American League Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
‘Sticky stuff’ enforcement theater captivates baseball world as press buries real issues
Major League Baseball’s crackdown on sticky stuff began on Monday, and the program already is a sweeping success....
MLB’s past is still evolving, and not just by rightly adding Negro League stats
Baseball-Reference is the gold standard for record keeping in a game whose numbers are its lifeblood. The site that Sean Forman built has supplanted decades of encyclopedias, carving out a niche on the Internet as the most authoritative source for statistics to connect baseball’s past to its present...
The biggest snubs so far in first round of MLB All-Star voting
Yesterday, MLB released its first All-Star voting update after the polls first opened on June 3. However, phase one of All-Star voting does not finish until June 27. When that day comes, only the top-three vote-getters (nine for outfield) at each position will advance to phase two of voting which wi...
Billy Hamilton (yes, him) is finally a fan favorite, as he was always meant to be
Major League Baseball is chock full of fun, meme-able characters that everybody loves to mock — but loves to root for even more. Take Bartolo Colon. He’d always been a solid player (even earned a couple of All-Star appearances in his final years), but was never one of the dominant arms in the game. ...
MLB’s first entry into NFT craze – Lou Gehrig's speech – doesn’t pass the smell test
Add “non-fungible” to the list of words that define 2021....
Connor McDavid and Mike Trout: one and the same
Two guys walk into a bar. They’re both dressed to the nines with glamorous accolades and praise, yet they hang their heads low. They sit a few seats apart and order the same drink. The two get to talking....
What does Major League Baseball have against the Rays?
I swear, the Tampa Bay Rays are the Rodney Dangerfield of Major League Baseball — they get no respect. And I don’t get it. I just don’t. What do the Rays have to do in order to earn some praise for what they’ve done? Win an AL pennant? Nope, not good enough. MLB gave the Rays just an 18.6 percent ch...
La Russa is still managing like it’s 1989
The Yankees and White Sox combined for 26 strikeouts in a nine-inning game. In 2012, that’s not so surprising. What is a bit of a stunner is that Aroldis Chapman didn’t get any of those K’s. Carlos Rodón fanned 13, Jordan Montgomery punched out 11, and Michael Kopech added two whiffs out of the Chic...
When I'd rather watch 'Schitt's Creek' than ANOTHER no-hitter, you know baseball has a problem
Last night, I was scrolling Twitter as the dulcet tones of Schitt’s Creek provided a backdrop to my evening. In short, I was doing nothing. As the late night baseball game out west between the Seattle Mariners and and the Detroit Tigers wore on, I started seeing familiar tweets in my timeline — we w...
Why are the Twins such a bad team in non-9-inning games? Like, 0-11 bad
The Minnesota Twins probably weren’t expecting to be where they currently sit heading into this season. Minnesota reached the playoffs in three of the last four seasons, and were looking to return once again in 2021 in the hopes of actually winning a playoff series for the first time since 2003. So ...
A long-awaited Matt Harvey return means a reminder of all the ‘what-ifs’
You were constantly reminded of what was, and led to pointlessly ponder what could’ve been. ...
Mellon Collie and The Minnesota Twins: At this rate a playoff collapse looks unlikely
It’s probably hard enough to be the Minnesota Twins under normal circumstances. Because no one outside of the Twin Cities wants to see you in the playoffs ever again. Some have even drafted measures to get you banned from the postseason forever. That’s what happens when you can’t manage to win a sin...
What it really means when white sportswriters talk about lack of hustle
The Yankees fell to 6-11 on Wednesday night with a 4-1 home loss to Atlanta. They got a grand total of five hits, and if not for Atlanta’s generosity in throwing away Tuesday night’s game, New York would be on a seven-game losing streak right now....
Everything is going great in the Bronx, except for the numbskull fans and very not good Yankees baseball
For everyone who’s ever said the Yankees are the worst, today is your day....
How well did<em> MLB: The Show</em> choose cover athletes? We rank all 15 player performances that season
One month later than usual, MLB: The Show is finally releasing their 2021 installment. Although the game itself doesn’t fully come out until Tuesday, April 20, today begins the early access release period, meaning if you pre-ordered the game, you’re probably playing it right now....
Anthony Edwards not knowing A-Rod is proof that MLB has failed with young Black people
I have an honest question. ...
Alex Rodriguez and ESPN’s <em>Sunday Night Baseball</em> are Can’t Stomach TV
Shohei Ohtani’s remarkable mound/plate performance last night helped mask what otherwise was a turgid, if not torturous, ESPN broadcast. The network’s Sunday Night Baseball show has been a bane to fans for pretty much its entire existence, spawning the one site that’s basically responsible for all t...
On Opening Day, the signs of how much we’ve lost were everywhere
After getting the coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday, I was pretty out of it on Thursday, which meant that Opening Day was a different experience than usual. I woke up in the morning, had breakfast and walked the dog, then went right back to sleep, setting an alarm to be able to watch the first inning...
Miguel Cabrera hit the first home run of the season in the snow and thought it was a double
Miguel Cabrera now has 488 career home runs (350 as a Tiger), and it’s possible that none were as unique as this....
Vlad, Fernando, Francisco and more: The players who’ll make this baseball season interesting
Every year we discuss how baseball’s become boring, how it could grow more enjoyable for younger fans, and how we long for legitimate progress of our national pastime. ...