fridagarza Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Phillies And Their Dumb Shift Just Handed Third Base To Kris Bryant
The Cubs beat the Phillies 7-5 in a thriller on Wednesday night that culminated in a walk-off grand slam dinger from Jason Heyward. This came right after the Phillies had taken a 5-3 lead in the top half of that inning on a two-run smash from Dylan Cozens. The win-probability graph alone is exciting...

Andrew Heaney Got Doused In A Glorious Ice Bucket Dump
There are few better birthday gifts a starting pitcher could ask for than the 23rd-in-OPS Kansas City Royals lineup, which is exactly what the Angels’ Andrew Heaney got for his 27th birthday last night. He threw the first shutout of his career, a one-hit gem in a 1-0 win, and was then treated to one...

Even For Aaron Judge, Eight Strikeouts Is A Lot!
The Yankees knew what they were signing up for when they brought together Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in the heart of their order. There would be stretches of pure pyrotechnic dong-mashing spectacle and there would also be days marked by multiple sullen trips back to the dugout, during which g...

All Routine Groundouts Should Look Like This
When you’ve reached the “playing for the Salt Lake Bees” point of your baseball career, it’s perfectly reasonable to have some fun with it. Eric Young Jr., erstwhile MLB speedster and veteran of 610 big league games over nine seasons, showed how this was done in a game on Sunday. ...

Danny Farquhar Gives First Interview Since Brain Hemorrhage
Here’s some nice news: White Sox reliever Danny Farquhar, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in the dugout during an April game, gave his first interview since returning home from the hospital. He sat down with Good Morning America on Friday to talk about his recovery for the first time, and while it’s...

Somehow Max Scherzer Is Better Than Ever
Yes, it was the Orioles, and yes, there are only a limited number of ways to talk about this sort of thing, but Max Scherzer surgically picked apart a lineup so thoroughly that it almost doesn’t matter that the lineup was one of the league’s worst. The Nationals beat the Orioles 2-0 Wednesday night,...

Carlos Gomez Claims MLB Targets Specific Players For Drug Testing
Rays outfielder Carlos Gomez says he’s already been drug tested six or seven times in this still-very-young season, which is enough to lead anyone to think random drug tests are not entirely random. Gomez vented some of these frustrations to the Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday, offering up ample amounts ...

Yet Again, We've Reached Peak Mets
On Tuesday, Mets co-ace Noah Syndergaard underwent an MRI exam that revealed a strained ligament in his pitching index finger. A few hours later, Steven Matz left in the fourth inning of his start with finger discomfort. After taking a 6-2 lead into the seventh inning, the Mets’ bullpen completed it...

The Blue Jays Have Reached The "Russell Martin, Utilityman" Point Of The Season
Russell Martin has been a fine Major Leaguer for a long time, but the 2018 version of Russell Martin is not, by the numbers, the sort of player that a team absolutely needs to squeeze into the lineup unless things have gone terribly wrong. This isn’t yet true for the middling Toronto Blue Jays, who ...

We Secretly Replaced The Texas Rangers With A Little League Team...Let's Watch
A team of what appeared to be adult major league athletes suited up for the Texas Rangers on Thursday night. They were playing the third-worst team in baseball, the currently skipper-less Royals. To look at them, and to look at their opponents, you had to think they at least had a chance. What could...

Jorge Alfaro's 89-MPH Throw To Second Is A Base-Stealer's Nightmare
The Phillies have been winning ballgames, more than anyone expected through this point in May. Some attribute that to pumping up the rotation with Jake Arrieta, Odubel Herrera’s scorching start, or Gabe Kapler’s cosmic management, but there also are the little things that don’t come through in the b...

Report: The NFL Polled Americans About Signing Colin Kaepernick
Just after the NFL introduced its new and grotesquely vague anthem policy, Yahoo Sports reported that the league hired a Washington consulting firm to poll Americans about whether they believed Colin Kaepernick should’ve been signed by an NFL team. The study, which was conducted four months into Kae...

Shohei Ohtani, Please Do The Damn Home Run Derby!
Shohei Ohtani doesn’t think he’s ready for the home run derby. “I don’t think I’m at that level yet,” he told reporters yesterday....

Rich Hill Wants To Pitch With Tape On His Finger So He Doesn't Have To Pee On It
To scroll through photos of Rich Hill pitching is to see a man who appears to be in extreme pain while performing normal functions of his job. This could just be a Pitchface scenario—every pitcher’s got one, and while Hill looks anguished in the act of pitching, he’s not quite in R.A. Dickey territo...

Andrew Cashner Might Be Better At Hacky Sack Than Pitching
Save for the almost-nightly Manny Machado dinger, things are going horrifically wrong in Baltimore. Any twisted soul who’s still keeping up with this team would be wise to hang onto whatever fleeting moments of joy roll around—like Andrew Cashner kicking this comebacker from White Sox second baseman...

Jordan Hicks Is A Flamethrowing Maniac
I guess we’d better get used to this: On Sunday, Cardinals reliever Jordan Hicks threw five pitches to the Phillies’ scorching-hot Odubel Herrera during a ninth inning at-bat. They were all sinkers, clocking in respectively at 104, 105, 104, 105 and 103 mph. They were the five fastest pitches of the...

Pirates' Gregory Polanco Becomes The Subject Of A Weird PED Hoax
On Tuesday, just after Mariners second baseman Robinson Cano was suspended 80 games for failing a drug test, Pirates outfielder Gregory Polanco started to receive concerned texts from his friends and family in the Dominican Republic. A fake ESPN tweet began to circulate online, suggesting that Polan...

Deadpool Can Fuck Right Off
The worst trend in modern moviegoing is not the proliferation or quality of superhero movies—there is just the right amount of those, and most of them are very good—but what happens to a theater when Stan Lee makes his way onscreen during one of these movies. I’d say around 2008, when the first Iron...

The Astros Can Pitch Now And Look Invincible
It took Justin Verlander just 2 hours and 36 minutes to dispatch the Angels on Wednesday night, striking out seven in a five-hit shutout. We’ve come to expect this sort of thing since Verlander was traded to Houston last August, but it was especially impressive given the team that was on the receivi...