American League Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Top candidates fit to manage Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani
Two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Angels were on top of the world. They had the best record in the AL West. Mike Trout was healthy and playing at the level we’ve come to expect. Shohei Ohtani had gotten off to a rocky start on the mound, but he’d lowered his ERA to an incredible 2.82 after his May 18 s...
Get ready for hot pickleball action!
It’s not often that we get the chance to live through the invention and ascension of a sport into popular culture. American football dates back to the Civil War era. James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. FIFA was founded in 1904. But thanks to a man named Joel Pritchard trying to entertain his...
It’s getting late pretty early in Boston
The Red Sox won 92 games last season and went to the ALCS. They had a fair amount of turnover in the offseason, losing Eduardo Rodriguez, Kyle Schwarber, and Hunter Renfroe in free agency, but Boston also added Michael Wacha and Rich Hill to the rotation, got Jackie Bradley Jr. to come back to their...
The Spurs in a different city, maybe even a different country? It's not a terrible idea
Does the Austin Spurs have a nice ring to it? How about the Monterrey Spurs, becoming the first team from a major American sports league to be located in Mexico?...
Are the Yankees frauds? Will the Angels come down to earth?
Saying “it’s only April” is out, because it’s been May for a few days now. We’re about 15 percent of the way through baseball’s regular season, give or take depending on how many games each team has played, and while that’s not a big sample size, the teams that are in first place now have those wins...
Leury Garcia hitting 3rd? Tony La Russa... explain yourself
Losers of three in a row, the Chicago White Sox currently sit at 6-6, tied for second place in the AL Central with the Kansas City Royals. Lo and behold, The ChiSox’s adversaries yesterday were the Cleveland Guardians. Cleveland took both games of Wednesday’s doubleheader, so you’d assume that manag...
Joe Maddon out-galaxy brains himself, manages to win anyway
There are a couple of key questions in baseball over the past several years that regularly intersect: “Why can’t the Angels win anything when they have Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, two unique talents among the greatest the game has ever seen?” and “How did Joe Maddon ever win a World Series with th...
Steven Kwan is kicking off his career hotter than anyone ever
First things first, I just want to say that I know he’s only played four career games, but that doesn’t take away from how insane Cleveland’s 24-year-old rookie, Steven Kwan, has been during this stretch. In 19 plate appearances, Kwan has recorded nine hits (three extra-base hits) and six walks for ...
When Jackie opened the door, these men walked through
It took 2,559 days after Jackie Robinson’s debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers for Major League Baseball to have its 42nd Black player appear in a game. Those seven years and two days saw 11 of the league’s 16 franchises integrate. The Boston Red Sox were the last to do so with Pumpsie Green in July 1959...
Overpaying Aaron Judge was a mistake the Yankees used to make without blinking
In the scene at the climax of Layer Cake, an English gangster flick Daniel Craig made two years before becoming James Bond, the antagonist goes on this tangent about taking shit, and how eventually, if you climb high enough, you forget what shit even looks like....
Deadspin’s 2022 MLB predictions: The good, the bad, the frustrating
You don’t need sportswriters to tell you that the Dodgers are going to be better than the Diamondbacks this year. You already know that. At the same time, it feels wrong to go into the baseball season without looking ahead at it, without trying to gaze into a crystal ball to make some kind of picks....
Yes, a pitcher can be the best player in baseball, especially if he also hits 40 HRs
Quarterback is the most important position in football because a quarterback has the ball in their hands for nearly half of the game. They control the game’s pace of play, the efficiency of the passing attack, and although it’s not done nearly as much nowadays, they can even call their team’s plays....
The White Sox are getting to their proper level of cantankerous
The term “White Sox” in baseball basically means anger. Or at least a heavy pinch of it to go with however else it might be defined. There is always an undercurrent of seething with the White Sox and their fans. It’s part of their identity. The White Sox are a symbol of their part of Chicago, the So...
What milestones might we see in baseball this year?
The coronavirus pandemic is going to wreak havoc on long-term baseball achievements for years to come. Obviously, anyone chasing career records took a hit from the 60-game season in 2020, and a lot of players were in and out of the lineup last season due to the virus. That also means interruptions t...
The Phillies OF should probably wear their helmets in the field, too
When in the NL East, and having designs on competing to win it, the natural conclusion is that you’ll have to score a lot of runs to do so. Fair enough. The Braves are still here, Ronald Acuña Jr. is going to be healthy (enough), A team also can’t expect Francisco Lindor to be in a constant state of...
The decline and fall of the New York Yankees
It’s not just that the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009, although it can’t be repeated enough that the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009....
MLB free agency predictions - who will go where?
With over 200 names still facing free agency and less than one month to go before the start of the MLB season, we are in for an absolute flurry of moves. There are still dozens of big names on the table for any team looking to make a game-changing acquisition. Those teams that were right on the bord...
Baseball is back, but the DH is everywhere, and that’s awful
There’s only one bad thing about the MLB lockout being over: The game is changing forever....
A youth baseball coach accidentally ripped apart Mike Trout’s swing
Over the weekend, former Chicago White Sox hitting strategist Matt Lisle tweeted out a video of his “friends’ son” taking BP. ...
IDIOT OF THE YEAR #8: Rob Manfred, who got everything wrong
Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR festivities! Nos. 50 through 11 are available for your enjoyment here. And our top 10 thus far:...