baseball Page 97 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Hug Stephen Strasburg More. Continue Hugging Him.
Stephen Strasburg continued his great postseason run last night by throwing six solid innings in Game 2 of the World Series, during which he allowed just two earned runs and struck out seven. You know what that means, don’t you? He got a big hug for his troubles....
After Game 2 Pounding, The Astros Are Up To Their Necks In Doo Doo
The Astros are in big trouble. They lost Game 1 Tuesday night when the Nationals touched up the best pitcher in baseball for five runs, and came into Game 2 needing to scratch out some offense against a rolling Stephen Strasburg in order to salvage a split at home. They got off to a good start on th...
Patrick Corbin Was The Only Choice
Dave Martinez knew it. He knew it by the fourth, when the Astros worked Max Scherzer for 27 pitches, pushing his pitch count on the night to an unsustainable 96 through four, but also he knew it on Monday, when the Nationals manager declined to name a starting pitcher for Game 3 despite having a cle...
Nationals Make Gerrit Cole Look Maybe Not Quite Human, But At Least Humanoid
The combustible Nationals bullpen tried very hard to give this away, but in the end the five runs their hitters put up on terrifying buzzsaw Gerrit Cole held up, and the Nationals escaped Game 1 with a 5–4 victory to snatch away home-field advantage in the World Series.Cole looked very much like his...
Umpire Joe West Sues Retired Catcher Paul Lo Duca Over Bribery Allegations
Umpire Joe West has had his share—some would say more than his share—of failures. You would be well within your rights to describe him as unreliable, ornery, confrontational, or an occasional obnoxious textualist. He’s been all of those things! But one thing West will not hesitate to sue your ass ov...
A Modest Proposal For The World Series Baseballs
With the World Series upon us, and the magic of the Houston Colt .45s vs. the Montreal Expos preparing to unfold before our satanically red-rimmed eyes, we can sit back, forget the rest of the world its slowly advancing state of entropy and decay and ask ourselves the most existential of questions:...
The Astros' Defense Grew More Impressive By The Inning
Before Jose Altuve’s heroic swing sent the Astros to the World Series, left fielder Michael Brantley was thought to be the one who all but guaranteed the pennant for Houston. In the top of the seventh, the 32-year-old veteran made a ridiculous diving catch to stop an Aaron Hicks popup from plopping ...
Jose Altuve Sends Astros To World Series With Walk-Off Bomb Against Aroldis Chapman
The final inning of the ALCS was a dramatic one, as the Astros booked their tickets to the World Series with an emphatic walk-off dinger. After spotting Houston a three-run lead in the first inning and trailing for the entire game, the Yankees finally drew even in the top of the ninth when D.J. LeMa...
Report: MLB Proposal Would Wipe Out A Quarter Of All Minor League Affiliates
Major League Baseball is currently negotiating a new Professional Baseball Agreement (PBA) with Minor League Baseball, which operates as a sprawling feeder system and training pipeline for the big leagues. If MLB has their way, MiLB will undergo massive restructuring, including the possible eliminat...
CC Sabathia Has Thrown His Last Pitch, And Joe Girardi Could Barely Hold It Together
Just about everything that could go wrong has for the Yankees, down 3-1 in the ALCS after Thursday night’s 8-3 loss to the Astros in the Bronx. (Except, weirdly, they’re still outhitting Houston in the series—which is itself a sign that they’re leaving men on base and the Astros aren’t.) So it was o...
The Washington Nationals Are The Team Of Destiny, Until They're Not
For the entirety of their brief existence in the nation’s capital, the Washington Nationals have been too insignificant or too lousy or too unlucky or too self-defeating to hate. This is not to say that I haven’t figured out various ways to do it over the years, but also I am not without some intere...
What's Wrong With The Baseballs Is What's Wrong With Baseball
Something is definitely up. There is data, and it points in a specific direction, but also there are some long shadows and heavy circumstances and longstanding and well-founded suspicions in play as well. But we might as well start with the data....
Nationals Complete Sweep Of Cardinals, Nanny Nanny Boo Boo
The Washington Nationals completed their four-game NLCS sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals Tuesday night, 7–4, and advanced to the franchise’s first World Series. They did it with a seven-run first inning, and then mostly held on for dear life, but they had a bunch of help from the Cardinals themselve...
Theo Epstein Landlord-Tenant Lawsuit Pits Scorpion Infestation Against Home-Befouling Doggo
Cubs executive Theo Epstein is embroiled in a not-at-all-classic security deposit dispute with a landlord whose home in Paradise Valley, Arizona Epstein rented with his family during spring training in 2015. The landlord says Epstein’s small family dog was a prolific piss-monster; Epstein says the h...
This Is Just Some Delightful Baserunning From The Astros
The Houston Astros doubled their lead against the Yankees in the seventh inning of Game 3 this evening, not with the fancy-pants longballs that initially gave them a 2-0 advantage, but with some gritty, scrappy, heads-up baserunning that was unironically delightful to watch. Through just one hit and...
Juan Soto's Goof In Left Was High Comedy, But Marcell Ozuna's Mattered
For my money, the two best highlights of the Nationals’ 8–1 Game 3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, a result that makes the rest of this series almost a formality, were bloopers. One looked stupid and hilarious and mattered not at all; the other almost looked like a very cool catch, until it didn’t...
Return To Anger With Wally Backman
In retrospect, the decision to do a second Mets-centric episode of Let’s Remember Some Guys falls somewhere between a calculated risk and a flagrant taunt. We had tried this before, and the result involved me talking about some Mets getting in a fight at a Houston bar named Cooter’s Executive Games ...
Gary Sanchez's Bizarre 11th-Inning At-Bat Was Pure Postseason Chaos
When Gary Sanchez came to the plate in the top of the 11th for the Yankees, with the score tied at two and runners on first and second with two outs, it felt like a safe bet the slumping New York catcher was either going to smash a three-run shot or strike out horrifically against Astros reliever Jo...
Carlos Correa Left His Body After His Walk-Off Homer
Carlos Correa hadn’t gotten that many opportunities to celebrate this year. The Astros’ young shortstop, who struggled last season to build upon a fantastic 2017, missed over half of this season with a broken rib and then a back problem. And though he was a powerful hitter when he was healthy enough...
Report: Angels Employee Told Team Officials About Tyler Skaggs's Drug Use Well Before Pitcher's Death
A report from ESPN’s T.J. Quinn reveals that officials for the Los Angeles Angels were told about drug habits of pitcher Tyler Skaggs well before his death. ESPN’s sources were two unnamed individuals aware of what Eric Kay, the Angels’ director of communications, had told agents at the U.S. Drug En...