Truth on sacrifice flies

"As an aside, sacrifice flies don't count as a turn at bat and therefore don't negatively affect a hitter's batting average, but they're almost always just regular fly outs with the singular and fortunate (from the batter's perspective) distinction that a runner happened to be on third base (or second!) at the time. Occasionally a [...]

Manuel assigns blame

That's a huge percentage, because they sit in the middle of the order," Manuel said. "It puts pressure on the complementary pieces in the order. When you don't get that production there, and then the complementary pieces aren't living up to the expectations you have for them, it makes it tough. But you can get [...]

Cutter helps Niese to nice rookie year

No matter how you look at things, the development of Jonathon Niese has been one of the top storylines for the Mets in 2010. But coming into this season mainstream scouting reports were behind the times on Niese. Baseball America had this report on his arsenal: Niese's signature pitch is a 12-to-6 curveball, though he [...]

Minaya, the Wilpons and Dave Cameron

FanGraphs Managing Editor Dave Cameron is one of the most influential online baseball writers around. Because of this he has had to take a fair amount of garbage over the years from people who comment on his stories. Some of the hostility is deserved; most of it is not. Highly visible people are subject to [...]