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I found this edition of Mint Condition interesting. Robert Edward Auctions has an item up for bid it claims is possibly the bat Roger Maris used in 1961 to tie Babe Ruth's then-record of 60 home runs. But the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown claims it has...

The grievances seem mostly confined to Michigan but usually go something like this: The media is ignoring Miguel Cabrera's MVP candidacy because we're in love with Mike Trout since he's a rookie; that Trout isn't doing anything so historic that we sh...

Mark Simon and I teased this on the Baseball Today podcast, so here it is. Tom from Melbourne, Fla., writes in: I have a slew of answers for Friday's ridiculous question regarding greatest difference in WAR in consecutive years. For the analysis, ...

WAR is not the Holy Grail of statistics. It's a conversation starter, not a conversation ender. It's important, it's useful and most of all it's fun. It's the best tool for comparing players across positions or across eras. It's a great tool for e...

The other night I tweeted something like, "Would love to see Aroldis Chapman face 2001 Barry Bonds." On the Baseball Today podcast, we had a reader ask us about best pitcher-hitter matchups to watch for over the next few years. With that prompt, I...

This is what will have American League pitchers and managers waking up in cold sweats all season long: Those stretches when Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder are both raking, eyes bulging as they pummel meaty fastballs over fences and into outfield s...

A quick final note related to our Greatest Season Ever bracket. Babe Ruth struck out 81 times in 693 plate appearances in 1921, an 11.7 percent strikeout rate. That's pretty impressive in 2011 terms -- akin to Dustin Pedroia, who fanned in 11.6 pe...

It's not surprising that Babe Ruth and Ted Williams reached the finals of our Greatest Season Ever bracket. In Ruth, you have the most iconic player of all time; in Williams, you have the owner of perhaps the most iconic season of all time. Maybe ...

The voters have spoken: They like outfielders who put up monster numbers in the pre-expansion era. It's not too surprising, of course, that Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Stan Musial are our semifinalists in the Greatest Season Ever br...

Here are the debut seasons of the 15 greatest position players in baseball history, according to Baseball-Reference.com's WAR (wins above replacement-level) statistic, listed in chronological order: 1897 (Honus Wagner) 1905 (Ty Cobb) 1906 (Eddie...

We've moved on to the second round of the Greatest MLB Season Ever bracket. All top-10 seeds advanced, but there were three upsets; interestingly, all involved shortstops. Alex Rodriguez lost to Ken Griffey Jr. in a Mariners death duel (got destroyed...

I seeded Carl Yastrzemski eighth in our 32-player greatest season of all time bracket, which puts him on a collision course to meet Babe Ruth in the quarterfinals. There is a case to be made that Yaz's 1967 season was the best ever. Here are the b...

In 1975, Joe Morgan hit .327 with 17 home runs and 94 RBIs. Those traditional statistics may not seem impressive, but Morgan's season ranks as one of the best in the game's history. As we begin voting Monday on the greatest individual season of al...

There are a lot of misunderstandings about the Hall of Fame and its voting procedures and results, beginning with the little fact that baseball was not, of course, actually invented in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1839 by a future Civil War general named Ab...

The highest World Series game score of all time belongs to Babe Ruth, for a game in 1916 in which he pitched 14 innings and allowed just six hits and one run. Ruth's game scores at 97. Don Larsen's perfect game -- 9 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 7 SO -- scores a 94,...

I asked my colleague Jim Caple a simple question: "Who is on your short list of the greatest hitters of all time?" He reeled off the names: Pujols, Bonds, Ruth, Williams ... Mays, Hornsby, Cobb (a little reluctantly on that one). We could include ...