majorleaguebaseballrivalries Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
If expanding MLB playoffs was about keeping people interested, why does no one care?
The concepts of “parity” and “fairness” in sports were exposed as fig leaves long ago. The idea that fans would care more, i.e. buy more tickets and watch more games on TV, if more teams had a chance at playoff berths and championships was never as important to owners. What was important was not bei...
Tony La Russa was every bit the human gallstone you thought he was
It could end up being the pacemaker that saved Chicago, going down in history along with other objects we revere like a lamp next to a cow, disco records, and all the dirt we moved to reverse the flow of the Chicago River to send our shit to St. Louis (where it belongs and they deserve) to name a fe...
Mets fans know better than to smile
As soon as Mets fans let their guards down and enjoyed Timmy Trumpet a little too much, we all knew what was coming next. The team’s lead in the NL East has been dwindling for going on three weeks, and now after losing three straight — two to the Nats and one to the Pirates — New York and Atlanta ar...
What the new MLB schedule could mean for MLB’s future
Yesterday, Major League Baseball released its 2023 schedule. The biggest news to come from the release is that for the first time ever, all 30 teams will play one another in a single season....
Don’t be impressed by the Yankees, they are MLB’s Green Bay Packers until further notice
The New York Yankees blew out another opponent, and won another game on Sunday....
Tony La Russa got the Matt Nagy treatment on Saturday, but at least he’ll only hear it at his home ballpark
Fortunately, for Tony La Russa, the chants for his firing won’t follow him everywhere around Chicago. Even if the Chicago Bulls were playing in the NBA Finals right now, there likely wouldn’t be enough White Sox fans at the game for the chant to ring out enough for a viral moment. Also, La Russa’s k...
No deGrom, no Scherzer, no problem
The New York Mets have the 10th-best team OPS in 2022 and they have scored the second-most runs per game. Most of that offensive success has come thanks to slugger Pete Alonso as well as resurgent seasons from utility man Jeff McNeil and shortstop Francisco Lindor (plus, Luis Guillorme to a lesser e...
Mets fans are going to need some really strong anti-depressants to keep up the optimism
Pete Alonso’s two-run walkoff homer in the 10th inning Thursday improved the New York Mets’ record to 26-14, which is good for the second-most wins in baseball and a six-and-a-half-game lead in the NL East. They have a +44 run differential, put up the fourth most runs in the MLB, and boast the leagu...
The Giants are suffering a power outage
Fresh off a franchise-best 107-win season, nobody expected the San Francisco Giants to repeat as NL West champs in 2022. The departures of key players such as Buster Posey, Kris Bryant, and Kevin Gausman were going to be difficult to overcome. The Giants managed to replace Gausman by acquiring Carlo...
We’re not going to get rid of the Mets, are we?
Usually, you can dismiss hot April starts as nothing more than cute. Whether it’s real or not, if you have the motivation, you can always lean on baseball “needing to play out” because of the length of the season. Sure, it’s harder to dismiss a hot start from the Dodgers, but why even try? Almost an...
Are the Yankees frauds? Will the Angels come down to earth?
Saying “it’s only April” is out, because it’s been May for a few days now. We’re about 15 percent of the way through baseball’s regular season, give or take depending on how many games each team has played, and while that’s not a big sample size, the teams that are in first place now have those wins...
Brian Cashman making dumb excuses for team’s failures
The best way to keep a job you’re in jeopardy of losing is to insist that the failures aren’t your fault. Occasionally, it’s true. You could’ve been in the World Series had the Houston Astros not sounded the alarm for fastballs in the ALCS. That’s misleading because there’s a decades worth of slacki...
The White Sox are getting to their proper level of cantankerous
The term “White Sox” in baseball basically means anger. Or at least a heavy pinch of it to go with however else it might be defined. There is always an undercurrent of seething with the White Sox and their fans. It’s part of their identity. The White Sox are a symbol of their part of Chicago, the So...
The decline and fall of the New York Yankees
It’s not just that the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009, although it can’t be repeated enough that the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009....
Even a lockout can't prevent the Cubs from being greedy and stupid
It’s still worth it, every so often, to consider how impressive it is that the Ricketts family pissed all over the glow of being the ownership group that brought the first World Series title to the Northside of Chicago in 100 years to being universally hated in less than five....
This doesn’t feel like the first time the Dodgers and Giants have met in the playoffs
Tonight will be the first time in MLB history we see the Dodgers and Giants compete in the postseason. For such a storied rivalry, it’s crazy to think that in the year 2021, there’s still something new for these franchises to experience with one another. Sure, there are some discrepancies like the 1...
What <i>are</i> the Yankees now?
I suppose one of the things that makes me feel old, one of the many things, is how I would perceive the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry versus someone who is 30 or under. I lived long enough in the era of the Yankees pissing all over the Sox to still have some base inkling toward that whenever these two lin...
This year’s Wild-Card Game matchups are the best ever
“Get your popcorn ready,” ...
Javy Báez has quietly turned his season around with the Mets
It’s easy to forget that the Mets have existed recently. The biggest news coming out of Queens since they’ve fallen out of playoff contention have been Francisco Lindor and Javy Báez’s “thumbs down” debacle, Jacob deGrom getting hurt more often than Mr. Glass from Invincible, and a TikTok trend invo...
We are witnessing a multi-team choke for the ages
When August began, the Mets were in first place in the National League East, which was the fifth-best record in the Senior Circuit. The Padres were right ahead of them, holding the second wild-card position as the Giants and Dodgers battled at the top of the West. And the Reds, though seven and a ha...