baseball Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
In a move that shocks no one, Kansas barely gets a slap on the wrist from the NCAA
Did anyone expect a different result? ...
Tuesday night should’ve been only celebratory for this Texas Rangers fan. It wasn’t
Last night should’ve been pure, unadulterated joy. I haven’t been shy when it comes to the Texas Rangers and writing about my favorite baseball team. It swept the 101-win Orioles and advanced to the American League Championship Series for the first time in a dozen years. I was a sophomore in college...
Michigan TV network fires sports director for Mel Tucker ‘analysis’ that read more like PR work
Last Thursday, sports reporter Audrey Dahlgren had a very bad day, by journalistic standards. After attorneys for Mel Tucker, the recently fired head football coach at Michigan State, released 98 pages worth of text messages sent by Brenda Tracy — an anti-rape advocate who filed a Title IX complaint...
Now comes the tricky part for the Orioles
It’s awfully easy, and too easy, to point at an up-and-coming team like the Rangers that spent a lot of money to augment the players they developed from within and say that’s the reason they clobbered an up-and-coming team like the Orioles that did the exact opposite, basically only adding the decre...
This is part of Clayton Kershaw's legacy, too
Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher of the 21st century. This much isn’t really in dispute. A career 2.48 ERA and 2.82 FIP over 16 years is unimpeachable. There’s three Cy Youngs to go with it, and an MVP in 2014 when he had a 1.77 ERA and a 0.857 WHIP, which is beyond stupid. He probably should hav...
The Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers can afford to gamble
A couple of early season behemoths in the NFL rolled the dice with house money Friday as the San Francisco 49ers’ defense got scarier with the addition of edge rusher Randy Gregory, and the Miami Dolphins’ offense folded Chase Claypool into a ridiculously talented group of skill players. The two tra...
MLB got what it deserves with its wild-card round
MLB and Rob Manfred don’t really have to care what happens in the wildcard round. Their only aim was to provide more playoff baseball, good or not, because its mere existence netted them more TV cash. So the fact that MLB will get no Game 3s, no interesting storylines, and barely any drama, followin...
It shouldn't be this funny to see a tennis player mistakenly hit an umpire in the face. But it is
I’m told tennis is up there with golf on the list of leisure activities that aren’t as calming as they’re intended to be. While any miscue during a round of 18 is technically an unforced error, they’re documented in tennis, and there is a cumulative effect as the slight screwups can build to a momen...
Tampa Bay Rays fans have plenty of reasons to take a WFH day — even during the playoffs
Call it an all-around epic fail. ...
The Tampa Bay Rays-Texas Rangers series winner will advance to the World Series
Here’s your de facto American League Championship Series. Sorry to those in Baltimore, your luck will run out despite being undervalued the entire season. Postseason baseball is a different juggernaut. The Toronto Blue Jays and Minnesota Twins just don’t have the firepower to keep up. And Houston co...
No one does goodbyes, or hellos, like baseball
The MLB playoffs start tomorrow, which still gives us a day to reflect on the season gone. MLB more and more would like its fans to focus on only October so they can demean, and hence pay less for, the regular season. But that’s not how the game works, it’s not how baseball fandom works, and there i...
VAR performs its coup de moron
Whether VAR is still in its teething stages, and this is season five so it’s really debatable whether or not it should still be having growing problems, it will never be able to escape its fatal flaw. And that is it is still administered by humans. So it’s still going to be susceptible to human erro...
And now we get to the question that has plagued society: Can the Minnesota Twins win a playoff game?
Saturday night completed the field for the MLB postseason, and then Sunday sorted out some seeding and matchups. And while most of the questions will be can Atlanta cap off one of the more dominating regular seasons we’ve seen, or Houston turn it on once again in October, or which start will Clayton...
Our national nightmare is over, the San Diego Padres won a game in extra innings
What gets to the heart of baseball, and to the heart of a baseball season, is that 162 games is supposed to be enough for any anomaly or bit of screwiness a long enough timeline to flatten out. Anyone can get hot, but no one can get unreasonably hot for 162 games and six months. Every team is going ...
This time the Cubs can't blame Billy Goat
Though I no longer belong to the Wrigleyville parish, it doesn’t mean I have any more patience for tired and overused narratives about the Cubs. I do not find “#Cubes” any more entertaining or pertinent than I did when I bled blue. Most, if not all, should have been washed away by the 2016 World Ser...
The Bears and White Sox are studies in how NOT to handle a PR crisis
It’s a rough time to be a fan of Chicago sports. ...
Someone should look into this agreement Justin Verlander has with Father Time
If you’ve watched enough Justin Verlander starts, there’s always a feeling he has one last card to play when he absolutely needs it. That mostly comes from his habit of keeping his fastball velocity just low enough to be a tease early in his starts, and then somewhere later when he really needs it h...
If you're going to crash and burn, crash and burn like the Reds
Almost every demise in a baseball season is slow (unless you’re the Pittsburgh Pirates–more on them later). When a team still has a shot at the postseason by September, every game means that team is chasing something. And that chase means that should they falter on Tuesday, by Wednesday’s first pitc...
Saluting Sean Doolittle, one of the good ones
There’s a fixation in sports media and society at large to focus on the negative. When you’re watching the nightly news, they’ll never lead with how a crossing guard helped hundreds of kids not get hit by a car. It’ll be about the accident up the street. And you can bet they’ll run the tape of somet...
MLB's final 10 days in the American League will be pure chaos
Entering the penultimate weekend of baseball’s regular season, so much is in flux. The calming part is the National League. Every division race is wrapped up and the Wild Card will become a matter of which pair of teams are the odd ones out between the Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago Cubs, Miami Marli...