Baseball Page 999 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Scott Boras Wouldn't Advise California Players To Seek Early Free Agency
Yesterday, we considered the legal viability of baseball players using Section 2855 of the California Labor Code to enter free agency early. The state law stipulates that employees cannot be held to contracts of longer than seven years; over at FanGraphs, Nathaniel Grow speculated that Mike Trout—an...

Could Mike Trout Exploit A California Labor Law Quirk To Become A Free Agent Early?
There isn’t a team in Major League Baseball that wouldn’t jump at the chance to sign Mike Trout, whose two MVP awards in his first five years of big league service vastly underrepresent how good he really is. And there isn’t a team that could afford to do so that wouldn’t throw hundreds of millions ...

Yes, More Hall Of Fame Projections, Give Them To Me
It is impossible for me to get enough Baseball Hall of Fame shit. News, analysis, debate—give it all to me. Hook it to my veins....

Pissed Off Diamondbacks Sue Because They Want Another Stadium<em></em><em></em>
The protracted fight between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Maricopa County has reached a boiling point. The Diamondbacks announced tonight that they had filed a lawsuit in Arizona Superior Court against the Maricopa County Stadium District, the legislative body that operates their stadium, in an atte...

Curt Schilling Digs Hole Deeper
Curt Schilling, who is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame but would be a first-ballot pick for the Meme Curator Hall of Fame, talked to TMZ Sports about how he probably won’t be elected this year and continued to hurt his chances for the future....

Dodgers' Twitter Account Hacked With Message About Upgrading Your Security
The Dodgers got an early Christmas present today in the form of a Twitter hack. OurMine—the collective that claimed responsibility earlier this week for hacking Netflix and NFL Network’s accounts, among others—appears to be the culprit....

Cleveland Goes After Dingers, Signs Edwin Encarnacion To Three-Year Deal
Free agent Edwin Encarnacion is headed to Cleveland, on a three-year contract for a reported $65 million with an option for a fourth season. ...

Clay Buchholz Is Your Problem Now, Phillies Fans
In a move that is notable mostly because it will shut up Red Sox fans just a little bit, the Sox have traded embattled pitcher Clay Buchholz to the Phillies for Josh Tobias, a prospect you’ve never heard of. ...

Kenta Maeda Pretends To Be Old Man, Strikes Out Hapless Child
With his first season with the Dodgers under his belt, pitcher Kenta Maeda returned to his native Japan this winter to do charity work in Hiroshima and visit Disneyland Tokyo. Maeda also disguised himself as an old man and clumsily fielded ground balls before he ruthlessly struck out a child on a ga...

Aroldis Chapman Doesn't Understand What Joe Maddon Was Doing, Either
The greatest benefit enjoyed by a World Series-winning manager, aside from the obvious one, is that all of those in-game decisions that read as questionable or just plain boneheaded in the moment are erased by the post-championship glow. Despite the Cubs’ World Series win, at least one person hasn’t...

Curt Schilling Should Be In The Hall Of Fame
As of this morning, Ryan Thibodaux’s invaluable Hall of Fame election tracker has the results of 44 ballots up, representing about a tenth the total number of ballots expected to be cast by veteran baseball writers this year. It’s a skewed and self-selecting sample—writers who make their ballot publ...

Bartolo Colon Is Grinding, Putting In Work, And Coming For That Throne
What are you doing today to bring yourself closer to achieving your goals? If you aren’t going out there every day and chopping wood, getting it in, and refusing to be average, then I suggest you take some inspiration from the one and only Bartolo Colon:...

Jeurys Familia Will Not Face Criminal Charges In Domestic Violence Case<em></em>
Prosecutors in Fort Lee, New Jersey dropped assault charges against New York Mets closer Jeurys Familia today. He appeared in court alongside his wife, who had previously requested that the case be dismissed....

There Are Plenty Of Reasons To Get Rid Of Baseball's Rookie Hazing
MLB ratified a new collective bargaining agreement today that, among other changes, banned rooking hazing, including the longstanding tradition of veteran ballplayers making rookies dress like women. Many other forms of hazing were banned—making people drink too much alcohol, coercing people to brea...

Jeffrey Loria Is Having A Bad Day
Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria has had better weeks. Just a few days after Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen reportedly turned down a larger offer from the Marlins to re-sign in Los Angeles, Loria’s personal cell phone number inadvertently made its way online when a business card he had once signed was put ...

Cuban Pitcher Cionel Perez On Signing With The Astros: "I Feel Abused By This System"
It can be a little dubious when professional athletes making literal millions complain about being treated unfairly. But within the highly skewed relative universe of superstar signing bonuses, international baseball amateurs have a distinctly viable grievance....

MLB To Ban Bullying And Hazing In New CBA
Major League Baseball and its players union are set to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement tomorrow that includes a section banning hazing. The proposal specifically bans rituals that require, “dressing up as women or wearing costumes that may be offensive to individuals based on their race...

Twins Prospect Yorman Landa Dies In Car Accident
Minnesota Twins minor leaguer Yorman Landa died in a car accident last night in his native Venezuela. He was 22....

MLB Wants Pitching Prospects To Submit To Voluntary MRI Scans
Details about baseball’s newly minted collective bargaining are still trickling out, and here’s a shitty one:...

Nobody Seems To Want Andrew McCutchen
There might be a gas outage in Pittsburgh this week because the stove, my friends, appears to have gone freezing cold for Andrew McCutchen and the Pirates....