This week in baseball blogs:
- Jays From the Couch interviews Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro and Pirates general manager Neal Huntington.
- The Point of Pittsburgh doesn’t expect Pirates outfielder Starling Marte’s 80-game suspension to affect the futures of Andrew McCutchen or Austin Meadows.
- Off The Bench Baseball ponders Marte’s future (or lack thereof) in Pittsburgh.
- The Unbalanced, in the wake of Marte’s ban, questions Major League Baseball’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs.
- theScore salutes Josh Hamilton, whom the Rangers released Friday.
- Climbing Tal’s Hill suggests Astros southpaw Dallas Keuchel is returning to ace form.
- Cleveland Indians Perspective wants the Tribe to sign Cuban outfield prospect Luis Robert.
- Camden Depot argues that WAR underrates great relievers.
- Call To The Pen ranks the top 30 second basemen in the majors.
- Chin Music Baseball focuses on the contrasting strikeout numbers of Red Sox right fielder Mookie Betts and Twins center fielder Byron Buxton.
- District On Deck writes about resurgent Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman.
- Inside the ’Zona praises the early season output of the Diamondbacks’ bullpen.
- Pirates Breakdown addresses McCutchen’s return to center field.
- Bunt to the Gap searches for the positives in what has been a dreadful season thus far for the Blue Jays.
- MLB451 looks at the Hall of Fame cases of Bobby Abreu and Lance Berkman.
- The 3rd Man In offers a mock amateur draft.
- Mets Daddy focuses on how first baseman Lucas Duda and second baseman Neil Walker have fared returning from 2016 back injuries.
- MetsMind wonders if the club should sign Walker to an extension.
- Notes From the Sally scouts Braves southpaw pitching prospect Joey Wentz.
- The Runner Sports delves into Yankees left-hander C.C. Sabathia’s solid start to the season.
- Outside Pitch MLB asks if Madison Bumgarner’s injury will torpedo the Giants’ season.
- Jays Journal scolds Toronto fans for booing Jose Bautista.
- Sports Talk Philly is pleased with the Phillies’ organizational depth at second base.
- Think Blue Planning Committee takes a look at the Dodgers’ organizational bullpen depth.
- Real McCoy Minor News scouts some of the Athletics’ prospects.
- When Sid Slid has updates on recent performbuances by several of the Braves’ prospects.
- That Ball’s Outta Here says it’s too early to draw conclusions about the Phillies.
- Pinstriped Prospects reports on Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius’ first rehab game.
- Clutchlings profiles Blue Jays infield prospect Bradley Jones.
- The Runner Sports revisits the injury that derailed then-Astro shortstop Dickie Thon’s career in 1984 and checks in on Thon’s son, Dickie Joe Thon, who’s an infield prospect with the Cardinals.
- rascalsoftheravine has some uniform change ideas for the Dodgers.
- Rotisserie Duck looks back back on a 1968 set of Topps baseball cards featuring a slew of legends.
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The link for the article about the Indians gunning for Robert is a copy of the link to the Score’s Josh Hamilton article. Fix please
“Call To The Pen ranks the top 30 second basemen in the majors.” Is actually a link to top 30 THIRD baseman
To be completely honest, I become actually enraged when people rank Bryant, Machado, and Donaldson ahead of Nolan Arenado. And I’m a tigers fan. My goodness arenado is statistically better…(not war, but homers and average mostly.
Colorado helps BA and HRs.
Arenado’s numbers are NOT Coors enhanced.
To be completely honest, I become actually enraged when people don’t understand that park factors are a thing.
Other than park factors Donaldson has much better on base skills and in my, and probably most others opinion is we know exactly what arenado is but Bryant could get even better. While they’re all close JD probably go Bryant Donaldson arenado Machado
*I’d, not JD my phone has started autocorrecting to baseball players lol
I put Machado and Arenado in a whole different category by themselves , they are the best third basemen in their respective leagues.
And you’re wrong.
IMO it’s Bryant arenado donaldson machado in that order Donaldson is older and arenado’s splits show that coors doesn’t give him as much inflation as many think. Yeah there is quite a bit in general but arenado on the road is still better, not to mention stellar defense.
IT has taken me a while to cool off my man crush on Arenado, but in my opinion, it simply comes down to where he plays. I know that is not his fault, but I would honestly like to see the numbers that Bryant or Machado would put up playing 81 games a year at coors, or would like to see what Arenado’s numbers would look like playing his home games at a more neutral site.
It is not meant to be a knock against Arenado, its just that I have to wonder whether he would put up those numbers playing somewhere else is all
That would have validity if Arenado weren’t so damn good with the glove. It’s more than just his bat in high altitudes. He’s Trout at 3B.
I agree that his glove is all world…so is Machado.
“He’s Trout at 3B.” Is this supposed to mean he’s really good defensively at 3b? Because Mike Trout really isn’t that great of a defensive center fielder relative to the other good defensive cfs.
Agree, idk why Trout has become the defensive gold standard, guess kind of like Jeter years ago
From 2014-2016, which is a sample of 3937 innings, trout is 6th by drs (-1), 10th by UZR (-9.9), and 9th by UZR 150 (-3.4) for cf. I guess people think that because he is such a good player, he has to be good at defense? I’m not really sure where the misconception comes from.
His numbers this year are pretty interesting, when you look at his home and away splits. Obviously, it’s a very small sample size, so you really have to take that into consideration, but the numbers are pretty shocking, to say the least.
Home Stats G- 8, AB- 30, R-5, H-7, 2B-1, 3B-0, HR-2, RBI-4, BB-2, IBB-0, SO-8, SB-0, CS-0, Batting Line -.233/.303/.467 /.770
Away Stats G- 10, AB- 37, R-7, H-15, 2B-5, 3B-0, HR-4, RBI-8, BB-4, IBB-0, SO-2, SB-1, CS-0, Batting Line – .405/.476/.865/1.341
While Arenado is an excellent all-around player, his 2016 numbers do bring up the question of what his batting line might look like if he played elsewhere. That isn’t to take away from Arenado, regardless where he plays, he will still undoubtedly be a top tier player. I’m just curious how different his batting line might be, and if he would go from all-world to just maybe an all-star??
Are your home and away stats backwards?
I like the post on WAR for relievers. WPA is not a very good predictive stat, but it’s good for determining how much your relief pitching contributed to winning. Britton led the league among pitchers last year with a 6.39 WPA. second highest was Miller at 5.04, then Lester at 4.99