mlb Page 98 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Red Sox Have Won The AL East
The race is over. After a four-game sweep of the Yankees, capped off by a comeback against Aroldis Chapman and the vaunted Yankees bullpen, the Red Sox now have a 9.5-game lead, the largest division lead in baseball. They are 79-34, and on pace for 113 wins, which would be the best record in franchi...
Mike Scioscia Describes Report Of His Impending Departure From The Angels As "Poppycock"
Mike Scioscia has been manager of the Angels for 19 years, long enough to have been around before they were the Los Angeles Angels, before they were even the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Their current condition—a middling, forgotten team criminally wasting two of the most exciting players in all o...
Carloz Gomez Has More Fun Than Anyone
Carlos Gomez is having a rotten season, overall. He’s batting just .220, and his OPS sits at the always alarming .666 mark. The batting average is the worst of his career; the OPS is his lowest mark since 2010. But he does lead the majors in one useful statistic: Gomez and Brandon Nimmo have each be...
Shohei Ohtani Still Has That Fearsome Tater-Mashing Power
Angels phenom Shohei Ohtani missed most of June following the bullcrap UCL injury that ended the pitching part of his season after just nine starts. Ohtani was batting .289 with a .907 OPS when the Angels shut him down, and in 71 plate appearances since his return on July 3 his batting average and s...
A's Rookie Produces Walk-Off Win With First Career Hit In First Career Game
This is the kind of thing that happens for a team having one of those magical runs: the two huge clutch plays that delivered a 1-0 A’s win in extras Friday night were made by a rookie, making his first career appearance in the majors, and his first career knock was a walk-off game-winner. Break up t...
Rick Ankiel, Who Could And Then Couldn't, Might<em></em>
We should begin with the important stuff. There is a league that plays at Louisville Slugger Stadium, in Louisville, over the course of a brief eight-team tournament held at the height of summer. It’s called the Bluegrass World Series, and seven of the teams in its field have rosters made up of coll...
Maikel Franco Punctuates Walk-Off Dinger With Incredible Bat Flip
Every bat flip demonstrates a certain amount of contempt for the bat. Something like who needs this piece of shit or get this fucking thing out of my face, odd and rude attitudes to have towards a tool that just helped you do one of the coolest things in baseball, which is sock a mighty dinger....
That Might've Been Sonny Gray's Last Bad Start For A While
Sonny Gray, last year’s big trade deadline acquisition, has had a poor 2018, with an ERA of 5.56 and a role in the rotation that’s gone unthreatened only because the Yankees haven’t had any other real options. That last part changed this week when New York went out and got Lance Lynn, who hasn’t bee...
Only The Shit-Ass Mets And Shit-Ass José Reyes Could Make Baseball History Like This
To the surprise of nobody, the Mets followed up yesterday’s 25-4 loss to the Nationals by losing yet again. They couldn’t capitalize on the late momentum they generated last night or the Nationals’ fluid roster, and they wound up losing 5-3. It was not for lack of effort on José Reyes’s part, howeve...
Whatever Caleb Joseph Was Doing On This Home-Plate Play, It Didn't Work<em></em>
With two outs in the top of the fifth in today’s game between the last-place Orioles and the Yankees, Baltimore catcher Caleb Joseph tried to score from first base on a double, but he was out by a mile. As Yankees catcher Austin Romine squared up in front of the plate to make the tag, Joseph went to...
The Nationals Are Cracking Down On Their "Iffy Clubhouse Culture"
Nationals reliever Brandon Kintzler was one of the team’s few trade deadline casualties on Tuesday, traded to the Cubs for a Single-A prospect, a relative pittance given the all-star set-up man’s production this season. The Nats were in a weird, hybrid, buyer/seller mode, one that necessitated consi...
Shawn Kelley's Glove-Throwing Meltdown Will Cost Him His Spot On The Nationals
Last night, Nationals reliever Shawn Kelley gave up a completely meaningless ninth-inning home run to Austin Jackson, which turned the Nationals 23-run win into a 21-run win. Maybe he was mad about dulling Washington’s historic margin, or maybe he was just angry that he was in the game at all, but K...
Adam Jones Wouldn't Let The Orioles Trade Him, Is Awesome
It’s no secret that the Baltimore Orioles are, uh, resetting. Over the past month they’ve had the big Manny Machado deal, and yesterday the team traded three more veterans: Jonathan Schoop, Darren O’Day, and Kevin Gausman. It might have been four, but Adam Jones, the longtime face of the club, decid...
Behold A Cursed Phrase: "The Worst Loss In Mets History"
It is obviously not so simple as this, but when a team, especially one as desperately crummy as the New York Mets, decides to stand pat at the trade deadline, the front office (or perhaps ownership, in this instance) is saying to fans and to the players, “This is fine.” Is this fine? Mere hours afte...
Rangers Pitcher Jake Diekman Got Traded And Only Needed A Cart Ride To His New Team
Relief pitcher Jake Diekman got traded from the Rangers to the Diamondbacks at the deadline, and the timing could not have been better. Thanks to the miracle of interleague play, the D-backs were halfway through a home series with Texas when they traded for Diekman, so all that the reliever had to d...
The Roberto Osuna Case Has Turned Baseball Reporters Into Psychics And Sermonists
Here is what’s known publicly about what happened on May 8 in Toronto. That day, according to Toronto police, Roberto Osuna, 23, of Toronto was charged with assault. News reports added that the victim was a woman. Police said Osuna was scheduled to appear in court in June. Since then, the only upda...
Aw, You Guys, The Pirates Are Actually Trying To Get Better
The Pittsburgh Pirates, a “small-market” MLB team whose owner prefers hoarding his money to spending it on good players, actually made a deal today to improve the team. I know, right?! These scrappy little tightwad nobodies acquired an honest-to-gosh name people have heard of in Rays starter Chris A...
So This Is What It's Come To: A Brad Ziegler MLB Trade Deadline Liveblog
The MLB non-waiver trade deadline is at 4 p.m. today, and there’s only one prize on every team’s mind: Marlins reliever Brad Ziegler. Where will he end up? Follow along with the number one liveblog dedicated solely to the Unicorn, which is apparently his nickname according to Baseball Reference. And...
Teen At Padres Game Embarrassed By Delighted Red Dad And His Dancing Lady Companion
Parents love to embarrass their kids in public. I think it’s the parental way of avenging all those the times when the kids worried them sick by missing curfew or something. Anyhow, at the Padres game on Monday night, this kid’s dad and mom (stepmom? Older sister? Teacher???) were relentless. ...
