Yesterday, beginning with the pitchers, I started compiling an expansion team consisting of the best, non top prospects at the Triple-A level. Finding hitters for a MLB expansion team is a lot easier than finding pitchers, given the lack of quality pitching depth at the Major League level. With that said, I present the offence and defence for my club: The Catchers: Brayan Pena, C Omaha Royals (Kans...

One of my favorite activities as a kid was to create Major League "expansion teams" with my baseball cards. My teams would not have been confused with any All-Star squads. I was never a fan of the super stars in sports, and always found myself gravitating to the Bill Pecotas, Mark McLemores and Randy Readys of the world. This activity occurred before my love of minor league baseball developed (than...

I wanted to account for today's change in style; a departure from the longer work readers have become accustomed to here at Baseball Analysts. Rich, Marc, Al, and our Designated Hitters (and Bryan, Jeff, and Joe over the years as well) regularly write remarkable, in-depth analysis. Posts here are longer than posts on many other baseball blogs, the quality of the writing better, the level of editori...

Taking cues from Andruw Jones, Jason Varitek is sucking some pretty good suck in 2008, his contract year. He's batting .222/.304/.373 on the season, good for a 77 OPS+. The man that endeavors to be baseball's highest paid catcher in 2009 hasn't hit a lick this season. Not from the right side, the left side, at home or on the road. His .272 BABIP might portend improvement down the road but look a li...

It doesn't get much more painful for the keyboard-toting baseball enthusiast living in Mom's basement than the bottom half of the eighth inning of Monday night's Pittsburgh-Cincinnati game. Down 3-2, the Reds pieced together a walk and a single to start the home half of the inning against the Bucs' Damaso Marte with Joey Votto (.283/.343/.483 in 2008), Edwin Encarnacion (.246/.332/.462) and Jay Bru...