Twins second baseman Brian Dozier was a few inches short of a dinger in his first at-bat against the Tigers Wednesday afternoon, but pulled off a much more unique feat instead. Dozier’s long drive to center field wedged itself perfectly between two of the outfield wall panels, suspending the ball in the park and…
Lenny Dykstra has long since ceased to be a former baseball player with the Mets and Phillies. Now he’s just a semi-famous man who is occasionally in the news for something. Usually it’s not great. Whether it’s pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud, admitting a sexual harassment claim or allegedly trashing a hotel room,…
Shohei Ohtani doesn’t think he’s ready for the home run derby. “I don’t think I’m at that level yet,” he told reporters yesterday.
Trevor Bauer, the Indians pitcher who loves both funny numbers and casually suggesting conspiracy theories, wrote “BD 911” on the back of the pitching mound before the first pitch of his start against the Cubs. Here’s video of him carving with his cleats in the dirt, then appearing to admire his work.
Just a few days after the Atlanta Braves told José Bautista that he was too washed up to play third base for them and cut him loose, the once-great slugger has moved across the division to sign a one-year deal with the New York Mets. He’s not only on the active major league roster for their game tonight against the…
To scroll through photos of Rich Hill pitching is to see a man who appears to be in extreme pain while performing normal functions of his job. This could just be a Pitchface scenario—every pitcher’s got one, and while Hill looks anguished in the act of pitching, he’s not quite in R.A. Dickey territory. But while Rich…
Save for the almost-nightly Manny Machado dinger, things are going horrifically wrong in Baltimore. Any twisted soul who’s still keeping up with this team would be wise to hang onto whatever fleeting moments of joy roll around—like Andrew Cashner kicking this comebacker from White Sox second baseman Yolmer Sánchez off…
Nineteen-year-old Nationals outfielder Juan Soto became the youngest position player to start in the majors since 2012 tonight, and he immediately proved his worth. On the very first ball that he saw off Padres pitcher Robbie Erlin, Soto crushed a three-run oppo dinger 422 feet into left, earning a curtain call as the…
Two-way star Shohei Ohtani helped the Angels end a five-game losing streak with a 110-pitch outing against the Rays Sunday. At this point, Ohtani going for nine strikeouts in 7.2 innings and generally bewitching opposing hitters isn’t much of a surprise, since he’s paired masterful control with devastating velocity…
Odubel Herrera didn’t start opening day, but since then, he’s been on fire: He leads the National League in batting average, at .344, and is 10th in slugging. (Yes, genius manager/fedora wearer Gabe Kapler benched his best player, now a legit NL MVP candidate, for the first game of the season.) The Phillies are a…
I guess we’d better get used to this: On Sunday, Cardinals reliever Jordan Hicks threw five pitches to the Phillies’ scorching-hot Odubel Herrera during a ninth inning at-bat. They were all sinkers, clocking in respectively at 104, 105, 104, 105 and 103 mph. They were the five fastest pitches of the season, eclipsing…
Mike Trout’s greatness is all-encompassing and unrelenting. There are no holes to be poked in it, and no complaints to be made about how he chooses to deploy his skills every day. If you were, however, some kind of sick freak who believes that Trout could be doing more to help his team win, you might say that he…
The New Hampshire Fisher Cats entered the bottom of the seventh* inning Sunday down 5-3 to the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. The very brink of a loss! Whatever would they do? Whosoever could save them from these dire circumstances?
José Bautista’s unexpected and endlessly depressing stint as a third-baseman for the Atlanta Braves, kicked-off ominously with a one-year minor league contract in mid-April, has not produced the way anyone involved might’ve hoped: Bautista is hitting a putrid .143 with an alarming .593 OPS in 40 plate appearances this…
The Rays announced last week an extremely unusual, cosmic-brain plan for the immediate future of their pitching rotation: rather than the traditional approach of deploying a starting pitcher to work through the opposing lineup a few times before yielding to the bullpen, manager Kevin Cash decided to play matchup…
Reds reliever Amir Garrett punctuated an inning-ending strikeout of Javier Baez in the seventh inning Saturday with a triumphant shout, loud enough to be audible over the television broadcast, followed by an aggressive stare-down of his vanquished foe. Unwritten rules and athlete egos being what they are, this did not…
Last month Miami radio host Andy Slater joined Marlins Man on an investigative trip to the British Virgin Islands, where they learned that the corporate address of the Miami Marlins was a post office box, listed in order to establish the Marlins as a foreign company, for the most cynical of reasons. This was an…
The dreaded Cardinals chased Phillies ace Jake Arrieta after just three innings in Friday night’s gloomy, rain-delayed tilt in St. Louis. The score was then 4-0; by the time reliever Drew Hutchison finished the sixth inning it was 9-2; the game finally became a laugher when Yacksel Rios allowed another three runs in…
This morning, a student at Houston-area Santa Fe High School murdered 10 people with a shotgun and a .38 caliber pistol. This is the 22nd time this year that someone with a gun has either killed or injured someone on a high school campus. Astros manager A.J. Hinch was asked about the deadly attack ahead of tonight’s…
On Tuesday, just after Mariners second baseman Robinson Cano was suspended 80 games for failing a drug test, Pirates outfielder Gregory Polanco started to receive concerned texts from his friends and family in the Dominican Republic. A fake ESPN tweet began to circulate online, suggesting that Polanco would also be…
