Baseball Page 911 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

What’s The Matter With Tampa Bay?
It’s not like everyone hadn’t been thinking it, but it took Tommy Pham to mention the elephant in the room. The outfielder, who one year earlier had celebrated his 6-WAR season in his first year as a starter at age 29 by publicly tearing down Cardinals management for not calling him up sooner, was s...

MLB Players Keep Calling Out Bullshit Excuses For Players Remaining Unsigned
Yesterday, Astros pitcher Justin Verlander became the latest high-profile MLB player to use social media to push back on the excuses being made to explain away the frigid free-agent market. He took specific aim at the false idea that teams who are in a rebuilding phase can’t be bothered to try and s...

Kyler Murray Wanted Football More Than Baseball Wanted Kyler Murray
Outraged by the Bob Costas report from the weekend, Kyler Murray today chose a potential future in the NFL to a potential future in Major League Baseball....

Frank Robinson Was The Man, Even If I Never Forgave Him For It
I’ve carried a grudge against Frank Robinson for 49 years....

Marlins Trade J.T. Realmuto To The Phillies, Who Are Quickly Going All-In
Woo-hoo, we got some real, honest-to-god MLB transaction news to talk about! Hooray! After a long winter of drawn-out rumors, the Marlins have decided to trade top catcher J.T. Realmuto to the Phillies in exchange for an enticing if unproven bag of a few players and potential future players....

Bryce Harper Met With The Giants, But That Won't Work Out Either
It is extremely difficult to talk about the continuing free agencies of Bryce Harper and Manny Machado without finding yourself trapped in a valley of nihilistic despair, with no hope of escape besides the sudden appearance of a “mystery team” savior. With five days until Spring Training begins, eve...


Cubs Co-Owner Tom Ricketts Apologizes For All The Racist Emails In His Dad's Inbox
Yesterday, our colleagues at Splinter published a collection of insanely racist emails from the inbox of Joe Ricketts, the billionaire patriarch of the Ricketts family, which currently owns the Chicago Cubs. Found in these emails is Joe Ricketts expressing his appreciation for plainly racist jokes a...

Dodgers Fan Killed By Foul Ball To The Head Suffered During August Game
A 79-year-old grandmother was struck in the head by a foul ball at an August 25 game at Dodger Stadium, and died days later from “acute intracranial hemorrhage,” reports ESPN’s Outside the Lines. The victim, Linda Goldbloom, was sitting above the protective netting extending from behind home plate d...

Report: Gabe Kapler Failed To Report Underage Girl's Assault At Dodgers Spring Training Hotel In 2015
In 2015, a 17-year-old girl told current Phillies manager Gabe Kapler—who was then the Dodgers’ director of player development—that she had been assaulted by two women while drinking in a Dodgers minor leaguer’s spring training hotel room in Glendale, Az., according to a report from the Washington P...

MLB's Luxury Tax Became A Salary Cap Because Of Decades Of Failures
Major League Baseball’s luxury tax was introduced as a compromise during collective bargaining in the late 1990s as a way to avoid implementing a salary cap, which had been one of the major points of conflict that led to the 1994 strike by the Major League Baseball Players Association. In the years ...

The Stove Is So Cold That Now We Have To Entertain The Padres
Baseball’s hot stove should have burned bright and hot and then shut off by this point in the offseason, given that there are less than two weeks to go until spring training. Instead, the free agent process is all but guaranteed to trudge on through February, as solid potential additions including D...

Today Was Somehow The Stupidest Day Yet In The Bryce Harper Sweepstakes
Today felt like it could have finally been the day we got some movement in the frigid pursuit of the two top free agents in baseball, but it was not meant to be. Despite what felt like all of Philly Twitter trying to will it into existence, Bryce Harper did not sign with the Phillies on Tuesday. Why...

Oh Look, An Owner Of An MLB Team Has Brought Up Another Excuse To Not Pay Bryce Harper Or Manny Machado Their Worth
Astros owner Jim Crane was the latest team owner to give his opinion on why stars like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado aren’t receiving the blockbuster contracts many expected them to sign this offseason. At a team event on Friday, Crane, whose net worth is an estimated $2.5 billion, told reporters t...

Curt Schilling Goes On Radio, Melts Down As He Defends Liking And Sharing Memes
In his sixth go-round, former baseball pitcher Curt Schilling received 60.9 percent in the Hall of Fame vote. He’s on pace to get in within his 10 years of eligibility. (Though this blog argues for his induction, I don’t personally care if he does and hope he doesn’t. Why? Because fuck him, that’s w...

Cashless Stadiums Are The Next Frontier In Fan Exploitation
The Tampa Bay Rays announced today that they would become the first major American sports team to stop accepting cash at their stadium, forcing fans to either pay via credit card or something called a “Rays card.” This shift is roughly coterminous with their recent decision to eliminate 5,000 of the...

Dipshit Philly Columnist: I Know Roy Halladay's Desires Better Than His Wife And Family
Brandy Halladay, the widow of Hall of Fame pitcher Roy Halladay, announced Wednesday her family’s decision to have Roy’s bust in Cooperstown feature a blank cap, representing neither the Toronto Blue Jays nor the Philadelphia Phillies. The Halladays figure this way Roy can represent “something to a...

The Video Of Mariano Rivera Getting The Call From Cooperstown Is So Great
For all its oversights, Hall of Fame announcement day is a day of joy. As a fan, it’s a day to remember great players, and how much fun it was to watch them play, and, if you were lucky enough to root for a team of an inductee, to remember the specific moments that player brought you the deepest, pu...

Roy Halladay's Hats, Ranked
The late Roy Halladay earned a well-deserved first-ballot nod from the BBWAA on Tuesday, with 85.4 percent of voters enshrining him in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The two-time Cy Young winner Halladay enters Cooperstown with 203 career wins, 2,117 strikeouts, 64.3 WAR, and a whole lotta hats worn, as...

Barry Bonds And Roger Clemens Not Elected To Baseball Hall Of Fame
For the seventh straight year, the greatest hitter of all time and the greatest pitcher of his era will not be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens received 59.1 and 59.5 percent of the vote, respectively, short of the 75 percent needed to enter Cooperstown....