My deeper cut breakout player picks + 5 skirmishes defining the World Baseball Classic.
Today's Bandwagon is live for your perusal before the baseball starts again. bandwagon.ghost.io/preboarding-...
Ridiculously good
I'll specifically call out José Caballero as a breakout I've become convinced of. The Yankees turned him from an out-in-front hitter to a stay-back hitter, to oversimplify.
That might just really work for him. bandwagon.ghost.io/preboarding-...
My deeper cut breakout player picks + 5 skirmishes defining the World Baseball Classic.
Today's Bandwagon is live for your perusal before the baseball starts again. bandwagon.ghost.io/preboarding-...
Only sometimes. bsky.app/profile/jjco...
Gotta admit I’m pretty ready for someone ask Bryce Harper — who sat for most of the Italy loss in favor of Paul Goldschmidt — what he thinks of DeRosa.
I can def see the chin and a little bit of the mouth but I don't think it's an exact match for me.
Ahem ... jump about the Award Candidate Express now. bandwagon.ghost.io/bandwagon-pr...
Oh that single is good.
Don't call it a breakout player list.
I'm ramping up my look ahead to the 2026 MLB season by picking players to level up into MVP / Cy Young contenders. I'm calling it Bandwagon Preboarding. Because it's always fun to be early. bandwagon.ghost.io/bandwagon-pr...
Among the players I'm all in on in 2026: Blue Jays thumper / couch surfer / funny guy Addison Barger, who has some wild bat tracking data.
More "breakout" MVP/Cy Young candidates in today's Bandwagon. 👀 bandwagon.ghost.io/bandwagon-pr...
Come for the reasoning. Stay for my annual attempt to bring a music review staple to baseball. bandwagon.ghost.io/bandwagon-pr...
Don't call it a breakout player list.
I'm ramping up my look ahead to the 2026 MLB season by picking players to level up into MVP / Cy Young contenders. I'm calling it Bandwagon Preboarding. Because it's always fun to be early. bandwagon.ghost.io/bandwagon-pr...
Now this is the journalism I need.
If there's media you care about, it's hard to overstate how important it is that you subscribe to it. Ad rates are garbage, and the changes to search mean fewer new folks discovering sites they didn't already visit.
Honestly, maybe the team that employs noted McDonald’s stan Zack Wheeler should tell him to eat more pie.
Starting with the Netherlands and hoping I have stomach room for more.
Even though it was very mean of them to name the hot dog after Decoy Ohtani's breed.
Geopolitics aside, what hot dog are you getting
I've been thinking about the Rangers' decision to display One Riot, One Ranger, and what it says about who this team is for. So I wrote about that. It's a big ol' bummer.
www.dmagazine.com/sports/2026/...
It's the best airport drink right?
It is a key distinction. Was paranoid throughout that I was going to write “slider” out of habit.
Lol bsky.app/profile/jake...
Everything is coming up @rjandersonwrites.com
Not going to be news here but the Johnny Blue Skies (Sturgill Simpson) country-funk-protest-party record he dropped on YouTube is wild (positive). youtu.be/QKHGmFvzjJ4?...
For a more blood-curdling instance: The D-backs bullpen! Run and hide! www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...
If you haven't already been reading the @baseballprospectus.com team previews, highly recommend. The visuals are such a strong, easy guide to visualizing each piece of a team. www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...
Are the slides better now?!
A Bandwagon theory, investigated. bandwagon.ghost.io/keep-slides-...
If you enjoy, consider signing up to support the fan-focused baseball coverage at The Bandwagon. bandwagon.ghost.io#/portal/signup
About 15 years ago, I visited Austin, Texas, for a journalism conference. You couldn’t shake a stick at a barbecue restaurant without spotting a magnet, bumper sticker or tie-dyed T-shirt imploring you (or someone) to Keep Austin Weird. It was a marketing slogan that innately but perhaps cynically understood the nature of how any appealing thing — a city, a business, a method of improving outcomes in a lucrative professionalized sport — gets recognized and rushed into mass production, eventually losing the original appeal in the process. The arc of anything that accumulates value bends toward standardization. Quirks get shaved off. The shoddy becomes sleek. Character becomes characteristic. Soon enough, all the coffee shops with decent cold brew have brushed concrete floors and a cardamom bun on offer, chalkboards printed machine-neat in sans serif fonts. Baseball versions of this happen all the time. It happened with catcher stances and the full windup and outfielder positioning and No. 2 hitters and the infield shift. It is happening with the new pitch boom and stuff metrics and first-pitch swings and fastball usage. Styles only make fights until someone figures out which one wins 50.1% of the time.
And after thinking about how to do this for a very, very long time, I did prove something to myself. Maybe not what I set out to.
Hope you'll follow me down the rabbit hole. bandwagon.ghost.io/keep-slides-...
