batting Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Did Rogers Centre kill Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s power?
Whenever the post-mortem is compiled on this Toronto Blue Jays season — they’re still very much in the hunt for a wildcard spot — it won’t be hard to find culprits for how they didn’t quite manage to take the next step from a good team to a power that most in Ontario were expecting (feels like a the...
Luis Arraez is going to put up an eye-popping batting average, but how do we equate it?
Let’s bust some dreams right at the top. Luis Arraez is not going to bat .400. He’s not even there now, and will cross into the second half of the season today at .396, which is still incredible. Very few players even get halfway through the season anywhere near the beyond-mythical mark, and Arraez ...
The Baltimore Orioles are on the highwire
One of the bigger stories of MLB so far this season is the unrelenting and pretty comedic dominance of the AL East. The last-place team, the Toronto Blue Jays, have the exact same record as the first-place team in the AL Central, the Minnesota Twins. Every team is at least three games over .500. The...
The baseball may be Flubber again
The baseball season not even being quite a week old is probably not the best time to draw conclusions. That’s not going to stop us though, as within these walls is where logic goes to die. But if you’ve been paying even cursory attention so far, you might have noticed some boxcar numbers being tosse...
College ump made a call so bad, he's been indefinitely suspended
Somewhere Fred VanVleet is smiling and cursing happily after a subpar official received his just due. The University of New Orleans defeated Mississippi Valley State 7-3 in a college baseball game on Friday. As the college basketball season is heating up, millions of people still found time to view ...
It's Day 2 of spring training games and the pitch clock is already wreaking havoc
The new rules set for the upcoming MLB season are sure to change baseball forever, and the most impactful change will undoubtedly be the introduction of the pitch clock. Twenty seconds maximum between each pitch. Games are flying by, and with pace-of-play being an enormous talking point surrounding ...
Umpires will definitely handle being challenged well
Automatic strike zones, or ABS, or Robo-umps, have been the Valhalla for a certain section of baseball fans (one I happen to be a part of). Watching Angel Hernandez or Doug Eddings try and guess where the strike zone is today and then acting like the world’s biggest ass-boil when anyone points out t...
Trea Turner to the Phillies is fine... for now at least
Two-time All-Star Trea Turner will be a Philadelphia Phillie for the next 11 years. He will be 30 in 2023, meaning the deal will end when Turner turns 40. This long-term contract with Turner near the end of his prime has some people worried. The two biggest concerns I’ve seen given to this situation...
I could play this New York Times umpire game for hours
I love umpires. I don’t love to hate them like other baseball fans do, though. I’ve always leaned in the direction of leniency. I know that officiating in any sport is difficult, thankless, and downright hazardous to your health in some situations. Umpires get it the worst though, perhaps because th...
Houston, we have a champagne problem
Champagne isn’t the only thing the Houston Astros are keeping on ice. ...
Geez, what happened to Juan Soto?
All of sunny San Diego rejoiced on Aug. 2 when the Washington Nationals sent their 23-year-old superstar Juan Soto to the Padres. A month and a half later, Padres fans are showing their receipts to the Nats, asking for take-backsies. ...
This kid is making sports fans everywhere proud
If you’ve ever gambled on sports, you know the feeling. You spend all your time prepping, finding the perfect line, and studying the trends in order to maximize the money you can win. You get through the first three legs of your four-game parlay totally unscathed and all that’s left is the final gam...
How rare is the HR cycle?
Since 1900, a player has hit three home runs in an MLB game 624 times. Only 16 times has a player hit four. Nobody has ever hit five....
And it's one, two, three, four strikes you're out for Yordan Alvarez
We don’t want to alarm anyone, but it appears home plate umpire Jim Wolf gave Houston’s Yordan Alvarez four strikes in today’s matchup with Rich Hill and the Boston Red Sox. See for yourself....
The new baseball killed Joey Gallo
Joey Gallo has been one of baseball’s weirdest hitters for his entire career. He was something of the poster boy for the new approach to hitting, which was only developed as a counter to the devil magic that more and more pitchers were equipped with. Lift the ball, drive it, and the easiest way to d...
For right now, there’s nothing Aaron Judge can do
Aaron Judge is a big dude, in every meaning of the word. He’s tall, strong, got lots of money and influence, and he even plays in the Big Apple. However, being a mammoth of a man comes with its downfalls: short door frames are a thing, getting into cars becomes much more of a hassle, it becomes much...
Baseballs really went from sticky to slippery in less than a year
Today is the one-year anniversary of MLB’s ban on sticky substances. In that time, we’ve seen a massive decrease in spin rate, a few suspensions, plus a striptease or two from Max Scherzer and company. Even most fans seemed to like the change. Yes sir, everything was going according to plan for Rob ...
Y’see, this is the problem
Most of the discussion about baseball this year has been about the baseball itself, or the lack of runs being scored. Rob Mains at BP expertly broke down just how big the offense problem in MLB these days, when you pull it out from under the shield of extra innings/Manfred Man. These discussions lea...
Robo umps can’t get here soon enough as unhinged humans remind sports fans that baseball still has worst officials
The MLB’s umpires are really milking their last few minutes of relevance, and in the process aren’t doing themselves any favors in the argument against robot umpires taking their jobs. No, Triple A isn’t testing out a robo-ump at the moment, but maybe they should be because what happened to Madison ...
The baseball is deflated again
I’m cribbing heavily from Joe Sheehan’s newsletter again, but in his latest missive he points out that things keep getting better and better for pitchers. Thanks to technology and greater study, they discover new pitches or tweaks to existing ones as they keep throwing harder and harder. At the same...