Blake Beavan's Poor Pitch Selection

Reconnaissance work on Starting Pitchers for the upcoming season brought me to Blake Beavan of the Seattle Mariners. Beavan is not, yet, expected to win a spot in big league rotation, but he’s 6’7” 240 lbs. and he started 15 games for the Mariners, as a 22-year old, last season. So, there is reason for optimism. In fact, the Mariners are displaying some confidence by starting Beavan in their cactus league opener on Friday.

College Hoops, Top 5 from 1990-Now

All right folks, it's not baseball, but it adds to another favorite sport: College Hoops. We are doing this. Please add to the discussion. What is your Top 5 lineup for NCAA hoops of players from 1990 - today?

Jesus Montero in the Tools of Ignorance

Yahoo posted this AP picture on their site from yesterday:

What Will the Braves Do?

The Braves had a terrible collapse last September. People outside of Atlanta don't hear much about it because (a) the Red Sox had a worse collapse, (b) the media loves to report on Boston teams, and (c) even Braves fans don't really care about the Braves.

Favorite Catcher: Wilson Ramos

Anyone who follows on Twitter or knows me personally knows we are big fans of Wilson Ramos and were on edge for the two days he was kidnapped. We were fans when the Twins foolishly traded him for Matt Capps. We expected Wilson Ramos to complement Joe Mauer perfectly, almost as the Girardi to Mauer's Posada.

Fast forward to this morning, and I am on the Subway, reading this outstanding article from Sports Illustrated's Melissa Segura. Please take a few minutes out of your day to read some of the fascinating details of existence in Venezuela. For example:

The kidnappers ... recognized a narrow window of opportunity. They had found Ramos in the vulnerable space between making the major leagues and buying the security that his fame had suddenly necessitated. This is the devil's bargain of the Venezuelan major leaguer: Success comes with a terrible price. He has two main options. He can stay away from his country altogether, or he can build a fortress. High walls, razor wire, prisonlike security doors, private guards in watchtowers—these things signify realism, not paranoia. Ramos, who was getting ready to spend the off-season playing for the Tigres de Aragua of the Venezuelan winter league, earned $415,000 with the Nationals last season, but he still lived with his mother and five siblings in a small concrete box of a house with a corrugated metal roof and no sink in the bathroom.

A few days earlier he'd bought a new house in a safer neighborhood with seven bedrooms and a garden. But there was no hurry to leave the old place. Here young Wilson and his brothers had played baseball in the street with a broomstick bat and a ball of crumpled tape. Here Wilson had gone from the pudgy kid his family called Pipo to the man of the house after his parents' divorce. Long before he signed his first baseball contract, as a 16-year-old scooped up by the Minnesota Twins, he put food on his family's table. He found a horse wandering in the street and collected money from neighborhood children for rides. He caught tropical birds in a homemade trap baited with honey and sold them to a local pet store...

How could we not root for a guy like Wilson Ramos?

Here's to a great season and career for Pipo Ramos.

Bo Jackson, Home to Home

One of today's SB Nation pieces by Rob Neyer sent me to his final ESPN.com piece from a year ago, which brought me childhood memories of Bo Jackson. Neyer included a Youtube link with amazing Bo Jackson footage, but it's not what I wanted to share.

With a little extra digging, I found the following clip of Bo Jackson hitting an inside the park home run off Bob Welch.

To see someone round the bases in 15 seconds, please enjoy:

A Few Good Stats

The Society for American Baseball Research celebrates SABR Day each year on the Saturday before the Super Bowl. We took part by spending a little time on Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs, ultimately sharing a quick discovery in tweet form: 

"For 16 years (age 21-36) Yogi Berra never OPS+'d below 109." 

Below are few different baseball stats for this Pro Bowl Sunday.

Prince and his Power

One of my stranger collections are the undeveloped ideas, explorations, and arguments that lay in the tenuous existence of this blog's nebulous Saved Drafts folder.

Archived like time capsules, these drafts may house a few lines or more. Sometimes, it's just a title for a post, but more often it's a bunch of half-baked and sloppily written blog fragments.

We've never done this before, but the following is an unpublished post from this past June.

MLB's 24 Under 24

Some of you may have participated in a Major League Soccer promotion called 24 under 24. As the name implies, MLS is highlighting 24 of their brightest young stars, under the age of 24.

Fredy Montero is a beacon of
hope for soccer fans in Seattle.

The league has done this the past two years. Fredy Montero ranked #1 in 2010, and Brek Shea of FC Dallas too top honors this season.

Major League Soccer is blessed with the best young talent they've maybe ever had. Not only does the league have a bright future, it is thriving after a fantastic season.

I have no idea of the prime ages for soccer players, but 24 seems like an interesting age for the arbitrary cutoff. In baseball, a decent number of people would presumably say that the age 24 season is often the first of a player's prime, i.e. peak performance, seasons.

As an homage to the good people at MLS, let's take a look at our choices for Major League Baseball players, yet to reach their prime:

If Twitter Had Deleted Scenes

Have you ever watched deleted scenes to any of your favorite movies? There's a reason the scenes didn't make it into the final cut of the film. Usually, they're mundane scenes that are either poorly written, don't quite fit with the pace of the film, or have any other multitude of problems. Sadly, I'm afraid this post may live up to similar standards of excellence.

Coal for the Hot Stove

We did this 367 days ago. It was so much; we had to do it again.

Below is our suggestion for a 25-man roster comprised solely of current free agents, as of Dec 31, 2011.

Basic Appreciation for Edgar Martinez

As we noted in our last post, one stat never tells the whole story. Nonetheless, it is widely believed that the most important offensive statistic is On Base Percentage. As readers of Moneyball may remember, outs are a baseball game's most valuable commodity. A team gets only twenty-seven outs per game, and each one is precious. OBP is baseball's most treasured offensive statistic because reaching base is the act of avoiding an out.

Last Year's Best Roster Additions

The final days of December are just a bit past the midpoint of baseball's hot stove season. Many big purchases have been made, while a few marquee prizes still shine in the sales brochures produced by their agents. This season, Prince Fielder, Ryan Madson, Edwin Jackson, among others, will make many millions of dollars after Christmas.

Instead of the usual guessing game as to who will end up where, let's take a quick look back at the 2011 season. Which players changing teams added the most to their clubs?

Extra Base Hit Leaders by Position

 Below are the 2011 batting leaders for each position, as measured by extra base hits. For historical significance, we included the last person at his position with more in a season.

Check out the "best since" surprises at 2nd Base, Shortstop, and LF.