Baseball Page 816 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Tampa Bay Rays can sure beat the tar out of awful teams
You can only play who is on the schedule. That’s an axiom as old as baseball, and it’s mostly true. The Tampa Bay Rays got to start their season with nine games against MLB’s kids with mittens pinned to their jackets year-round, and they’ve done all they can do. Which is to beat the ever-loving piss...
MLB’s rule changes have made baseball more like itself
One week into the MLB season, the rule changes are by and large a huge success. It seems that fans and players alike overwhelmingly like the changes. ...
The baseball may be Flubber again
The baseball season not even being quite a week old is probably not the best time to draw conclusions. That’s not going to stop us though, as within these walls is where logic goes to die. But if you’ve been paying even cursory attention so far, you might have noticed some boxcar numbers being tosse...
Manny Machado getting run over arguing a pitch-clock K is objectively funny
There was bound to be an adjustment period as MLB entered the pitch clock era, and my question is, did basketball handle the implementation of the shot clock as poorly as this? Manny Machado was the first player to earn a strike via clock violation in spring training, and he became the first player ...
Does anyone truly believe Jacob deGrom can stay healthy all year?
Has there been a closer franchise to winning a World Series ever that never reached the pinnacle than the Texas Rangers? The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex’s Major League Baseball team had multiple squads good enough to be the sport’s last team standing over the last 15 years and never got it done. Sta...
How every MLB team will tank their seasons and break their fans' hearts in 2023
You can all give up the Rogers Hornsby quotes, already. We made it Opening Day, when hope springs eternal for millions of MLB fans across the country, a least for a few days/weeks. We’d all love to believe that our team has as much of a chance of winning the World Series as any other but, realistica...
Opening Day is a reminder of how little Major League Baseball thinks of African-Americans
Hot dogs. Peanuts. Cracker Jacks. Racism. It can only mean one thing — Opening Day of a new Major League Baseball season is here. And today, of all days, is a great example of how things haven’t changed and remain the same, or gotten worse. ...
Sean Gibson says MLB hasn't gone far enough when it comes to the Negro Leagues
With opening day in Major League Baseball upon us, there’s no better time to remember baseball’s heroes of yesteryear. Such nostalgia shouldn’t only extend to past eras of MLB but also to those who paved the way in the Negro Leagues for players of color to make their way into the Majors. One of thos...
8 Cy Young winners taking the mound on MLB Opening Day
It’s the most wonderful day of the year for baseball fans. Well, it’s one of them I guess — Opening Day! After the World Baseball Classic, the real fun begins, right Keith Olbermann? All 30 teams will have 161 games to go in the regular season after Thursday, with eight former Cy Young winners throw...
How every MLB division will shake out
Welcome to Opening Day! It was a long, cold winter, but Spring is, at last, officially upon us. Sure, the ivy at Wrigley might be sparse and brown, and your favorite broadcaster might be wearing Gore-Tex for the next few weeks, but baseball is back. As Bart Giamatti once said, “It breaks your heart....
The best and worst TV broadcasts in MLB: Your guide to watching other baseball
As hard as MLB tries, baseball remains pretty parochial. That’s mostly due to the daily nature of it. If you’re a fan of a team, you basically spend every day from the beginning of April to the end of September watching your team and then going to bed, or maybe cramming in some sort of worthless soc...
The fans Rob Manfred is trying to service are prudes
This year’s MLB Opening Day feels different than recent iterations because the media doesn’t have (most of) its usual talking points to complain about. The rule changes are going to shorten the games, discontinue the dialog about shifts, and provide baserunners with throw pillows to slide into. Yay!...
Can the Arizona Diamondbacks come from the clouds?
When baseball writers get done complaining about how late their games are on, most of baseball’s attention this season will be on the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Padres kneecapping the Dodgers in last year’s divisional round gave this tango some stakes instead of the Padres jus...
You gonna do anything about this, MLB?
Take a look at the face of MLB umpire Randy Rosenberg in the image above. If that’s not the face of someone who is slowly realizing that they may have *slightly* overreacted, I don’t know what is. But before we get into it, please take a second to view Rosenberg ejecting Phillies catcher J.T. Realmu...
Is there actually a reason to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates?
The Pittsburgh Pirates have been the prime symbol of everything wrong with MLB. They play in perhaps the league’s best ballpark. They have a passionate fanbase that is just screaming for a team worth their time, assuming they haven’t all been chased off (and they may need the Pirates soon given that...
Here are the Braves, sittin’ on top of the world
Life must be pretty good for the Atlanta Braves. They can kick back and watch all the headlines be about the New York Mets and their Correa fiasco, or the Mets and their Edwin Diaz fiasco, or the Philadelphia Phillies signing Trea Turner without really solving the problem that their outfield will lo...
The Angels will make the playoffs...or at least let’s figure out a way they can
As badass as the moment was of seeing Shohei Ohtani face Mike Trout with the World Baseball Classic on the line last night, you could forgive Los Angeles Angels fans if they were rubbing their temples a bit during it. The cry whenever either or both of those names come up in conversation has been, “...
How much difference can it make to have a manager who is awake?
How much tangible difference a manager makes on a baseball team over 162 games has never been quite nailed down. It’s generally thought the best ones might only add a couple wins, and a truly bad one might only take away a couple wins. Most are just there, which is kind of why front offices stopped ...
Is it finally time for the Toronto Blue Jays?
Once the Toronto Maple Leafs get Andrei Vasilevskiy’d in the first round again, it’s not like the angst level in the T.O. will fade all that much through the summer months. That’s because the Toronto Blue Jays have reached the same threshold as the Leafs passed a few years ago, where you go from you...
No, Keith Olbermann, we should not 'kill' the WBC
If you ever wonder why much of the world views Americans as arrogant and uninterested in anything that happens outside the United States’ borders, look no further than Keith Olbermann’s recent tweets about the World Baseball Classic....