"I wouldn’t say it was a mistake," Anthopoulos said of Ryan’s contract. "I think it’s unfortunate he got hurt. The one thing you can never predict is health." Blue Jays release LHP B.J. Ryan - Apparently, no one saw B.J. Ryan's injuries coming.
Interleague play is over for 2009. To the surprise of no one who follows baseball the American League dominated the National League yet again. This is part (but not all) of the basis for the argument that the AL is the stronger league than the NL...
The A's are in dire straits offensively, partly thanks to some inconsistent leadership from Beane...
The A's are in dire straits offensively, partly thanks to some inconsistent leadership from Beane over the last year or so. Rebuilding made a lot of sense in 2008 but the team did a 180 and made a few win-now moves when they sensed an opportunity...
[Note: I'm sure you're all thinking, "boy, that devil_fingers guy is really witty...
Dr. Mike Marshall trains pitchers in his facilities in Zephyr Hills, Florida. What follows are videos taken by Joe Williams (aka fastbal95; formerly in AA with the St...
Rally updates his Historical Wins Above Replacement back to 1871 As Rally notes, the pre-Retrosheet (pre-1955) defensive stuff is kinda shaky, but this is still super-cool.
Ryan Rowland-Smith's Lost Season An attempt to figure out RRS' drop in velo. Verducci Effect? Inverted W? Plant leg lock? Something else?
For readers unaware, I've been planning on building a biomechanics lab in the Seattle, WA area for some time now...
Ryan Langerhans #0 / Right Field / Seattle Mariners...
Everything you wanted to know about labrums [but were afraid to ask] Pretty great article. Title sums it up. (It's about Brandon Webb.)
Moneyball Script Available! Though you'll just have to imagine Brad Pitt channeling Billy Beane, you can read through one of the first drafts of the Moneyball script - gratuitous 80's chain-restaurant sex scene included. You can't make this stuff up.
All data is taken from Sean "CHONE" Smith's excellent Historical Wins Above Replacement (WAR) site. So who are these guys? ...
You know the drill with baseball bloggers: we like to talk about players who are either really, really good, or (and perhaps preferably -- overall, we're pretty misanthropic) really, really bad. But what about the guys in the middle of the pack...
Driveline Mechanics in the NY Times We're mentioned in the NY Times regarding Tim Lincecum / Randy Johnson. The interview went on for what felt like 45 minutes, yet they used just a little blurb of the conversation. This was probably due to the interviewer quoting Dr...
In a recent article (co-written as an exchange with Bill James), Joe Posnanski makes the following remark: [Nolan] Ryan believed that the game belonged to the starting pitcher. It was his...
Did anyone else see Conan O'Brien last night? I'm not normally a late night talk show guy. Back in high school/college I used to watch Letterman off-and-on, and I actually watched the first few seasons of Conan pretty regularly...
Anthony Reyes to have UCL-related surgery Anthony Reyes has elbow reconstructive surgery on his pitching elbow. In other news, man lands on the moon.
Awesomest. BobbleHead. Ever, for Shin-Soo Choo, of all people. Gotta hand it to Kyle's boys on this one. [H/t: Deadspin]. At least he's on my Ball on a Budget team.
Abolish the Draft Colin Wyers lays out a convincing argument (as usual) that advocates the abolition of the MLB amateur draft. I strongly agree with him for various reasons, but he does a much better job than I at explaining why.
(Hello Driveline readers. My name is Nick and I'm a Cardinals fan living in SoCal. I've been a Cards fan since I was 12, and you can probably guess who my favorite player is, although Colby Rasmus is growing on me. I am very excited to write on this site, thanks a lot to Kyle, and I hope that...
As you've undoubtedly read (or would have if I hadn't pushed the story down the page a bit), Kyle hired two new writers here at Driveline Mechanics...
According to MLB.com, Kyle Gibson has a stress fracture in his throwing forearm and is experiencing tightness as well...
I'd like to take a short post to introduce two of the writers we've accepted to write for Driveline Mechanics: vivaelpujols TucsonRoyal As an Indians' fan, it pains me to accept yet another Royals' fan to my website, but that is a testament to how much I like TucsonRoyal's work...
I recently took a look at Seattle Mariners' closer of the future, Joshua Fields, over at Bleeding Blue and Teal. Here's the clip I used to analyze him: If you want to read it, you'll have to head over there. Check it out!
Draft Prospect: Tyler Matzek, LHP, Capistrano Valley HS After finishing my article on Matthew Purke, I became slightly obsessed with figuring out why scouts seem to be so positive about Tyler Matzek's mechanics. I compare the two and break Matzek's arm action down a little.
Life is busy right now - just started a new job, lots of errands, moving out in a month or so, and my car is in the impound lot as I type this. As such, I haven't been able to do much...
Okay, okay, you probably figured we were done with this. And we are. Really. After this...
Luke Hochevar was picked with the first overall pick of the Kansas City Royals in the 2006 amateur draft. Since being drafted, he has pitched exceptionally well in the minors as a starter (ERA = 3.59, WHIP = 1.243, BB/SO = 3.06) and reasonably as a young stater in the majors...
Today I'm introducing an occasional feature I hope to do from time-to-time. I imagine someone somewhere is doing this, too, but if so, I haven't seen it. All WAR data is taken from Rally's famous historical WAR pages at baseballprojection.com...
In last week's post on the Myth of the RBI Guy, I used a crude method inspired by Jonah Keri's piece in Baseball Between the Numbers to generate groups of individual seasons by players since 1973 and in 2008 who were overrated by their gaudy RBI numbers...
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