Max Watt: The Boston Red Sox’s Power Pitching Prospect

Scouting is an integral part of professional baseball. Teams employ and send out hundreds of employees tasked with finding the next great players. Although they monitor first-round draft talent, their bread and butter is trying to decipher the future of players who may not have quite as much polish. As a result, some come to […]

Dear Santa

The Christmas tree in Washington is a little bare this year and it has nothing to do with the 70+ degree temperatures. This year it looks like the holidays are going to be all about deferred compensation–you know, that stuff they told you in college. Study hard, eschew the wild times and you will get […]

Hardball Retrospective – 1912 Season Replay

In “Hardball Retrospective: Evaluating Scouting and Development Outcomes for the Modern-Era Franchises”, I placed every ballplayer in the modern era (from 1901-present) on their original team. Therefore, Pete Alexander is listed on the Phillies roster for the duration of his career while the Cubs claim Heinie Zimmerman and the Pirates declare Max Carey. I calculated […]

The Unforgivable Sin

Commissioner Manfred did not deliver Pete Rose the holiday gift he had hoped for. Rose is still officially banned from having any role in major league baseball, other than appearing at certain events. Although Manfred made clear there was a distinction between Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame, for all intents and purposes […]

The Wonderful Writings of Donald Honig

Donald Honig is perhaps best known for picking up the mantle of Lawrence Ritter and carrying on the valuable work of preserving the history of the National Pastime through the oral reminiscences of ballplayers. But a closer look at his body of work reveals much more than interviews. In his towering history of baseball, Baseball […]

Seattle Mariners 2015 Winter Meetings Review

Now that the 2015 Winter Meetings held at the Opryland Resort and Conference Center down in Nashville, Tennessee are over it’s time to look at each team’s status as buyers or sellers in this year’s market. This edition highlights the busiest team of this offseason thus far, the Seattle Mariners. The total revamp of the northwest […]

Major League Offense Increases in 2015, Ending a Long Decline

At mid-season, I wrote a report indicating that there were signs that the long decline in offense in the major leagues that began in 2000 was coming to an end.  An update at season’s end indicates that the increase in offense is greater than it was at mid-season. The numbers below illustrate key hitting and […]

The Many Different Nicknames of the Baseball Hall of Fame

Hey baseball fans! One of my favorite things about baseball history is the players’ nicknames. Some are really funny, while some just make no sense. However, there are a few instances among the baseball Hall of Famers where nicknames are either repeated, similar, or contradict each other. Here’s a list of some examples of each: […]

An Interview with Former Relief Pitcher Jim Mecir

Job security can be difficult to attain in professional baseball given the ever-changing landscape. However, relief pitchers that prove they can consistently produce out of the bullpen are all but guaranteed to steer clear of the unemployment line. A perfect example of that is right-handed pitcher Jim Mecir, who enjoyed an 11-year major league career […]

Boswell or Baker?

In his Friday column Tom Boswell lamented that Dusty Baker had evoked racial stereotypes when Baker said at a news conference, “The number one thing that’s missing in the game is speed… you’ve got a better chance of getting speed with Latin and African Americans.” I will admit upfront that I do not have the hubris […]

Unusual Names from the Baseball World

As Abbott and Costello would say, they sure give baseball players peculiar names nowadays. As I researched my book, Baseball State by State over a five-year period, I kept coming across players with unusual names. So I included many of them in the book, which devotes a chapter to each state and includes all-time teams […]

Reviewing the Unusual 1936 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

The National Baseball Hall of Fame formally opened in 1939 in Cooperstown, New York. However, the concept was established in 1936, and that year the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) was tasked with voting for the inaugural class to be formally inducted three years later. At the time, the BBWAA was only voting on […]

The Sunday Notes: Leftovers Edition

At some point over the last couple days, chances are you rummaged to find a snack in the refrigerator to find the leftover cranberry sauce sprouting some new life form. Yes, the leftovers time forgot is the theme for this edition of the Sunday notes. Whether writers grabbed some badly needed time away or I […]

Hardball Retrospective – General Manager Trading Scorecard

Inspired by the Philadelphia Phillies chapter in the “Bill James Baseball Abstract 1985” entitled “The Philadelphia Trading Record” (pages 202-206), the following study reveals the best and worst of the “wheelers and dealers” in Major League front offices for the past 65 years. I cross-referenced every trade in the Retrosheet Transaction Database with the Seamheads […]

The Boston Red Sox: The Frugal Shopper’s Guide to Rebuilding the Rest of Their Bullpen

The Boston Red Sox made an early splash this offseason, acquiring high-octane closer Craig Kimbrel from the San Diego Padres to anchor their bullpen. With the team coming off a last-place finish in the American League East, and a relief corps whose 4.24 ERA ranked 13th out of 15 teams, it’s a good bet there […]

The Sunday Notes: 2015 Awards Edition

The 2015 award season has come and gone, ending the year. For the twelfth straight year, average attendance per game topped 30,000 and overall gate went up, barely, over last year. All told, 73,760,020 purchased tickets to Major League Baseball games in 2015. Would you believe the first year the average topped 20,000 was 1979 […]

Jim Campanis Jr.: Former Seattle Mariners Catcher Prospect Recounts Career

Baseball fans are typically enthralled by highly regarded prospects. After all, they are the possible future of their respective team, as long as everything goes well with their development. Unfortunately, just being young and talented isn’t an automatic key to a lengthy big league career. Competition is fierce and there are never any guarantees. Jim […]

Hardball Retrospective – 1911 Season Replay

In “Hardball Retrospective: Evaluating Scouting and Development Outcomes for the Modern-Era Franchises”, I placed every ballplayer in the modern era (from 1901-present) on their original team. Therefore, Eddie Plank is listed on the Athletics roster for the duration of his career while the White Sox claim Ed Walsh and the Giants declare Larry Doyle. I […]

My 400th Post on Baseball with Matt and My 2015 MLB Awards Predictions!!

Hey baseball fans! This is my 400th post on Baseball with Matt! I’m so happy that I’ve done so many fun things in my blogging career and it’s all thanks to you: the viewers. To celebrate number 400, I put up a vlog on YouTube in which I try to predict the eight main MLB […]

Tom Gamboa: A Baseball Life

In baseball, players typically receive all the glory when it comes to contributions to the game. After all, it’s a lot easier to recognize someone who has accumulated statistics or made a spectacular play that is captured on film. However, there are many other to be celebrated—those identify and help the players reach their fullest […]

The Sunday Notes: Remembering Tommy Hanson

The first week of the 2015 baseball offseason has not brought the best of news home. In finding ten stories of interest to share with you each week, the goal is to find stories that will make you smile, pass along a tale you might not know or remember someone’s childhood idol. This week, we […]

Does the Royals’ Success Signal a Paradigm Shift in Baseball Strategy?

Joaquin Benoit’s trade today is just the first in what has been described as a cascade of relief additions that MLB teams will commence once Darren O’Day lands somewhere. The success of the Kansas City Royals has translated to a new paradigm wherein late inning arms are valued equally to those of starters. It was […]

The Sunday Notes: World Series Leftovers Edition

As the street cleaners of Kansas City swept away the joyous mess left behind by nearly 800,000 fans, the 2015 Major League Baseball season officially ended. With qualifying offers made to soon-to-be free agents and a battery of options declined or accepted, the hot stove season is upon us again. Between now and mid-March, more than a few trees and hard drives will be filled with stories on how certain signings will vault their team into championship contention, only to look silly by mid-May. As sure as the swallows return to Capistrano, the consensus “winner” of the off-season World Series will watch next October […]

Which Free Agents Should the Boston Red Sox Sign?

With the 2015 World Series having concluded, baseball’s offseason is now upon us. For the next several months, rumors and innuendo about where free agent players will land will swirl about like winter winds. Following a disappointing season, the Boston Red Sox have a new front office regime; have money to spend and a number […]

Post Season Observations Part III

Keep the line moving.  The Royals had the uncanny ability in all three series to string together several hits with a mistake by their opponents to score 3-5 runs in an inning without a home run. The Royals hit only 2 home runs (both solos) in their 5 game series win over the Mets. Will […]

2015 World Series Notes

The Kansas City Royals are champions for the first time in thirty years. Can you believe it? Wait, I’m channeling Joe Castiglione above. Still, what a great postseason run by the Royals. No deficit was too big and, in return, they wore teams out. When they needed starting pitching, Johnny Cueto tosses a two-hitter. Down […]

A Big Hanging Curve Ball from DC

The Lerner family threw the baseball world a curve this morning when the Nationals announced Dusty Baker as their new manager after dangling Bud Black’s name for a week. If the new sources are to be believed more than the old sources, the Lerner family low-balled Bud Black who opted out. Dusty Baker has been […]

Mr. Black Goes to Washington

The Washington Nationals have settled on a manager to replace Matt Williams.  After the World Series they officially will name Bud Black as their manager for the 2016 season. It is a positive move and one that will hopefully signal more concrete steps to address the many moving parts that are the 2016 Nationals. Five […]

Astros Complete a Surprising 2015 Season

The Houston Astros were expected to make a modest improvement in 2015 over their 70-92 record in 2014.  Did anyone expect them to still be playing on October 14 and to be playing after the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees had been eliminated and sent home?  Would anyone have guessed that they would […]

Playoff Observations, Part II

All four of the LCS teams have blue as the dominant color. Is Daniel Murphy really this good? Why isn’t Mark Buehrle on Toronto’s playoff roster? Ben Zobrist has had an excellent major league career, none of it with the team that originally drafted and signed him, the Houston Astros. Josh Donaldson has a strong […]

The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball- A Review

The Chicago Black Sox (eight Chicago White Sox players who were banned from baseball for throwing the 1919 World Series for gamblers) has been one of the most popular topics of the sport’s literature for years. However, with so many unknowns, allegations and passed time, it remains a fruitful ground for new work. An excellent […]

The Sunday Notes: 2015 World Series

Now that we have enjoyed baseball’s playoff appetizer, it is time for the main course, the 2015 World Series. The plucky Kansas City Royals host the New York Mets starting Tuesday night at Kaufman Stadium in what we hope to be a classic matchup. No deficit is too large for the Royals, who pound out hit after hit. […]

Hardball Retrospective – 1910 Season Replay

In “Hardball Retrospective: Evaluating Scouting and Development Outcomes for the Modern-Era Franchises”, I placed every ballplayer in the modern era (from 1901-present) on their original team. Therefore, “Harvard” Eddie Grant is listed on the Naps roster for the duration of his career while the Browns claim Cy R. Morgan and the Highlanders declare Russ Ford. […]

The Monday Notes: Jose Bautista’s Bat Flip Edition

For me, one of the highlights last winter writing for Seamheads was reading my good friend Andrew H. Martin’s weekly Sunday notes. Martin has a good eye for linking good reads and videos from days gone by mixed with today’s baseball. He is working on other projects and I asked if he wanted to continue the series? “No.” […]

Pudge- The Biography of Carlton Fisk: A Review

The number of baseball players who are synonymous with a play so famous that there is immediate recognition upon hearing their name is restricted to an elite group. All fans know Willie Mays’ catch or Babe Ruth’s called home run. However, it’s hard to argue there are any more well known than Carlton Fisk’s extra […]

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