Stats

The Arizona Brewers, the Brewers Rookie affiliate Minor League team, had it's best season since 2002, when they went 26-30.

When looking at low Minor League affiliated teams, the record doesn't always indicate the success of a team. Since the Arizona Brewers are the first step in a Minor League players progression through the Brewers organization, it is very common to have players get called up to progress quicker.

What is the best way to measure a pitcher’s skill?

Is it his strikeout rate, demonstrating the pitcher’s ability to prevent batters from hitting the ball? Is it innings pitched, showing his durability? Is it WHIP, the talent to keep runners off the base paths?

So let us think about this for a moment. The following stat line is that of player X's splits against right handed hitters.

451 ABs, 74 Runs, 124 Hits, 19 2Bs, 8 3Bs, 28 HRs, 62 RBIs, 18 SB, 4 CS, 57 BBs, 99 SO, .275 BA, .358 OBP, .539 SLG, .879 OPS.

Last week, Rob Neyer challenged someone to find out just how many championships Mariano Rivera has been worth.

The Minnesota Twins announced today that the club has exercised Michael Cuddyer’s 2011 option valued at $10.5 million.

The option is part of the four-year deal Cuddyer signed in 2008. The right fielder will make $8.5 million in 2010, the third year of the $33.5 million pact.

First off, let me congratulate the Yankees on winning their 27th World Championship by defeating the Philadelphia Phillies 7-3 in Game Six at the new Yankee Stadium.

The point of this article is to go in depth into the number 27, and even using the two and the seven in a math equation to bring up a significance. I hope you enjoy.

27 = The number of world championships for the New York Yankees after defeating the Philadelphia Phillies to win the World Series in Six games.

Entering the 2009 postseason, only four pitchers in playoff history had recorded double-digit strikeouts while issuing zero walks.

Cliff Lee has now done it in back-to-back outings.

In Game Three of the NLCS, Lee navigated eight innings of shutout baseball while posting 10 strikeouts and zero walks against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Lee did it again on Wednesday night in Game One of the World Series, tossing a complete game six-hitter and recording 10 punch outs, with zero free passes, against the potent New York Yankees’ lineup.

What happens to a team when its strongest attribute goes south? Although the Dodgers' hitting was nothing to write home about, what really ruined them was their pitching.

A 5.30 ERA in the postseason. A 7.30 ERA in the NLCS.  Starters like Kershaw, Wolf, and Kuroda fell apart against the Phillies.

Who would have thought it? Would the Dodgers have won their division if their pitchers had pitched like this in the regular season? Probably not.

By contrast, the Phillies had ERAs of 3.04 in the postseason, and 3.07 in the NLCS, basically Dodgers type numbers.

I was reading an article the other day where a baseball commentator said the qualities needed to make the playoffs aren’t the qualities needed to succeed in the playoffs

They said that deep starting pitching, production up and down the lineup, good middle relief and steady defense isn't nearly as important as having two dominant starters and a closer.

Intrigued to know just how true this was, I began researching the topic, starting with the 2008 American League.