Baseball Page 811 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The National League Cy Young race is kind of a mess

With one month to go in the MLB season it’s generally about the time that not only playoff spot chases become pretty clear, but so do individual award chases. If not a clear winner, as one might find with the AL MVP, then at least a couple of candidates have separated themselves and voters at least ...

Mookie Betts, not Ronald Acuña Jr., is the NL MVP

We’d all be better off if every MVP award was simply renamed, “Player Of The Year,” as it would save us a very annoying and tiresome debate about what “valuable” means. It gets doubly so in baseball, where we still haven’t quite escaped what numbers people should pay attention to, and what is overbl...

Texas Rangers' current slide is tanking their chances at postseason redemption

How the tables have turned. On Aug. 15, the Texas Rangers were riding high, 24 games over .500, and in cruise control to the playoffs, if not an American League West title. Aug. 15 now happens to be the last time Bruce Bochy’s team has won. The Rangers are on a seven-game losing streak, including an...

So long, Stephen Strasburg, we hardly knew you

Stephen Strasburg’s announced retirement due to thoracic outlet syndrome isn’t so much a sad time as it is a prophecy fulfilled. Strasburg emerged from San Diego State and the minors as the most highly touted flamethrower in a generation. ...

Ohtani tears UCL and the Angels are done

Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout are hurt — how else would the Angels season end?

Neil Young told us that it was better to burn out than to fade away. In the same fashion, some things are just meant to divebomb so hard into the dirt that they cause a smoldering crater that affects all life on the planet rather than just saunter out to the woods to die in peace. That quickly appro...

Did Rogers Centre kill Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s power?

Whenever the post-mortem is compiled on this Toronto Blue Jays season — they’re still very much in the hunt for a wildcard spot — it won’t be hard to find culprits for how they didn’t quite manage to take the next step from a good team to a power that most in Ontario were expecting (feels like a the...

Alex Cora had himself a night

It’s starting to slip away from the Boston Red Sox. After an excellent July, the Carmines have run to nowhere in August with a 10-10 mark which has left them five games adrift of the last wildcard spot. Which isn’t a huge surprise, given that this team was built to basically win 84 games and give th...

What if there was a Mendoza Line for other baseball stats?

Mario Mendoza put together nine nondescript major league seasons from 1974-1982 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Seattle Mariners, and Texas Rangers. He was good for -2.7 WAR and finished with a career .215 batting average....

Julio Rodriguez refuses to make any outs

Baseball fans can lose track of the Mariners, all tucked away down there, pretty easily. They’re on late at night, and they don’t come with any of the glamor of some of the other West Coast teams. Though they entered this season as one of the more promising units after last year’s exploits, a pretty...

Who will New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman scapegoat next?

Atlanta has been a menace to New Yorkers of late. First, they dribbled the New York Mets all over Citi Field. Off the diamond, their District Attorney pinched Rudy Guiliani and Donald Trump in a RICO case, then the Braves continued their streak by lopping off the Bronx Bombers heads in three consecu...

Do you know just how bad the Colorado Rockies have been?

It’s a baseball axiom that the Colorado Rockies are clueless, helpless, directionless. They don’t have any stars, they don’t have any prospects, and they don’t have any idea how to get or produce either. Their ballpark presents a unique set of problems, but the Rockies are certainly not the organiza...

Wander Franco placed on administrative leave, off Rays roster [Update]

UPDATE: Aug. 22, 11:20 a.m.: Franco has been placed on administrative leave by MLB, who issued the following statement:...

Who’s more exciting: Shohei Ohtani or Elly De La Cruz?

This is not an argument about who’s the better player: Shohei Ohtani, or Elly De La Cruz. Ohtani is probably the best two-way player in baseball history, and De La Cruz has 55 games to his name. The discussion is about excitement, about who’s highlight you’re watching first, about throwing a complet...

Kenyan Middleton told his truth about the White Sox, and suddenly his name was off the scoreboard

Keynan Middleton gave his opinion about his time with the Chicago White Sox. He told ESPN’s Jesse Rogers that he felt the organization lacked discipline and personal accountability. His stories about players napping in the dugout and missing practice sessions were corroborated by teammates. Now a me...

Wait, suddenly Philly fans are great?

It was only Michael Lorenzen’s second start with the Phillies since he was acquired from Detroit at the trade deadline. And he threw a spectacular no-hitter, no doubt about it. A whole 124 pitches, with none of them leading to a hit, was special. Lorenzen offered his thanks to everyone involved on h...

Kevin Brown’s suspension is a symptom of a much larger problem with journalism, team-owned outlets (UPDATE)

(UPDATE, 4:58 PM: Baltimore Orioles announcer Kevin Brown was reinstated by the team Friday and released this statement on Twitter: “Unfortunately, recent media reports have mischaracterized my relationship with my adopted hometown Orioles. The fact is that I have a wonderful relationship with the o...

No, Domingo Germán is not a ‘sweetheart’

Domingo Germán’s career was forever altered the moment he threw the 24th perfect game in baseball history. As many humans have walked on the moon as have walked off an MLB mound perfect, and Germán is one of them. Despite a 5-7 record, and 4.56 ERA this year — and 4.41 ERA for his career — he’s show...

The San Diego Padres: The weirdest team money can buy

The main headline of the MLB trade deadline was the New York Mets surveying the landscape and basically coming to a “fuck this” conclusion. They punted a good chunk of the roster, and haven’t really done much to deny that their eyes are now set on 2025 and beyond, not even next year. Certainly the s...

Summer interns lasted longer in New York than the Mets’ free-agency haul

The New York Mets summer internship program is highly recommended. Who wouldn’t want to spend a summer in New York and collect eight figures along the way? This season, the Mets earned their rep as the most chaotic franchise in Major League Baseball by jettisoning Justin Verlander, David Robertson, ...