds are
Colliding all around you

I was going to write something today for SI.com re Votto. Specifically, that Votto represented one of the clearest cases of Old-v-New schools of thought, re hitting production. The idea was discussed when The Technician was sitting on 4 HR/20 BI. Now, he’s up to 7 and 22. Both #s are subpar for him and, in fact, for a No. 3 hitter. The obvious question being, can a guy who ranks 11th among NL 1Bs in BI be seen as having a ...

Sutton: Because that’s where the defaced money is.

The outspoken Sutton—who came up with the Dodgers in 1966 and pitched with them for 16 of his 23 seasons—has his own opinion about everything.

He said in an interview last week that he hates pitch counts.

“I say it with a laugh in my voice when I broadcast: ‘That’s 100 pitches. On the next one, he’s going to turn into a troll.’ At 101, you just disappear. Poof, you’re gone,” Sutton said.

...MLB.com: Did you cheat?

Sutton: No, I never got ...

What a waste of damn fine Canadian beer.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, McLouth chased down a fly ball towards the left-field foul line off the bat of Cobly Rasmus. McLouth caught the ball, but his momentum carried him into the stands.

After disappearing into the (not-so filled) seats, an uninjured McLouth stood up and showed umpire Manny Gonzalez that the ball was still in his glove. Some Toronto fans claimed the nine-year veteran didn’t hold onto the ball, but Gonzalez ruled it an out.

...

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 ...