Seems like superstitions did work this time around: the Houston Astros are your 2022 WS Champions! A postseason dominated on paper, two sweeps and a 11–2 record, but hardly fought in reality, with close games and crucial bombs, Houston prevailed on Seattle, New York and finally Philadelphia, a 4–2 series…

Baseball is a conundrum. After a marathon of a Regular Season, 162 games with few to no time for a breather, here come the Playoffs, do or die 3–5–7 game series deciding whether it was worth the effort going through such peripecies. For some teams, Dodgers Astros and a few…

It seems yesterday the 2022 MLB season started yet we are almost at the end of September, a time where a lot and a lot of nothing happen at the same time. Many teams still have the world to fight for, a Playoff berth to clinch, a Division to win…

What is a slugger? He’s your beloved big boi, Daniel Vogelbach or Rowdy Tellez, made to mash baseballs and not much else, but he can be also a 5-tool phenom, running like the wind and fielding acres in the field a la Byron Buxton. He’s a physical specimen, a giant…

What should be isn’t, and what shouldn’t is. Stop me if you’ve never heard this mantra before when referring to the Houston Astros as a whole. The team calling the Juice Box home has been a long time mistery, defying expectations in good and bad, faltering when everyone thought they…

Blink and you’ll miss it: seems like Opening Day was just yesterday yet we are at the end of April, already more than 10 games into the odissey known as Regular Season. That’s not much, not even 10% of the whole calendar and far too small a sample size to…

Play ball! Another season is starting as I write, and that was far from a sure thing given the disaster called “lockout”, a fracture between players and owners that came oh so close a death sentence on the 2022 MLB calendar. In an offseason halted by the possibility of not…

Hello old friend, and here we are, at the last page… Borrowing Amelia Pond’s final words for her Doctor, another baseball season has come to an end, a bitter throwback of an end personally. If in 2019 it was Howie Kendrick barely sending a Will Harris cutter to the RF…

This is it! Although the regular season has yet to end and a lot is still in the air, awards and postseason spots foremost (AL WC race is spicy), for an Astros fan as I am the worse is water under the bridge: Houston has won the AL West for…

The Astros season has been a tale of consistency so far: the strengths and weaknesses of the roster held up from day 1 to the approaching Trade Deadline, so that, even with stints in the IL and other issues, Houston has an identity and plans. Offense was never a problem…

I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t really stoked by the Astros’ offseason spending. The way Click and co replenished a roster that lost far too many pieces at the end of 2020 was nothing short of suspect: set aside the return of Michael Brantley, almost a Blue Jays legend, for…

The AL West is such a weird division: apart from the Rangers who were supposed to be where they are, bottom feeders due for a rebuilding they don’t seem to want to go for, every other team has somehow betrayed or overcome all expectations and predictions. From the top, the…

The Astros season has been somewhat of a rollercoaster: after a 6–1 start the team went on a skid, due to bad performances and a bout of COVID on several key players, so that they relinquished the division lead to the surprising Oakland Athletics and visited the scary under-.500 zone. …

Baseball is a damn oxymoron. On one hand we are talking about a sport permeated, fully covered by statistics: a 162-games season allows for the law of great numbers to kick on gear, not to mention there’s a whole niche, our beloved sabermetrics, devoted to the diamond. …

First basemen were almost a given: big, strong, hulking guys that compensated their defensive shortcomings by providing the precious pop needed to bring home speedsters and hawkeyes playing in harder zones of the diamond. In what is now officially the Longball, and Strikeout, era this distinction is eroding day by…

Yes, this is finally the end of what has been a long, perilous and chaotic journey into allowed Balls in Play clustering! I know many of you are partying like it’s 90-something, and that is perfectly understandable. Clustering is a risky topic to get into: there’s a lot of subjectivity…

I don’t need to tell you anything new about Zack Greinke. He’s been doing his thing since almost two decades, piling up wins, accolades and 150+ innings’ seasons as clockwork, whatever team had the privilege, and the payroll, to have him into the starting rotation. When he started out in…

In this day and age of baseball I bet you felt somewhat nostalgic reading the previous Framber Valdez entry. …

Baseball is all about timing and the disruption of it, as someone said, and that’s true from the diamond up to front offices and writers alike. How many times did a GM regret a move he didn’t make, when one of the pieces coming back turned out to be a…

Let’s start with some good news: baseball is back! Spring training is underway, which is a great opportunity to get reaccustomed to balls hit into outer space and nasty pitches worthy of Pitching Ninja recognition. There’s also the classic heavy dose of unpredictability surrounding this magical pastime: on the positive…