Page 121 - Baseball Reference News Today

Why Have There Been So Many No-Hitters in 2021? Pitchers are better than ever. Hitters seem worse than ever. With six no-hitters by May 19, baseball is two away from tying the full-season record, which was set in 1884. On Tuesday night, Detroit’s Spencer Turnbull threw a no-hitter against Seattle. Less than 24 hours later, Corey Kluber of the Yankees threw one against Texas.Credit...Ted S. Warren/Associated Press May 20, 2021, 2:24 a.m. ET It had been less than 24 hours since Spencer Turnbull...

Photo by Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images It feels like Opening Day was just yesterday, but we’re already a quarter of the way through the baseball season. With four teams within two games of first place, the American League East is shaping up to be one of the most competitive divisions in baseball, if not the most competitive. Let’s take a quick run through the Yankees’ divisional rivals, most of which you’ve probably been very familiar with, and one big one that we’ve yet to...

Baseball’s unwritten rules are sometimes hazy, owing to the fact that they are not rules at all. But one of them says more or less that if a team is winning a blowout, and the losing team’s pitcher grooves a meatball right over the plate on a 3–0 count, the batter should not embarrass his opponent by hitting the ball to the moon. Instead, he should let it whiz past. Players usually observe this nonrule. Since 1988, which is as far back as Baseball Reference keeps count data for nearly eve...

From my new book review in Taki’s Magazine of th...

Have Diamondback Starters Pitched Above Average? Share this story Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images The Approach Game score was originally developed by Bill James. It was designed to have an average of 50. It was good and can be found at Baseball Reference. Tango Tiger tweaked it into the version provided on the FanGraph site. Then 538.com tweaked it into a version that they use in their model to predict the odds for each game. Three versions of Game Score (there may be more) can be found at ...

share-square-354938 Scouts can sense when a Draft might be special, and they had that inkling about the 2011 crop early on. They viewed it as the best class since 2005, which sent 26 of its 30 first-rounders to the big leagues and featured stars such as Ryan Braun, Andrew McCutchen and Troy Tulowitzki. Looking back 10 years later, scouts were correct about the 2011 group. The first 29 players selected and 30 of 33 first-rounders have played in the Majors, including Gerrit Cole, Francisco Lindor...

D-backs Preview #34: 5/9 @ Mets Share this story Here are today’s lineups: The Diamondbacks have been getting good starting pitching of late. Since April 25th their Starters ERA of 3.50 ranks 4th best in the NL, and it hasn’t been luck as their 3.31 FIP ranks second best. The starters have allowed just 5 homers in 69 IP in that span. Riley Smith will hope to continue that good stretch for the team today. He’s likely to need to as the team is facing the best starter in MLB at the momen...

4:54 AM UTC Share share-square-1530368 With a little more than a month of the season in the books, several teams have defied expectations, finishing April with above-.500 records.   A group of MLB.com experts gathered for a roundtable to analyze three teams -- the Giants, Mariners and Royals -- all of whom were not contenders in 2020 but are playing at a better-than-expected clip this year, and, in some cases, are tops in their divisions. The big question: Will it last?   Alyson Footer, mode...

Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images Some good news on a Monday afternoon for fans in Twins Territory! One member of the Minnesota Twins has some additional hardware to add to his mantle today. After an unprecedented month of April, outfielder Byron Buxton has been named the American League Player of the Month, and rightfully so. Buxton slashed .426/.466/.897 with eight homers, eight doubles, and 14 RBI. He touched home fifteen times and stole three bases on top of that. He currently owns a 2....

Getty Is the Cubs’ Kris Bryant really an underrated player? Teammate Anthony Rizzo thinks so. Before the Cubs’ game Monday against the Dodgers at Wrigley Field was postponed because of the forecast of inclement weather, Rizzo was asked about Bryant’s hot start to the season. Bryant, who was named the National League player of the week Monday, has looked like the player who became a household name after being voted the NL Rookie of the Year in 2015 and the NL MVP in 2016. Since those fi...