Mike Petriello

The Cubs have the best offense in baseball, and by a large margin, too. It’s actually arguably the best in team history, and this is a team with a lot of history. The Cubs have the best defense in baseball too, by another large margin. That undersells it; they’re going

Philly's new-look lineup bucks baseball tradition. Here's why it works

Bryce Harper says his Phillies “need some help” as the Deadline nears, and that’s an entirely correct statement. The Phillies do need help, and in more than one way. For one thing, they probably need another starting pitcher just to get through the season, given that they’re 5-21 (.192) whenever

The Dodgers made two big splashes last winter, signing outfielder Kyle Tucker and reliever Edwin Díaz as free agents, and so far they haven’t gotten a whole lot out of either one. (Not that it’s stopped them, as they’re easily cruising to yet another NL West title.) Díaz pitched only

For all the rumors flying ahead of the Trade Deadline about who will get traded, or not, and where, and for whom, there’s one name that stands out above all others as being the most interesting. OK, fine, there’s two names, but we’re not talking about Tarik Skubal today. We’re

With so many metrics out there in the baseball world, sometimes the hardest thing to do is to collect them, to know where to look and to see what's changed over time -- to settle arguments, or create new ones. With the new Baseball Savant Statcast Player Comparison tool, maybe

What makes for a successful evening in the Home Run Derby? It’s an incredibly difficult thing to prognosticate. That’s in part because it’s an annual exhibition of one single skill, with regularly changing rules and formats, but also because the eight participants each year have already been cherrypicked because they’re

Somewhat lost in all of Sunday’s drama about the Marlins lifting Eury Pérez after seven perfect innings was that it wasn’t just about pitch count, health, modern analytics, or whatever narrative you choose to apply. It’s exactly what manager Clayton McCullough said it was. It’s that the goal here isn’t

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. just finished off the weakest full month of his career (.498 OPS), which might be written off as a slump, if not for the fact that it followed the third-weakest month of his career (May’s .623 OPS), which might itself be a minor concern if not for

“The reality of the situation is, we need to play better baseball,” Tigers ace Tarik Skubal told the Detroit News last week, adding that “... or else come the \[Trade\] Deadline, you give the front office an option to reassess where this team is.” Quite right. The sharks are already