Baseball Page 1125 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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...
Wonderteen Juan Soto Homers On First Pitch Of First MLB Start
Nineteen-year-old Nationals outfielder Juan Soto became the youngest position player to start in the majors since 2012 tonight, and he immediately proved his worth. On the very first ball that he saw off Padres pitcher Robbie Erlin, Soto crushed a three-run oppo dinger 422 feet into left, earning a ...
Shohei Ohtani's Splitter Is The Most Untouchable Pitch In Baseball
Two-way star Shohei Ohtani helped the Angels end a five-game losing streak with a 110-pitch outing against the Rays Sunday. At this point, Ohtani going for nine strikeouts in 7.2 innings and generally bewitching opposing hitters isn’t much of a surprise, since he’s paired masterful control with deva...
Odubel Herrera’s On-Base Streak Ended Even Though He Got On Base
Odubel Herrera didn’t start opening day, but since then, he’s been on fire: He leads the National League in batting average, at .344, and is 10th in slugging. (Yes, genius manager/fedora wearer Gabe Kapler benched his best player, now a legit NL MVP candidate, for the first game of the season.) The ...
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...
Mike Trout Is Running Again
Mike Trout’s greatness is all-encompassing and unrelenting. There are no holes to be poked in it, and no complaints to be made about how he chooses to deploy his skills every day. If you were, however, some kind of sick freak who believes that Trout could be doing more to help his team win, you migh...
José Bautista Shifts Into The "Too Crummy Even To Play Third Base For The Atlanta Braves" Stage Of His Career
José Bautista’s unexpected and endlessly depressing stint as a third-baseman for the Atlanta Braves, kicked-off ominously with a one-year minor league contract in mid-April, has not produced the way anyone involved might’ve hoped: Bautista is hitting a putrid .143 with an alarming .593 OPS in 40 pla...
The Rays Are Making History With Strange New Pitching Strategies
The Rays announced last week an extremely unusual, cosmic-brain plan for the immediate future of their pitching rotation: rather than the traditional approach of deploying a starting pitcher to work through the opposing lineup a few times before yielding to the bullpen, manager Kevin Cash decided to...
Benches Clear In Cubs-Reds After Bold Pitcher Stare-Down
Reds reliever Amir Garrett punctuated an inning-ending strikeout of Javier Baez in the seventh inning Saturday with a triumphant shout, loud enough to be audible over the television broadcast, followed by an aggressive stare-down of his vanquished foe. Unwritten rules and athlete egos being what the...
Worthless Jedi Absolutely Humiliated By Cunning Novice
Astros mascot Orbit, who is also apparently a Jedi, was challenged to a lightsaber duel by Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor on Friday. Gotta say, I am starting to believe more and more in Luke Skywalker’s bitter “actually the Jedi are busters” preachings:...
Petty-Ass Derek Jeter Yanks Credentials From Radio Host Who Tracked Down Marlins’ Overseas Corporate Office<em></em>
Last month Miami radio host Andy Slater joined Marlins Man on an investigative trip to the British Virgin Islands, where they learned that the corporate address of the Miami Marlins was a post office box, listed in order to establish the Marlins as a foreign company, for the most cynical of reasons....
Shortstop Pedro Florimon Pitches Perfect Inning, Then Socks Mighty Dinger
The dreaded Cardinals chased Phillies ace Jake Arrieta after just three innings in Friday night’s gloomy, rain-delayed tilt in St. Louis. The score was then 4-0; by the time reliever Drew Hutchison finished the sixth inning it was 9-2; the game finally became a laugher when Yacksel Rios allowed anot...
Astros Manager A.J. Hinch On Santa Fe Shooting: "Thoughts And Prayers Are Great, But They're Not Fixing The Problem"
This morning, a student at Houston-area Santa Fe High School murdered 10 people with a shotgun and a .38 caliber pistol. This is the 22nd time this year that someone with a gun has either killed or injured someone on a high school campus. Astros manager A.J. Hinch was asked about the deadly attack a...
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...
Mookie Betts Played Kevin Gausman For A Fool
Mookie Betts, the best non–Mike Trout player in baseball who makes everything look impossibly easy, has a history of showing as little mercy as possible to the division rival Baltimore Orioles. He continued that trend during last night’s 6-2 victory over the O’s in Boston....
Buck Showalter Will Not Yield For Your Home Run Trot<em></em>
A three-run dinger from Xander Bogaerts gave his Red Sox a 6-0 lead and chased Orioles pitcher Kevin Gausman in the fifth inning of tonight’s game. While Gausman himself couldn’t have been thrilled with his mistake, O’s manager Buck Showalter appeared even more disgusted, as he couldn’t even restrai...
Heck Yeah, J.D. Martinez Is Smashing Dingers Like Clockwork Again
New Red Sox signing J.D. Martinez had a very, very good first month in a Boston uniform—an April OPS of .994 is nothing to sneeze at—but Just Dingers has truly been living up to his nickname since May began. And in his first at-bat tonight against the Orioles, J.D.’s fifth-gear hot streak got even m...
"Tommy G?": People On The Street Try To Name A Famous Active Baseball Player
If the 2016 survey of 6,000 sports fans that found no active baseball players cracked the top 50 most popular athletes, the persuasive handwringing over Mike Trout’s likability, and the fact that we just considered this question last week to no definitive answer weren’t convincing, here’s more evide...
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...
Bartolo Colon's Belly Saves The Day
In the middle of his seven-plus scoreless innings in the Texas Rangers’ 5-1 win Wednesday, pitcher Bartolo Colon had to deal with a comebacker from Mariners shortstop Jean Segura. While Colon wasn’t quick enough with his glove, his tummy more or less did the job, and he got the out in time. You can’...