Royals Add Broxton, Fail to Improve

This past summer, the inside scoop from of LA was that Jonathan Broxton was a country bumpkin. He hated it in LA and would embrace free agency as a chance to relocate to more comfortable surroundings.

Stolen Bases Against Lefty Pitchers

From today's Buster Olney column, his Stat of the day:

"Ted Lilly allowed the most stolen base attempts in 2011, with baserunners swiping 35 bags in 37 chances off of the Los Angeles Dodgers southpaw. The remaining top-5: John Lackey (33-for-36), Josh Beckett (31-for-35), Felix Hernandez (31-for-39) and Tommy Hanson (30-for-33)."

Southpaws are expected to control the running game, and Lilly gave up more stolen bases than anyone, even righties.

Ted Lilly focuses on getting the batter out, and the numbers show it.

As his 35 of 37 record show, Ted Lilly was particularly terrible at controlling the running game by having only two runners thrown out. Of the Top 5 from Buster's column, at least Felix Hernandez got eight base runners thrown out.

Most stolen bases allowed by LHP:

AL East Notes

We shared our droning on the NL East a couple of weeks ago. Springing forth in spite of a remarkable lack of creativity, below are a few quick thoughts on recent developments in the AL East. Unlike last time, these will actually be quick...

Options for the Yankee Rotation

As we learned from Ben Nicholson-Smith's engaging summary of the NYY portions of Joel Sherman's column from Friday:

Thoughts on the NL East

On an evening subway ride and a couple lonely bar stools, recently, I wrote about my feelings (about the NL East)...

2011 MLB Award Ballots

During the 3rd week of November, Major League Baseball will unveil their Major Award winners, as voted on by the BBWA. This is fun to do; we suggest you try this at home. If we could vote on the awards, our ballots would look like this:

Random Thoughts, Early November

Theo Epstein and Ben Cherington discussed potential new managers for the Red Sox before Theo left for Chicago. So, they're working off similar lists of candidates.

All Free Agent Team

It's that time of year again. Warming up the hot stove, it's time for the All Free Agent Team. Since the end of the World Series, the only transaction that may have affected this roster was CC Sabathia re-signing with the New York Yankees.