Major League Baseball will not implement an international draft for 2014 and may not revisit the subject for another three years, temporarily allaying fears of those worried one would destroy the vibrant baseball culture in Latin American countries, sources told Yahoo! Sports on Friday.
The league and the MLB Players Association are expected to announce Friday they did not reach an agreement and plan to table the idea of an international draft for the rest of the current collective-bargaining ...
Endgame: Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.
The level of local goodwill that Josh Beckett built with his historic 2007 postseason faded over time, and all but disappeared in the 2011 chicken-and-beer fiasco. And there’s no doubt there are plenty of people—a local talk-show host, most notably—reveling in his 0-5, 5.91 start for the Dodgers.
But only the most heartless among us can be happy with the shocking news, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, that ...
So much for that planned Fay Vincent/Pete Rose Happy Hour Event.
We hear this congratulatory phrase—the post-steroid era—being thrown about to explain lower ERAs and fewer home runs. How do you react when you hear that term? Do you think it is accurate? Has the war been won, at least in baseball, or merely a battle?
I do not believe there can be an end to the “steroid era.” The problem will be with all athletics permanently because there is so much money at stake that cheating will always be ...
But you must also recognize that Teixeira and Youkilis are mere Band-Aids, hardly sufficient to close all the wounds from which the Yankees are currently bleeding.
After all, they can only play first and third. The Yankees are are still getting precious little production out of their shortstop, their catcher and both corner outfield spots.
And the pitching, which has been the glue that has been holding this ragtag collection together, might be starting to come apart at the seams.
The Washington baseball club has purchased land adjoining the right field fence on the local ball grounds and will enlarge the garden because of the large number of home runs made in that part of the field. Three circuit clouts were features of yesterday’s game and a couple of these were over the right field fence.
It worked. Griffith Stadium became a notoriously difficult place to hit home runs.
Dusty Baker, not so much. (quickly heads over to chemicalland21.com for product updates)
It is some kind of oddity or irony or sabermetric injustice that they are providing this OBP assault in the first one-third of a lineup drawn up nightly by the man oft-associated with being anti-OBP. But Dusty Baker, who once famously made the observation that “clogging up the bases isn’t that great to me,” will tell you he’s not so much anti-OBP as he is anti-OBP obsession. OBP, he said, means nothing if ...
Yeah, but if was Crisissy Magazine, it would be a different story.
It was Victoria Day in Canada and the Toronto Blue Jays were hosting the Rays of Tampa Bay. The word “hosting,” however, hardly applied to the treatment that one Yunel Escobar, the Rays shortstop, received, who was lustfully booed each time he came to the plate. When he homered in the 9th inning, he was booed again for employing his signature gesture as he crossed home plate—stretching his arms out to indicate the ...
And here I thought FOX was supposed to be a family type thingee…
If anyone can can sympathize with the plight of Dodgers’ manager Don Mattingly, it’s his counterpart from 35 miles down the freeway, Angels leader Mike Scioscia.
“Nobody ever said it was going to be easy managing in the big leagues, especially in Los Angeles,” said Scioscia, who’s been the target of media and fan criticism after missing the playoffs for the past three years and getting off to rought starts the last two. “I’m ...
Hideki Matsui will sign a one-day, minor-league contract on July 28 in order to retire as a Yankee, the team announced on Thursday afternoon. Matsui, the 2009 World Series MVP, will be honored in a ceremony that day at Yankee Stadium.
The date was picked because it is the 55th home game for the Yankees this season. Matsui wore No. 55 during his seven seasons in pinstripes. He hit 140 homers during that time.
Carl Pavano’s hopes for a return to baseball have been stalled until at least next year as he continues to recover from a serious injury that required removal of his spleen, his agent, Dave Pepe, said Thursday.
“Carl will not be physically able to play this year as he recovers from his spleen removal and the complications that followed,’’ Pepe said via text. “His hope is that he can give it a try next year.’‘
Pavano, 37, suffered severe bleeding and internal injuries when he ...
A few weeks ago, umpire Angel Hernandez blew a call on an Adam Rosales home run despite having the opportunity to review it on a replay monitor. At the time it was reported that umpires who review home run calls do so with the same pictures the fans see on TV, using large full resolution HD broadcast monitors made by Panasonic and similar to those commonly used in TV production trucks.
It’s not clear if that was the case at Progressive ...
With their bullpen depleted by season-ending elbow injuries to left-handers Jonny Venters and Eric O’Flaherty and taxed after covering seven innings behind Kris Medlen Wednesday night, the Braves have called on left-handed prospect Alex Wood.
Wood, the Braves second-round pick last year out of the University of Georgia, has been recalled from Double-A Mississippi and is expected to join the Braves’ bullpen Thursday in Atlanta.
The Kansas City Royals have hired George Brett as their new hitting coach, the club announced Thursday.
Previous hitting coaches Jack Maloof and Andre David were reassigned to the minor leagues while Pedro Grifol will become a special assignment coach alongside Brett with the big-league club.
Wednesday, my colleague Danny Knobler wrote that manager Ned Yost’s job isn’t safe in the long-run, but it isn’t in immediate jeopardy. With that in mind and knowing how much Royals hitters have ...
The factory makes uniforms for every major leaguer, from likely Hall of Famers such as Albert Pujols to minor league call-ups like former IronPigs hurler Tyler Cloyd, as well as high-end replicas worn by fans everywhere.
Now a labor dispute that has caught the attention of the Major League Baseball Players Association threatens to disrupt that supply. The textile workers’ three-year contract will expire Friday night. And Pennsylvania Joint Board Workers United, Service Employees ...
So with the stipulation that someone or someones will likely step forward and give the Yankees enough hitting to support a strong rotation and ridiculous bullpen, here are your betting odds for just who that will be over the next few months.
Some random guy currently hitting .180 for your favorite team, 2-1: Roger Bernadina? Chris Heisey? Jesus Guzman? Whatever, it’s totally going to happen, and it’s going to be annoying.
Ichiro Suzuki, 10-1: It should concern the Yankees ...
It’s time for the Yankees Replacements to be replaced. Even Lyle Overbay, who has played tremendously in a fill-in role for Mark Teixeira at first base, understands this cold fact of baseball life.
The Replacements have run their course, and last night’s 9-4 stomping by the Mets at Yankee Stadium was more proof. The Mets have won all three Subway Series games. It was the Yankees’ fourth straight loss.
CHICAGO, May 30.—Baseball, with its incentive for exercise, will prevent the youth of America from becoming effeminate if war is abolished, declared Elmer E. Rogers, in a Memorial day address at Senn High school, when he pleaded for universal peace and urged general disarmament.
“Baseball, our national pastime, will afford the exercise and skill to counteract any loss of virility both in players and fans,” said Rogers. “I would observe that in any country where ...
Arthur Koehler will testify that Daugherty indeed has a knot in his head.
I KIDNAPPED THE LINDBERGH BABY. Actually, I wrote that a 3-hole hitter should drive in runs. Seems an obvious statement. Harmless, you know? Not to the metrics gurus. I’m not getting into this, except to say it’s starting to get amusing. For suggesting RBIs are, you know, good, I am e-bombed by the SABR types… Apparently, I’m ignorant and lazy. I know nothing about baseball. Certainly not compared to them.
Long-time baseball writer Jon Heyman riled up A’s players and fans with a tweet that was critical of the Oakland Coliseum.
Said Heyman’s tweet: “A shame the a’s and giants have to play these games at the coliseum while ATandT sits empty. #shame”
A’s reliever Sean Doolittle wasted little time in responding via Twitter, writing: “I can see why you don’t like it. We have a strict No High Horse policy at O.Co.”
...Heyman, who writes for cbssports.com, backtracked ...
University of Illinois trustees have agreed to a deal in which New York Yankees star Curtis Granderson will pay for most of a new baseball stadium at his alma mater, the University of Illinois-Chicago. Trustees voted Wednesday to name the new stadium after Granderson, who announced in February that he will donate $5 million to the project. The total cost is projected to be $7 million. The open-air, brick-and-stone stadium will seat 1,200 and is expected to open in 2015. The plan calls for using ...
El Paso, Texas, the second-largest U.S. city without a professional sports team, is borrowing $53 million with yields at record lows as it joins municipalities nationwide betting that stadiums will rejuvenate downtowns. [...] The Tucson team moving to El Paso sold 3,000 tickets per game last year, the lowest attendance in the 16-team Pacific Coast League. El Paso’s team will do better, said Mike Feder, general manager of the Tucson Padres. “They’ve never had Triple A baseball, their ...
So what do the Mets have in Duda, both today and in the future? Why has Duda been given carte blanche to play every day when other players are a single bad performance away from being glued to the bench by Collins?
Ooh, I know—a free nightly nine-inning rendition of “Rosie O’Donnell on Ice” in left field.
After being traded to the Indians, Bauer produced a rap song that seemed to address his critics (like Miguel Montero), though he denied that was the case. This time around, he created a song about his team, and it was full of positive sentiment.
The folks at Indians fan site Wahoos on First reached out to Bauer over Twitter and asked him to produce the opening song for their podcast. Bauer came through for them with a solid song.
The only person associated with the Royals to cheer for this summer.
A recent transplant to St. Louis, Hoffmann visited a new Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, which has an award for people in their UFO Club who drink 200 different beers from the menu.
The first person to complete the task receives a commemorative plate with their name on it to be placed in the establishment’s “Ring of Honor.”
Only Hoffman planned a twist.
The engraving would say Don Denkinger, whose name still evokes ...
“There is just no reward here (for us) to try and hit home runs,” Maloof said. “We try to stay down on the ball, be more line-drive oriented, and do more situational hitting at least through the first two or three rounds (at home) here. That’s why I’m not overly concerned because I think we’ll lead the league in fewest home runs again this year. We don’t have a 40-homer guy in the middle of the lineup.
I’ll be honest. I had no idea he was once a catcher until I heard it recently on an ESPN baseball podcast. Heck, I had no idea he was ever young. He’s one of those guys who seems like he was 35 at birth.
