Baseball Page 929 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Too Many Position Players Are Pitching Now
41 position players have pitched in a big-league game this season. By my count, 28 different position players have taken the mound since the start of June. This is too many! A good thing is being spoiled, here....

Trea Turner Bunts, Just Gives Up
The Nationals are an underachieving team that is reaching that point in the season when everyone starts to get really pissy about all the underachieving. Over the weekend, Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer got into a dugout tiff after Strasburg got knocked around by the Braves. On Monday night, Tre...

You Aren't Going To Believe This, But Jacob DeGrom Pitched Great And The Mets Lost Anyway
Whenever Jacob deGrom takes the hill for the Mets, there’s a certain level of excellence that you can expect to see from the spindly 30-year-old. He has, after all, only given up more than three earned runs in a start once this season. That means that whenever deGrom is pitching, all the Mets have t...
![It Was A Miserable Night For Gary Sanchez [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/ihmqpyutr7w1rczpbpff.jpg)
It Was A Miserable Night For Gary Sanchez [Update]
Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez is not a complete player, but his offensive skills more than make up for for his questionable defense and occasionally suspect effort. There’s a reason he was an all-star last year and rookie of the year runner-up the year before that. His bat is a beast, and the Yankees...

Daniel Poncedeleon Hurls Seven No-Hit Innings In Big-League Debut
Daniel Poncedeleon made his big-league debut Monday night, 14 months after a comebacker hit him in the temple in a minor-league game and very nearly ended his career. And what a debut it was! Poncedeleon left the game after the seventh inning, having thrown 116 pitches without allowing a single hit....

Jake Bauers Scores From Second On Passed Ball Thanks To Just The Sleepiest Yankees Defensive Effort
Jake Bauers socked a three-run dinger in the fifth inning tonight against the Yankees. That’s cool. It’s cool to sock dingers, especially against the abominable Yankees. But Bauers’s best highlight from Monday night came in the bottom of the first inning, when he scored from second base on a passed ...

Oakland A's Overcome Inconveniently Placed Chair, Win In Extra Innings<em></em>
The Oakland A’s are no strangers to bizarre late-game plays, and the San Francisco Giants forced extra innings in Oakland on Saturday night by scoring in rather controversial fashion. With the A’s only needing one more out to win the game, Hunter Pence smacked a grounder that snuck past first base a...

Nationals Executive Has To Resort To Crowdfunding For Leukemia Treatment
Doug Harris, the Washington Nationals’ assistant GM and vice president of player personnel, holds a significant position in the organization—and yet, even an MLB team executive has to resort to asking the public to help cover his medical costs....

Manny Machado Knew He Had Been Traded A Week Ago
The worst-kept secret of the All-Star Game was that then-Orioles shortstop Manny Machado was heading to the Dodgers, in a trade that wouldn’t be announced until after the break—to avoid the awkwardness of Machado wearing an Orioles uniform in the ASG and head off the possibility of his story oversha...

Hernan Perez Plunked A Batter With The Softest Pitch You'll Ever See
The Brewers lost to the Dodgers 11-2 in nine innings on Sunday, but they stopped trying to win in the seventh, when utility man Hernan Perez went to the mound to throw two innings of relief. Perez, one of two Milwaukee position players to try their luck at hurling in the game, acquitted himself nice...

Sounds Like Everyone Should Lay Off That Cubs Fan Who "Stole" A Baseball From A Kid
Sunday outrage gives way to Monday fact-checking. If you were one of the people who (reasonably) got very angry at a short video clip appearing to show an adult Cubs fan intercepting a ball meant for a child, you can stand down. The man, it now appears, is a good guy who does not deserve this at all...

Daniel Poncedeleon Will Make His Major League Debut 14 Months After A Horrifying Injury
Cardinals pitcher Daniel Poncedeleon will be called up by St. Louis today and start tonight’s game against the Reds, making his big-league debut little more than a year after an injury suffered on the mound put his career—and maybe his life—in jeopardy. “Talk about a comeback story,” new Cards manag...

Just When You Think We've Reached Peak Mets, Noah Syndergaard Comes Down With "Hand, Foot, And Mouth Disease"
The Mets have spent an MLB-high $39.5 million on players on the disabled list in 2018, almost $2 million more than the next highest team on the list, and a full $12 million more than the third highest. I am going to guess the dollars they spend on Noah Syndergaard’s new ailment are the weirdest they...

I Hereby Demand Several Large Jars Of Matt Carpenter's Secret Dinger Salsa
Matt Carpenter’s current streak of just absurd production started on July 14, with a double and a home run in the middle game of a series against the Reds. He homered again the following night, this time in a win, to enter the All-Star break on a nice two-day run of slugging excellence....

Mets Reach "Trading Top Relievers For Prospects" Stage Of Hopelessness
In the most definitive sign yet that the Mets have closed the books on any chance of developing their current core back into a championship contender, Saturday they traded closer Jeurys Familia, who has been with the organization since he was 17 years old, to the Oakland Athletics, for a pair of pro...

Giving A Guy Who Was Racist Online A Standing Ovation To Own The Libs
Josh Hader took the mound for the Brewers Saturday night, his first appearance since the All-Star break, and since the accompanying revelation that Hader’s Twitter account was full of racist and offensive shit, all of it posted when he was a teenager in 2011 and 2012. Hader was masterful against the...

Stephen Strasburg's Return Brings More Misery For The Sorry Nationals
Stephen Strasburg pitched for the Nationals for the first time since June 8 Friday. His return to the rotation after recovering from shoulder inflammation was hailed as a major reason for hope that a gloomy, disappointing Nationals season might turn around in the second half. Then he went out and pi...

The Indians Paid A Lot For Their New Bullpen, But They Pretty Much Had To Do It
The Cleveland Indians, despite owning only the sixth-best record in the American League, have basically already clinched their spot in the playoffs, and are the only AL team that doesn’t have to worry about the wild card play-in game. Thanks to the putrid AL Central and its one (1) team with a recor...

Rob Manfred Wants MLB Expansion, Lists Six Potential Cities
Commissioner Rob Manfred’s all-star break wasn’t only spent sandbagging his sport’s best player. He also took some time to throw his support behind expanding MLB to two more cities....
![Angels Defend Mike Trout After MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred Says He Should Market Himself More [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/srtrnx3cnwsledksnlob.jpg)
Angels Defend Mike Trout After MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred Says He Should Market Himself More [Update]
MLB czar Rob Manfred had a pretty short-sighted take to lob at Angels outfielder Mike Trout. Manfred said that Trout—the man who is on pace to beat Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle for the highest all-time WAR total before their age-27 season—had to “make a decision to engage” in order to be more marketabl...