Conor Glassey explains the difference between what writers do and what scouts do:

Yes, we often will write about players we’ve seen and we’ll tell you how fast a pitcher was throwing, what kind of offspeed pitches he throws, or how fast an outfielder got from home to first. That’s not scouting, that’s just reporting. Anybody can sit at a game and hold a radar gun or click a stopwatch.

However, there’s a growing number of people online who think the opposite. It’s baffling to me ...

Like Darby Crash says, “See you all at Aoki-Dog!”

There is no scientific way to pick an all-underrated team. Well, I suppose there is some formula we could come up, but that would be about as much fun as watching Brendan Ryan take batting practice.

RF—Norichika Aoki, Brewers
He came over from Japan last year and quietly hit .288/.355/433, lashed out 51 extra-base his, stole 30 bases and played a very good right field. He also made appearances as Bernie Brewer and at least four times raced as ...

Q: How meaningful was it when Jim Carrey screamed “I’m Jose Canseco!” in Liar Liar?

He could have screamed many other names when he thought of playing baseball with his kid.

A: hes a big fan of mine plus we had a threesome together

Not sure I’d agree with any of these but Len Kasper contributed so, ummm, baseball-related.

With Baseball’s Opening Day around the corner, Jim and Greg team up with Len Kasper, TV voice of the Chicago Cubs, to pay homage to their version of a Grand Slam. We all know how this works in baseball (though sports-phobe Jim DeRogatis is still getting the hang of the rules). A batter hits a home run with bases loaded, sending four players to home plate. In music, Jim and Greg define a grand slam as ...

cheap eats in cincy. mets getting scr8wed. this is news?

I put those concerns to Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. Sheriff Joe is a noisy supporter of SB 1070 and stricter deportation policies. It is a strange fate of the times that Sheriff Joe has jurisdiction over the Cactus League territory.

“Nobody’s going to go around stopping them at a restaurant, asking for their ID,” Arpaio says.

He pauses and adds, “Unless there’s some other reason to do that.”

Sheriff Joe is a Red Sox fan. Since he was raised outside ...

“You have no idea how important it was to bring in some of these guys,” closer J.J. Putz said, “especially a guy like Hinske.”

Hinske, 35, has never been a .300 hitter in the major leagues. He’s never belted 25 or more home runs in a season, either. But it’s all the intangibles he offers that makes him just as valuable as a superstar.

“Having those kinds of guys is huge,” Hinske said. “It doesn’t have to be one person. It doesn’t have to be an everyday player. It just ...

Major League Baseball 2K13 is an offensively recycled product and an embarrassment to sports video games. In my five years as Kotaku’s sports writer, I’ve spent a good deal of time in comments defending the genre, and those who make its games, from the worn-out slur that annual sports titles are nothing but reskinned roster updates. Yet that is exactly what MLB 2K13 is, and its existence is forever an argumentative trump card to any advocacy I can make for sports…
[...]
Major League Baseball ...

TAMPA, Fla.—The Yankees have made a “significant offer” to Robinson Cano, according to general manager Brian Cashman, who is hoping to lock the All-Star second baseman into a contract extension before he reaches free agency.

Cashman confirmed on Thursday that an offer has been presented to Cano and agent Scott Boras. There have been negotiations between the two sides in recent weeks, but Cashman declined to comment further on the state of the talks.

Gravity had to be weaker to make dinosaurs nimble

Neil Degrasse Tyson, he ain’t.

the Arizona Diamondbacks knew of Didi Gregorius’ elbow problem, and they had no trouble trading for him even with that knowledge.

There were initial reports that the Diamondbacks did not do a proper physical or proper medical background check on Gregorius.  That is simply not the case.  Kevin Towers, the DBacks GM, said the team knew that Gregorius had hurt his elbow preparing for the World Baseball Classic.  Gregorius was doing so in December when Arizona acquired him.  They knew.

some people…claim the ex-Brave used his baseball reputation to trick them out of as much as $1,000 each by falsely promising he could win early release for their loved one in state prison.

Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5

620 career steals… and counting!

“Last year, we scored more runs than in the previous year. It’s not all how many runs you score. In 2011, we were very good and efficient at winning close ballgames. Last year, we weren’t. If you look at statistics, high-leverage situations we were not good. Late and close we were not good. Yet we improved ourselves with runners in scoring position. 2007 was the same way, we had a negative run differential (and still won 90 games). That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for ...

Our very own Dag Nabbit (of BTF/THT fame) was in New York to film a segment evaluating managers for a MLB Network show.  They ran the segment on Clubhouse Confidential today.

Villalona had been charged with the September 2009 murder of 25-year-old Mario Felix de Jesus Velete in the Dominican Republic at a bar in La Romana, where Villalona is from. Villalona eventually settled with de Jesus Velete’s family, reportedly for around $139,000. A prosecutor was planning to move forward with the case, but the charges were dropped.

Still waiting for Cooperstown, Tim Raines can say he’s a Hall of Famer.

The former Montreal Expos outfielder was selected for induction Thursday into the Canadian Baseball of Fame. Also included in the class of 2013 are former outfielders George Bell and Rob Ducey as well as former announcer Tom Cheek and longtime minor league owner Nat Bailey.

Can’t stop the Rock.

Enrique Soto, one of baseball’s most prominent trainers in the Dominican Republic for the last two decades, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of charges of sexually assaulting two boys that were part of his academy 10 years ago, according to a report that first aired Monday night in the Dominican Republic on Noticias Sin.

Better late than never.

We are OK with Kirk Gibson hitting one of the most famous home runs ever on one steroid (cortisone), but we slam the Hall of Fame door on the face of everybody else who might have used the anabolic kind. Granted, cortisone is not a banned performance enhancer, but it certainly enhanced Gibson’s performance, which wouldn’t have been possible without it. Lost in the shouting of “Cheater!” and “Fraud!” from a pill-popping America is how often athletes have to go through the pharmacy ...

My opinion on the deal is right in line with the general consensus: The Diamondbacks didn’t get enough. Which, in so many ways, is incredible to me. After close to 2 1/2 years of on-again/off-again trade discussions involving Upton, this is the deal they settle on? After saying time and again that they’re only going to trade Upton if/when the right package comes along, this is the one they deem the right one?

*This whole off-season seems like a huge overreaction, something Towers said in ...

Guerrero has been one of Cuba’s best players the last few years, hitting .338/.408/.641 in 2009, .343/.414/.583 in 2010 and .310/.400/.599 in 2011. Between the three seasons, he delivered 60 homers in 886 at-bats.

He sat out the 2012 season due to a reported lack of motivation after being passed over for the national team, but still seems like a very interesting talent.

Former major league pitcher Masumi Kuwata has spoken out against corporal punishment in sports following the suicide of a Japanese high school student who endured repeated beatings by his basketball coach.

Good for Kuwata.

While police officers on the scene say the house had a musty smell of urine and fecal material, all of the utility players appear to have been well-fed and cared for. Donald Leius, director of the Major League Players Association, a non-profit group dedicated to finding homes for players, is not surprised. “We could always count on Dayton to help. Finding a home for all our players can be difficult, but Dayton specialized in the hard cases, the ones nobody else wanted. Whenever we would get a ...

But as we saw in reactions to the Bauer trade, a GM’s reputation is the absolute epitome of, as Janet Jackson (or Eddie Murphy, depending on taste) put it: “What have you done for me lately?” That the Diamondbacks came within a squib of the National League Championship Series last year, while spending only more than the Pirates and Padres in the league, has apparently all been forgotten. Instead, Towers has often been dismissed as “lucky” at best, and incompetent by many. Let’s see if the past ...

Every night when he got ready to go to bed, Hawkeye baseball player Trevor Kenyon usually left his TV on the Big Ten Network. One night, he decided to fall asleep to FX.

When he returned to his room after brushing his teeth, he discovered his TV had been changed to BTN. Kenyon turned the TV off and put the remote on the floor next to his bed. When he rolled over, he discovered the remote next to him on the pillow. After that, Kenyon turned the TV back on to BTN and let “Tim” watch sports ...

How can you go wrong with that combo?