MLB Page 778 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Bianca Smith makes history as first Black woman coach in professional baseball
The Boston Red Sox recently announced that Bianca Smith will join the ballclub, making her the first Black woman to coach in professional baseball. Smith will begin her MLB career at the Red Sox player development facility in Florida. There, she’ll work with minor league players....
MLBPA is going to have to accept a salary cap to get a needed salary floor
While the swords remain sheathed at the moment between the MLBPA and the owners, there’s been enough saber-rattling about the length and shape of the 2021 season to know that there’s likely going to be another labor fight. Just like the one they had last summer in paring down to a 60-game season. An...
If ‘small-market’ teams like the Cubs can't make it, what hope is there?
If this is the reality of baseball, then something about the system needs to change. Trades of top talent for prospects are nothing new in the game, of course, but you don’t expect to see the teams giving up on frontline starting pitchers to be making those trades when they’re in the middle of a win...
Blake Snell headed to team actively trying to win, for a change
Game 6 of the World Series saw a former Cy Young-winning pitcher get yanked after 5 ⅓ shutout innings, after logging nine strikeouts, and after giving up only two hits on only 73 pitches. That pitcher was Blake Snell, whose visible fury when getting pulled from the game was easily palpable. Two mont...
The Reds (remember them?) are going to blow up something they never even built
The commonly accepted method for building a contending MLB team these days is to one day decide the team you have is rotten and no longer competitive, flog everything off that isn’t nailed down for prospects and lottery tickets, suck pond scum for a few years to rack up high draft picks that result ...
MLB continues dragging feet on universal DH, hurting the game for greedy reasons
It’s two months until pitchers and catchers are supposed to report to spring training, if all goes according to plan (yeah, right), and Major League Baseball still hasn’t determined whether or not the universal designated hitter will remain in effect for the 2021 season....
Negro Leagues recognized by MLB as major leagues… but what does that actually mean?
The announcement by MLB on Wednesday that the 1920-1948 Negro Leagues would be recognized as major league was very welcome news....
Not even a pandemic could stop the Scott Boras mangled-metaphor train from running on time
It’s become perhaps the most anticipated tradition of MLB’s Winter Meetings, if only because it’s been echoed so many times by a baseball press desperate for anyone to tell them anything. Long gone are the days of writers and GMs getting loaded in the hotel bar after every game, with the executive l...
MLB owners' concern over vaccine is really just them telling on themselves, for the 738th time
If it feels like MLB owners are always coming here for an argument, that’s pretty much because they always are. While the comatose-snail-slow free agent and trade market can be partially traced to the usual, contemporary miserliness of the cabal of 30 (though most certainly not collusion, no sir), a...
Paul Dolan says the quiet part loud for Cleveland, proving all Dolans are morons
Things are never as good as they seem, and so it has proven with Cleveland’s MLB team’s name change. The hunch was that they would always wait until 2022 to actually change the name, much like how the Washington Football Team couldn’t find another one for this year. The excuse they’ll trot out is th...
Deadspin Fixes The Phillies: A blueprint Dave Dombrowski will never follow
In some ways, anything like this is folly when a team has already hired Dave Dombrowski as President of Baseball. The Phillies clearly aren’t going to wait around for Theo Epstein to finish his year with a Eurorail pass as he takes up poetry or dyes his hair purple or whatever means of self-discover...
Cleveland baseball team finally agrees to change racist name
It’s not all that surprising after the Washington Football Team, belatedly, saw the light of the indecency of its name. Cleveland’s MLB team had been moving toward changing its name for a while now, as they began to de-emphasize their Chief Wahoo logo with hats and jerseys that just featured the blo...
Charley Pride, Negro Leagues veteran and country music trailblazer, dead of COVID complications
You know Charley Pride, the country singer. The three-time Grammy winner recorded over 40 No. 1 hit country songs and became the genre’s first Black superstar. But before his music career, Pride was a professional baseball player....
Mets deal for McCann reeks of failures past, but at least Cohen is shelling out
Meet the new Mets… same as the old Mets?...
MLB Hall of Fame Vets' inaction failing greats of the game like Santo, Allen
Dick Allen’s death on Monday is just the latest failure of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Allen had become a popular candidate in recent years, as the sabermetrics movement showed what a powerful and impactful hitter he was. His raw statistics alone — 351 home runs, a .292 career average — are impressiv...
With Phillies on verge of hiring Dave Dombrowski as president, MLB recycles its old trash better than anyone
Dave Dombrowski is what is still wrong with Major League Baseball....
MLB knows what it wants to do with the DH, it just doesn’t want to pay for it
Now that the baseball Winter Meetings have begun, such as they are in this altered pandemic-form, some real moves are being made. Lance Lynn and Adam Eaton have joined the White Sox either via trade or signing, Carlos Santana has got on the Royals express to 72 wins, and rumors are flying after the ...
Dodgers scout Jairo Castillo dies of COVID complications, franchise shrugs
The Dodgers won their first championship since 1988 with Justin Turner on the field until the eighth inning of the deciding game, even though he had coronavirus, and then didn’t stop him from coming back out to celebrate with the team, taking his mask down and exposing more people to the virus....
MLB Ump Brian O'Nora is even worse at sex solicitation than calling balls and strikes
Brian O’Nora opted out of umpiring in the 2020 season, and baseball hardly missed him. According to Bloomberg Businessweek’s Umpire Auditor, from 2012-19, O’Nora had a correct call rate of 87 percent, the same percentage as notoriously lousy umps Joe West and Kerwin Danley, and a point worse than th...
The Hall of Fame missed its chance to honor Dick Allen, who died today at 78
Editor’s note: This story was originally published about an hour before we learned that Dick Allen had died at age 78 at his home in Wampum, Pa. Changes have been made throughout to reflect that....