Baseball Page 833 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Yankees minor leaguer cut for running alleged memorabilia scam
Can you imagine signing a $597,000 contract to play in the New York Yankees minor league system right out of college, only to ruin it all by scamming fans and stealing bats, gloves and equipment? Jake Sanford, the Yankees third-round pick in 2019, was cut by the club on May 12 for multiple infractio...

Mets fans are going to need some really strong anti-depressants to keep up the optimism
Pete Alonso’s two-run walkoff homer in the 10th inning Thursday improved the New York Mets’ record to 26-14, which is good for the second-most wins in baseball and a six-and-a-half-game lead in the NL East. They have a +44 run differential, put up the fourth most runs in the MLB, and boast the leagu...

Baseball is less fun when NO ONE MOVES THEIR BACK ROW
Sporting leagues should enact a per game minimum of fun-yet-stupid plays attempts. For the NBA, each squad should be required to take at least 15 30-foot plus jumpers. There should be at least two trick plays per team in NFL games. I don’t know what it is for soccer or hockey. Maybe it’s something a...

Who would win? Pitchers or position players?
Baseball is wacky nowadays. Just a few nights ago we watched Tampa Bay outfielder Brett Phillips pitch to reigning AL MVP Shohei Ohtani. The very next day, Ohtani was on the mound pitching to Phillips. When was the last time something like that happened? We’ve got a universal DH now. This stuff shou...

Put Aaron Judge in center field, you cowards!
This is going to sound like a conspiracy theory, but hear me out. If you only put your best players in your lineup, you tend to do well. I know, right! Insane! Call me crazy, but so too did they call Galileo crazy when he said the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and look where we are now. B...

It’s getting late pretty early in Boston
The Red Sox won 92 games last season and went to the ALCS. They had a fair amount of turnover in the offseason, losing Eduardo Rodriguez, Kyle Schwarber, and Hunter Renfroe in free agency, but Boston also added Michael Wacha and Rich Hill to the rotation, got Jackie Bradley Jr. to come back to their...

Gabe Kapler, your mustache/beard take is all wrong
For once, I get to speak with the exact same authority on a subject as a professional athlete. Gabe Kapler played professional baseball for 12 seasons and has been a manager for the last four. While I can’t speak with anywhere near the same authority on what it takes to hit a curveball or when to pu...

How is Justin Verlander still doing this?
Justin Verlander served notice to those sleeping on the Houston Astros and their 39-year-old ace: He’s all the way back. ...

Josh VanMeter was forced to catch for the first time in 12 years. It didn’t go well
Ask any Pirates fan and they’ll tell you how bad a second baseman Josh VanMeter is. The 27-year-old is hitting .171 with a .496 OPS in 15 games this season. Well, after today, he’s not only the worst second baseman some Pirates fans have ever seen, but the worst catcher as well. ...

The Giants are suffering a power outage
Fresh off a franchise-best 107-win season, nobody expected the San Francisco Giants to repeat as NL West champs in 2022. The departures of key players such as Buster Posey, Kris Bryant, and Kevin Gausman were going to be difficult to overcome. The Giants managed to replace Gausman by acquiring Carlo...

The Cincinnati Reds are tanking hard and it (probably) won’t save them
The Reds are a joke. Not a gut-wrenching knee slapper either. I’m talking about a “force the audience to ask for a refund”-type joke, AKA just normal Amy Schumer material. The Reds’ record is an abysmal 3-22. To put that in perspective, only one team in the Modern Era of baseball (since 1901) had a ...

Anthony Rizzo’s season has made absolutely zero sense
The New York Yankees are a good baseball team. Contrary to what any rational baseball fan wants to believe, the Yankees are currently leading the AL East and are top-5 in MLB in average, OPS, and home runs. They are a great team, and a big part of their offensive prowess in 2022 has been first basem...

Alleged model MLB franchise St. Louis Cardinals having trouble nurturing homegrown hitters
A promising offensive prospect cratering back to Earth has become the St. Louis Cardinals’ version of Anchorman’s pancake breakfast: They do it annually. Tyler O’Neill and Dylan Carlson both showed signs of potentially being long-term solutions to two-thirds of the Red Birds’ outfield a season ago, ...

Hats off to Mike Clevinger
588 days. That’s how long it had been since Mike Clevinger pitched in a regular season MLB game. That’s not what the Padres were hoping for when they traded six players to Cleveland for him, but through injuries to his biceps, elbow, knee, another undisclosed setback, and a brief appearance in the 2...

Robo umps can’t get here soon enough as unhinged humans remind sports fans that baseball still has worst officials
The MLB’s umpires are really milking their last few minutes of relevance, and in the process aren’t doing themselves any favors in the argument against robot umpires taking their jobs. No, Triple A isn’t testing out a robo-ump at the moment, but maybe they should be because what happened to Madison ...

Are the Yankees frauds? Will the Angels come down to earth?
Saying “it’s only April” is out, because it’s been May for a few days now. We’re about 15 percent of the way through baseball’s regular season, give or take depending on how many games each team has played, and while that’s not a big sample size, the teams that are in first place now have those wins...

The Rockies’ scoreboard operator is going through some stuff
The Colorado Rockies came into last night’s game fresh off a sweep of the Cincinnati Reds. Energy was high and the team was looking to pick up their series against Washington on a similar note. The Rockies were favored in this matchup. They had their ace, Germán Marquez on the mound, and while he’d ...
