baseball Page 47 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Down-and-backs never hurt anybody
In high school, I skipped my ninth-grade team and started on JV. It’s still – top to bottom – the most talented team I’ve ever played on. We were even better than the varsity team. But, in one game we were just going through the motions. At halftime, our coach made us do cardio in the locker room – ...

MLB teams want a 2021 Platinum Glove winner to change positions?
Stop the free agent talk! The lockout has commenced and with it there will be no more free agent signings until MLB and the MLB Players’ Association agree on a new CBA for the next five years. That being said, there are still several big-name free agents who remained unsigned through the Wednesday C...

MLB lockout: So what?
There are plenty of reasons to ignore Buster Olney, not only for the duration of the lockout, but beyond. ESPN’s baseball version of Adam Schefter is routinely a water carrier for some of the worst the sport has to offer, from caping for Zack Scott, to floating “ideas” that he then accidentally reve...

Odds are, MLB has to get a handle on gambling revenue
Major League Baseball is now locking out its players, and given that it’s the offseason, there shouldn’t be much way to notice other than the sudden lack of hot stove activity. The league, though, has gone out of its way to remind everyone online, taking all player-related content off of MLB.com, ri...

Rob Manfred is fertilizer
I can’t say that Rob Manfred is bad at his job, at least not entirely. Because his job is to make sure that all 30 owners squeeze the sport for every last dollar possible, and he’s done that. It doesn’t really matter if he kills the league in the process, because his bosses don’t care. It’s simply a...

MLB secretly used two different types of baseballs last season, according to report
Can’t we go six months without a scandal in Major League Baseball? Just six months. That’s all I’m asking for....

Idiot of the Month: November’s most mind-blowing acts of stupidity
Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH! The year is almost over, mercifully. Here are some people who stood out in November for doing dumb things....

Rangers are spending big, Blue Jays are playing smart
We knew Hot Stove season was going to come earlier than usual, given the ongoing MLB CBA dispute, but holy smokes! This got nuts real quick! Over the weekend, a myriad of moves were made involving the biggest free agents on the market. ...

Javy Báez, the most interesting man in baseball
I wouldn’t pretend to not have a personal connection to Javier Báez, who is signing with the Detroit Tigers at some point today for six years, $140 million. He’s always been the most interesting player to watch first on the Cubs, back when I cared a lot, and in baseball overall. And it was both good...

Max Scherzer is the big name (so far) in this week’s frenzy, but does it mean anything?
No, I’m not asking, “Does it mean anything for the Mets?” Because as we all know, everything is meaningless to the Mets. Look for Scherzer to head for an MRI in June and discover that there are dozens of tiny, ambulatory gummy bears living in there. This is the Mets, after all. ...

Corporate names on sports venues are dumb, we have suggestions
Sick of corporate names on your sports stadiums and arenas? So are we. So, let’s fix it, and get the names of all these places right, once and for all. ...

Why is it still so hard to find coverage of women’s sports?
Sedona Prince started it this year with an uncomfortable truth. The Oregon basketball player, famous for a TikTok video earlier this year that pointed out the discrepancy between the workout palace provided at the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the meager triangle of dumbbells for the women, h...

Here are some more billionaire tears for you to drink up
The temptation is to label the Mets’ offseason a disaster so far, except that it doesn’t seem so out of character for the Mets. It’s kind of just a Mets offseason. Maybe it’s accentuated and louder than a normal Mets offseason, but the foundation is still very much the Queens baseball club. A clown ...

Don’t pull a muscle patting the Rays on the back
There’s obviously been a rush in the aftermath of the Tampa Bay Rays signing Wander Franco to a deal that could be worth as much as $223 million and keep him in Tampa for 12 years, according to reports. The 20-year-old star will get a serious upgrade on what he would have made the next three years w...

You’ve got a lot of balls, MLB
As long as you’ve known baseball, it’s been four balls for a walk, but it wasn’t always that way. Today is the 133rd anniversary of the Joint Rules Committee taking away 20% of pitchers’ margin for error, reducing the number of balls for a walk from five to four....

LaMonte Wade Jr. got an MVP vote? Explain yourself
Come here. Sit down. Let’s have a talk. I’m not angry, just disappointed....

Cleveland Guardians’ launch has a bad sign and bad signs
The Guardians are here and ready to start selling their merchandise, marking a new era of baseball in Cleveland, moving beyond the 73 years without winning a World Series, the decades of intransigence over Chief Wahoo, the......

The NL MVP has most likely already been revealed
I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper to win the National League MVP this year. I didn’t think his hot streak would last as long as it did, and I certainly didn’t think Harper’s incredible OPS figure halfway through August would be enough to overcome his home run and RBI number...

The Rays keep on winning due to their financial situation, not despite it
The most fascinating aspect about the Tampa Bay Rays competing and winning in the AL East — Kevin Cash repeated as AL manager of the year, and Randy Arozarena took home rookie of the year honors this week — is how they do it not despite their financial shortfalls but almost with the help of them....

How much do innings matter?
Nothing gets pretty inane arguments going like individual baseball awards. I can’t claim to be above them, but I also have never claimed to be a functioning member of society. To a lot of people, and they aren’t completely wrong to think so, who we give a Cy Young or MVP award to is a statement on w...