1 Page 120 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Astros' Defense Grew More Impressive By The Inning
Before Jose Altuve’s heroic swing sent the Astros to the World Series, left fielder Michael Brantley was thought to be the one who all but guaranteed the pennant for Houston. In the top of the seventh, the 32-year-old veteran made a ridiculous diving catch to stop an Aaron Hicks popup from plopping ...
Jose Altuve Sends Astros To World Series With Walk-Off Bomb Against Aroldis Chapman
The final inning of the ALCS was a dramatic one, as the Astros booked their tickets to the World Series with an emphatic walk-off dinger. After spotting Houston a three-run lead in the first inning and trailing for the entire game, the Yankees finally drew even in the top of the ninth when D.J. LeMa...
Here's Another Reason To Hate Baseball's De-Juiced Baseballs
The defining image of the Yankees’ Game 5 win over the Astros on Friday happened with two outs in the top of the sixth inning. Having just struck out Yordan Álvarez after walking Carlos Correa, Aaron Boone slowly came out of the dugout to have a talk with his starter. While it’s not clear what the e...
Giancarlo Stanton And His Bum Quad Will Try To Save The Yankees
This postseason, the New York Yankees are 4-0 when Giancarlo Stanton gets into the game, and 0-3 when he does not. The lack of Stanton’s bat in the lineup isn’t the only reason the Yankees are down 3-1 to the Astros in the ALCS, but it’d certainly help to have him at DH instead of Edwin Encarnacion....
CC Sabathia Has Thrown His Last Pitch, And Joe Girardi Could Barely Hold It Together
Just about everything that could go wrong has for the Yankees, down 3-1 in the ALCS after Thursday night’s 8-3 loss to the Astros in the Bronx. (Except, weirdly, they’re still outhitting Houston in the series—which is itself a sign that they’re leaving men on base and the Astros aren’t.) So it was o...
What's Wrong With The Baseballs Is What's Wrong With Baseball
Something is definitely up. There is data, and it points in a specific direction, but also there are some long shadows and heavy circumstances and longstanding and well-founded suspicions in play as well. But we might as well start with the data....
Here's A Relay Race Handoff Gone Horribly Wrong
Here’s the rare bungling at this year’s IAAF World Championships in Doha that was not the fault of the event’s corrupt, rapacious organizers. While the Jamaican team sped to victory in last weekend’s women’s 4x100 relay final, the final two runners on the Chinese team seemed to forget how their even...
Nationals Complete Sweep Of Cardinals, Nanny Nanny Boo Boo
The Washington Nationals completed their four-game NLCS sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals Tuesday night, 7–4, and advanced to the franchise’s first World Series. They did it with a seven-run first inning, and then mostly held on for dear life, but they had a bunch of help from the Cardinals themselve...
This Is Just Some Delightful Baserunning From The Astros
The Houston Astros doubled their lead against the Yankees in the seventh inning of Game 3 this evening, not with the fancy-pants longballs that initially gave them a 2-0 advantage, but with some gritty, scrappy, heads-up baserunning that was unironically delightful to watch. Through just one hit and...
Stephen Strasburg's Teammates Must Keep Hugging Him Until His Icy Heart Melts
Stephen Strasburg kicked ass last night, striking out 12 Cardinals hitters in seven innings of work and leading his team to an 8-1 Game 3 victory. As you can see in the image above, all that hard work was repaid when he entered the dugout after recording his final out of the night and received a gro...
Juan Soto's Goof In Left Was High Comedy, But Marcell Ozuna's Mattered
For my money, the two best highlights of the Nationals’ 8–1 Game 3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, a result that makes the rest of this series almost a formality, were bloopers. One looked stupid and hilarious and mattered not at all; the other almost looked like a very cool catch, until it didn’t...
Simone Biles Keeps Finding New Worlds To Conquer
It was quite the week to be Simone Biles. On Tuesday, at the 2019 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, the diminutive 22-year-old superstar helped her team to their seventh consecutive gold medal, at the same time beating the record for the most world medals ever won by a f...
Gary Sanchez's Bizarre 11th-Inning At-Bat Was Pure Postseason Chaos
When Gary Sanchez came to the plate in the top of the 11th for the Yankees, with the score tied at two and runners on first and second with two outs, it felt like a safe bet the slumping New York catcher was either going to smash a three-run shot or strike out horrifically against Astros reliever Jo...
Carlos Correa Left His Body After His Walk-Off Homer
Carlos Correa hadn’t gotten that many opportunities to celebrate this year. The Astros’ young shortstop, who struggled last season to build upon a fantastic 2017, missed over half of this season with a broken rib and then a back problem. And though he was a powerful hitter when he was healthy enough...
Juan Soto And Miles Mikolas Swear The Crotch-Grabbing Antics Are All In Good Fun
It was only a matter of time before a pitcher decided to respond to Juan Soto for, well, being Juan Soto. In the top of the fifth, after forcing the 20-year-old Nationals stud to ground out, Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas looked over at Washington’s dugout as Soto trotted over and aggressively grab...
Even Aníbal Sánchez Started To Believe He Had His No-Hitter Secured
With the Nationals’ postseason demons exorcised, and the team now navigating uncharted playoff territory, it seemed only right that this anything-is-possible type of magic carried over into specific areas of the team to elevate certain players. Still, as Washington and St. Louis entered the bottom o...
If The Nats Are Going To Be Worth Rooting For, Let's Get Them Some Better Hats
This may seem like a Guide To The League Championship Series, but it isn’t really. If you need to be guided through four teams, you may be too dim to read....
Emma Meesseman Proved She Can Carry The Mystics To Greatness (As Long As She Wants To Play For Them)
Going into the WNBA playoffs, it would have been fair to underestimate the impact of Washington Mystics forward Emma Meesseman. Though she was one of the Mystics’ most efficient scorers—she’d be in the 40-50-90 club if she had enough attempts to qualify—she often felt like a lesser version of her te...
Tyler Glasnow Picked The Worst Possible Time To Tip His Pitches
Game 5 of the ALDS was more or less decided by the first 20 pitches thrown by Rays starter Tyler Glasnow. The Astros battered Glasnow for four runs in the bottom of the first inning, which wasn’t totally shocking given how fearsome Houston’s lineup is. What was surprising was how they went about sco...
Gerrit Cole Made Mincemeat Out Of The Rays
Game 5 of the American League* Divisional Series between the Astros and Rays functionally ended in the first inning. Not because the Astros put 10 runs on the board, a la the Cardinals, but because they put more than a single run on the board, in a game in which they had the insane and unfair Gerrit...