A year after Albert Pujols found the fountain of youth and spent his final season setting major league pitching on fire, the old-guy star of the 2023 season hasn’t been a positional contemporar...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/andrew-mccutchen-is-hitting-it-big-again-with-the-pirates/
Bob Melvin played 10 years in the big leagues, and has managed for another 20. Yet the San Diego Padres’ skipper freely admitted that he has no idea exactly what to expect from Fernando Tatis J...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-fernando-tatis-jr-still-mash-after-a-year-away-from-mlb/
In 2021, Jarred Kelenic was the No. 4 prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline. That placed him one spot ahead of a fellow Seattle Mariners outfield prospect, Julio Rodriguez, at No. 5. Bu...
When we talk about the Tampa Bay Rays, it’s usually regarding their plucky ability to surprise the baseball world and win more games than expected despite a meager payroll, sparse attendance an...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/tampa-bay-rays-hot-start/
As the 2022 season ended, the New York Mets and owner Steve Cohen were wrapping up a major-league payroll record by shelling out about $430 million in salaries plus luxury tax penalties. Then Coh...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mets-payroll-slow-start-2023/
It warms this writer’s baseball-loving heart to see the MLB standings finally beginning to fill in anew this spring. Yes, that’s with an emphasis on “beginning” — we’re only a week in...
Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. The latest trend taking Congress by storm? A nationwide TikTok ban. A congressional hearing went viral last week, as lawmakers from both parti...
2023 MLB Predictions Updated after every game.
As we look ahead to Opening Day on Thursday, plenty of usual suspects lead the World Series odds in our 2023 MLB forecast interactive. But what you can’t see is how much variance there was arou...
2022 brought baseball fans a handful of gifts, headlined by Aaron Judge’s all-around excellence and Shohei Ohtani continuing to be Shohei Ohtani. But a few months of Albert Pujols’s farewell ...
For the past two weeks, the passion of the World Baseball Classic has been on full display. There was the indefatigable cheer squad for Chinese Taipei; Joey Meneses’s epic bat toss after homeri...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/world-baseball-classic-fans/
On top of all those strange new rules, there’s another twist to baseball this March: the return of the World Baseball Classic, the always-entertaining tournament that is essentially baseball’...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/whos-the-team-to-beat-at-the-world-baseball-classic/
We knew MLB’s sweeping rule changes were going to shake up baseball heading into the 2023 season. But it’s been fascinating to watch exactly how much of an adjustment players are having to ma...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mlb-rule-changes-winners-losers/
Big baseball rule changes are coming this season, starting with Friday’s spring training openers. Among MLB’s many on-field adjustments: a pitch clock that limits pitchers to 15 seconds (or 2...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-mlbs-new-rules-could-change-baseball-in-2023/
Generally speaking, buying a Major League Baseball team is one of the best investments you can make. Franchise valuations have skyrocketed over the past few decades, even relative to other growin...
During the MLB offseason, we can rely on at least two things: players changing uniforms via trades or free-agent signings, and the ensuing roster crunch that usually follows. Oftentimes, these mo...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/meet-lewin-diaz-baseballs-biggest-hot-potato-prospect/
The election for the Baseball Hall of Fame is fun again — mostly. After a decade of debate over whether baseball bad boys such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling were worthy of in...
As team-building tactics go, having the two best players in a particular sport on the same roster would seem to be a pretty good one. Surely you’d expect that lucky team to, at the very least, ...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-angels-small-moves-might-finally-add-up-to-big-success/
UPDATE (Dec. 21, 2022, 9:16 a.m.): As it turned out, the Mets were even bigger winners than we thought. In addition to all of the moves detailed below, it was reported early Wednesday morning tha...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-teams-that-won-lost-and-confused-us-this-mlb-offseason/
They’re baaaaaack. Last winter, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens each failed to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for the 10th time, ending their tenure on the Baseball Writers’ Associatio...