nola Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Willson Contreras is a Cardinal, and the Cubs let it happen
The St. Louis Cardinals found their replacement for now-retired catcher Yadier Molina, agreeing to terms with Willson Contreras on a five-year, $87 million deal. After refusing to move Contreras at the trade deadline, or pay him, the last remaining position player from the Chicago Cubs World Series ...
The Phillies don’t know when to settle
Dave Dombrowski and the Philadelphia Phillies apparently don’t understand the new atmosphere of baseball. The expanded playoffs mean, or were supposed to mean, that teams don’t have to go all out for 95-to-100 wins anymore. The Phightins are proof! 87 wins and a trip to the World Series!! You just h...
They say a good fastball is still the best pitch
It still amazes me how quickly a baseball playoff series, especially one of the seven-game variety, can pivot. ...
Dusty Baker is doing that thing again
The funny thing, no matter what Dusty Baker’s rep is, and will be, is that he’s gotten more looks at the postseason than many. While he’ll always wear the epic choke jobs of the Giants in 2002 and the Cubs in 2003 — fair or not — his time in D.C. and in Houston has shown a guy who has learned how pl...
World Series X-Factors: Who needs to step up for Houston Astros, Philadelphia Phillies to win the title?
The World Series kicks off tomorrow night between two teams with wildly different expectations heading into the postseason. On one hand, the Astros were the top seed in the American League. Houston reached the World Series in three of the last five seasons and reached the ALCS in all five. Everyone ...
Has Aaron Judge played his last game in pinstripes and a look at some notable 2023 MLB free agents
MLB wants everyone to focus on the World Series right now. The organization wants the baseball world’s focus on the matchup between Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander and Philadelphia Phillies slugger Bryce Harper; the Aaron Nola vs. Yordan Alvarez showdown; and the fact that it’s a 1-seed going ag...
MLB needs to explain why Juan Soto is a Gold Glove finalist
A few days ago, Major League Baseball announced its finalists for the Rawlings Gold Glove Awards....
The Yankees deserved this
“New York Yankees” and “inferiority complex” are two combinations of words that have probably never met in a sentence for over 100 years or so. This is the New York Yankees, the absolute biggest symbol of American exceptionalism, even when it’s a sport that no other place plays. They’re the Yankees,...
I can’t with this Juan Soto swing
If you spend too much time arguing about the macro, you miss out on the micro. And it is in the micro that the real enjoyment can be found in any sport. Whether it’s a silky drive to the hoop and layup, a cross-seam pass to set up a one-timer, a perfectly-timed tackle, the sort of things top-tier at...
Get good players, win good prizes
It obviously seems way too simple to distill the NLCS that kicks off tonight between the Phillies and Padres as two teams that just traded for or signed a bunch of good players. It’s a damning statement on where MLB is at the moment that this seems such a radical fucking idea. It’s the easiest thing...
With offense winning titles in other sports, playoff baseball is still about pitching
The Dodgers, Braves, and Yankees combined to win 311 regular season games over the course of the regular season, but the playoffs have been a beautiful disaster so far. Mid-’90s alternative rock references notwithstanding, all three clubs received first-round byes, and only New York isn’t on the bri...
Manny Machado is great, whether anyone bothers to notice or not
There’s been so much noise around the San Diego Padres for a few years now, it’s quite understandable that Manny Machado has sort of sunk under the radar. There has been a raft of buzz-worthy players acquired by the Padres since Machado in 2019. He didn’t win an MVP like his fellow prize of that par...
Good riddance, Yadi
While my baseball fandom was thrown in the trash by the Ricketts family, that doesn’t mean the fires of distaste and hatred burn any less. Our passions and love can ebb and flow, but the force of our animus for former rivals always remains strong. Maybe you’re a Red Sox fan out there that can never ...
MLB Wild Card Series predictions: Rays-Guardians, Mariners-Blue Jays, Phillies-Cardinals, Padres-Mets
The MLB playoffs begin today, and with that, eight teams will battle for the chance to compete against the Dodgers, Braves, Astros, and Yankees. Yikes! What an awful prize that is, am I right?...
Picking our MLB National League award winners
Yesterday, we gave you our picks for the American League awards. Today, we move to the Senior Circuit. While the National League didn’t have anyone hit 60 home runs or pitch and hit, it did have a multitude of strong, MVP-caliber performances. Aside from Sandy Alcantara most likely securing the Cy Y...
The ruthless efficiency of Sandy Alcantara
As the baseball season draws to a close today, one of the rites of this time is to look at numbers that pop off the screen. For most of the last month, that’s been Aaron Judge. Whether it’s the number of homers he hits — or more often, it’s simply the gap from him to the second-place homer total, wh...
If Aaron Judge were an Angel…
They still wouldn’t make the playoffs. Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waiter. ...
Week 2’s NFL MVP? That award goes to Kyler Murray
As tempting as it is to call Tua Tagovailoa the most valuable player of Week 2, he had help. Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle meep-meeped all over the Raiders, but he earned so much respect that this is the weekend everyone learned how to spell his last name. He’s now Mr. Tagovailoa. In Week 2, Micah P...
Sad Diego: Padres underperforming and underwhelming post-deadline
On paper, the San Diego Padres got better at the trade deadline. In reality, they’ve gotten worse — and are very quickly becoming the laughingstock of the MLB....