layoffs Page 131 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Yusmeiro Petit Was Essentially The Giants' Second Starter Last Night
Yusmeiro Petit has a weird position on the Giants. He was passable as a spot starter, but couldn't earn a place in a strong San Francisco rotation. The Giants don't need him to close out games, either, and Petit is capable of pitching longer than only an inning. But last night, in the longest MLB ...

Bryce Harper Killed A Baseball Into The Sky
Seventy-two years to the day from the first man-made object being sent into space, Bryce Harper mashed one hell of a tater....

Why The Cardinals Suck
By now you know the Cardinals and their fans and their city are terrible. But, you would be justified in asking, just why are they all so terrible?...


Orioles Win Game 2 By Thiiiiis Much
This here is Baltimore Orioles shortstop J.J. Hardy eluding Tigers catcher Alex Avila—by, hell, an inch?—to give the Orioles a 7-6 lead in the bottom of the eighth. Hardy was the third run to score on Delmon Young's pinch-hit, bases-clearing double. ...

This Josh Hamilton At-Bat Was The Saddest Thing
OK, so I knew that Josh Hamilton wasn't exactly a star anymore—a quick glance at his Baseball Reference page tells me that—but I didn't realize things had gotten this bad....

The Royals Stole The Game In Right Field
The Royals continue to play to type. A team that's never going to slug, Kansas City has to win with speed, defense, and timely hitting, or it's not going to win at all. There was no repeat base-stealing extravaganza in last night's 3-2 Game 1 win over the Angels, but the timely hitting showed up...

Fans Of The TV Show Castle Angry At Sports
In the bottom of the eighth inning of the first game of the ALDS series between the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers, the Orioles offense went gangbusters and sent 14 players to the plate as well as prompting three pitching changes. This took a long time, so the Los Angeles Angels-Kansas City Ro...

Chart: Royals-A's Was Awesome; Giants-Pirates Was Shit
Everyone knows the AL wild-card game between Oakland and Kansas City was much more exciting than San Francisco's blowout win over Pittsburgh in the NL game. Fangraphs' Jeff Sullivan has provided all of us with a stark visual representation of that fact by charting the win-expectancy fluctuations fro...

The Royals Will Never Stop Running
The Royals had seven different players steal a base on Tuesday night. That's a playoff record, and an incredible figure considering that most teams would have become gun-shy after a disastrous failed double-steal in the first and a four run deficit after six innings. The Royals are not most teams....


Madison Bumgarner Pitches Gem As Giants Advance In Playoffs
En route to winning the 2010 World Series, San Francisco Giants play-by-play announcer Duane Kuiper coined a slogan to describe the team's penchant for winning tight games: "Giants Baseball...Torture." In 2012 they went down 0–2 in the NLDS and 1–3 in the NLCS before beating Detroit to win their s...

Brandon Crawford's Grand Slam Silences Pittsburgh Crowd
Supporting their team to the fullest, Pittsburgh Pirates fans have been very loud the entire NL Wild Card play-in game. So loud that they almost managed to cause a second inning drop in the outfield when Giants Joe Panik and Hunter Pence collided while catching a pop fly. That's what makes this cl...


The Pirates Were One Of The Unluckiest (And Best) Teams In Baseball
Pittsburgh hosts its second straight National League play-in game tonight. The Pirates will host the Giants, with both teams finishing the regular season at at 88-74—which doesn't mean they were necessarily equal this year. While the one-game format renders a lot of season-long trends obsolete, the ...

Royals Fans Got Loud Enough To Help Their Team Win
If you are a Royals fan who attended last night's crazy-ass wild card game in Kansas City, you should go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back. Because according to A's outfielder Sam Fuld, you played a direct role in the Royals winning that game....


Royals Defeat A's, Ned Yost In Epic Play-In Game
Sacrifice bunts are rarely the correct call in baseball, so of course Ned Yost's Kansas City Royals laid down four of them in Tuesday night's wild card play-in game against the Oakland A's. Despite Jon Lester displaying uncharacteristic shakiness and the Royals' offense performing uncharacterist...

MLB.com Runs "Royals Lose" Game Story
Live on MLB.com in the minutes immediately following the Royals' incredible extra-inning win was a version of the game story written in the ninth inning. In this version, which you can read below, the A's hung on to win and advance. ...

Chart: How Sabermetric MLB Forecasts Stacked Up Against Vegas
From Skidmore College statistics professor Michael Lopez comes the handy chart you see above, plotting the 2014 win totals of all 30 MLB teams against preseason predictions from Vegas and what Lopez calls his "Statsheads Prediction."...