June 11th marks the 75th anniversary of the first no-hitter legendary Cincinnati Reds pitcher Johnny Vander Meer threw in 1938. His second no-hitter just four days later marked the only time that a major league pitcher has dealt back-to-back no-hitters in consecutive starts. The feat will likely never be matched and is virtually impossible to top, but as a can’t-miss prospect during his era, Vander Meer almost failed to realize his potential and make history.
One of the great aberrations this year is that the Tigers have 15 losses in quality starts. Think about that. This is a team with one of the best offenses in baseball. As of Friday, they held a 2½-game lead over the Indians. If they had won, say, five of those games, they’d have a 7½-game lead. [...]
Gregg Clifton, a sports law attorney and longtime player agent, thinks that while Tony Bosch may have a credibility issue that will certainly be challenged in appeals by players who may ...
22. Harrison Musgrave (Phillies, 991st overall)
Sounds like: presidential historian, tenured Dartmouth professor, MSNBC contributor. Unfulfilled in his marriage, but there’s value in keeping up appearances.
This BaseballThinkFactory link is about baseball. And John Hughes films. And stuff.
For the first time since 1999, two baseball teams will be celebrating an Old-Timers Day (OTD). For the last 14 years, the Yankees alone have spent the time and money to the honor their elders. This year, the Dodgers will be joining them, with a game to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers beating the Yankees in the 1963 World Series. Their opponent will be a select group of old-timer Yankee vets. [...]
Since then, Old-Timer games have withered away, with the last non-Yankee OTD ...
“I partly blame it on Velcro,” said Scully, now in his 63d year in the booth, referring to the advent of batting gloves and players’ tendency to adjust them unceasingly during at-bats. (While it’s unclear who was first to use them, Ken Harrelson is widely credited with popularizing them in the 1960s.)
“In the old days,” Scully said, “there was no nonsense, no fussing.” [...]
There is one thing that seems to have been effective, and could be effective again. Rewind to 2007, to ...
Right-hander Brandon McCarthy, who needed emergency surgery after being struck on the head by a line drive last season, suffered a seizure last week.
The Diamondbacks pitcher said Saturday he’s fine now and is hopeful it won’t push back his recovery from shoulder inflammation.
McCarthy was at a restaurant in north Phoenix with his wife, Amanda, on Monday night when the incident occurred.After he slumped over in a booth, Amanda climbed across, pushed the table away and called for help.
The Mets have optioned Ike Davis, Robert Carson, and Mike Baxter to Triple-A Las Vegas, quite possibly the biggest in-season shakeup of the team’s roster since Sandy Alderson took over as general manager.
Davis is, of course, the biggest name of the three, as he’s been with the Mets since he was recalled from the minors early in the 2010 season. For the second straight year, though, he’s struggled mightily at the plate. In 207 plate appearances this year, he hit just .161/.242/.258, one of the ...
There is a certain puzzlement to the MLB Draft, more in the format of the early portion of the draft, than in the backgrounds of the top players. Anyone who wants to can get more information on the top draft choices than ever before, through the herculean efforts of ESPN.com, MLB.com and the pioneer of draft coverage, Baseball America.
Now that there’s a limit for total signing bonuses leveled on each team, the Jonathan Mayos of the baseball world are producing mock drafts for the first 40,50 ...
Former Braves star, famous for 18-month extramarital affair with a Hooters waitress which produced a son, shows incredible lack of sensitivity and shocking grasp of basic English language skills in wildly racist Tweet
What is it about the Atlanta Braves? Don’t they do sensitivity training down there? We all remember John Rocker, but, now Chipper Jones has thrown his stetson firmly into the ‘outrageously racist’ ring with an unbelievably immature, ...
Not too many guys finally make the Show at age 31, after 10 years in the minors. And even fewer of those guys have an Ivy League degree they could’ve used to get a “real” job. I knew Ed in college, and he’s a good guy, and this kind of perserverence is worth a hat-tip.
Informed by the video board of Bantz’s baptismal at-bat Saturday, the Safeco Field crowd greeted him with a standing ovation that almost certainly set a baseball record for Longest Applause Given to an Obscure Minor Leaguer.
“It brought chills to my body,” said the catcher, whose longtime fantasy of a big league debut never broached the possibility he would be embraced by a standing ovation.
“I really didn’t know what to do,” Bantz said. “I remember ...
This was supposed to be the year for the Kansas City Royals, the climax of all those of futile seasons, subsequent high draft pick selections, and constant rebuilding. In a perfect world the images of James Shields, Wade Davis, Ervin Santana and Jeremy Guthrie donning Kansas City uniforms would never exist.
After all, just two seasons prior to beginning the year with the four veteran right-handers in the rotation, ...
R. Budd Selig: Baseball people have said, ‘Why bother, no one cares.’ ‘You look foolish’.
As his team of investigators continues to vigilantly sift through evidence and testimony from a lowlife south Florida drug dealer — evidence that could bring down two of the game’s biggest stars, even though they haven’t officially tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs — there are people all around the professional sports scene asking: Has Bud Selig gone completely mad?
The other day from Harold Reynolds…“Every time I look up…Rick Ankiel is getting a hit for the Mets!”
After Rick Ankiel went hitless in four at-bats and struck out three times in Saturday’s 20-inning game off the bench, upping his futility streak to 2-for-his-last-35, the Mets designated the outfielder for assignment and will promote Kirk Nieuwenhuis from Triple-A Las Vegas.
Nieuwenhuis has eight homers in 16 games with the 51s since May 22, although overall he is hitting only .232 with 40 ...
Whisper leaks: It’s about not being confident every day of the month.
Robin Ventura says he has no plans to abandon ship as his team struggles to win games.
The Sox salvaged a 4-1 victory Saturday, but have dropped 10 of their last 12.
“For one reason or another, there is a whisper that because it is going the way it is, I am not going to come back,” Ventura said before the game. “That is the furthest thing from the truth. For me, I’m in it for as long as I’m in it, and then you go from ...
The Arizona Diamondbacks selected Arizona State’s Cory Hahn, paralyzed from mid-chest down during a head-first slide in February 2011, in the 34th round of the major league draft Saturday.
Hahn has continued as a student coach at ASU since his accident.
Pettitte allowed three hits over 7 1/3 innings to earn his 250th career victory, leading the Yankees to a 3-1 win over the Seattle Mariners. The 47th pitcher in major league history to reach that milestone, he will turn 41 on June 15. But what happened just as the game ended meant even more to him. His first-born son, Josh Pettitte, a right-hand pitcher for Deer Park (Texas) High School, was drafted by the Yankees in the 37th round in the Major League Baseball draft.
. . . ...
Roughly two months and 60 aimless games after they entered the season as World Series favorites, the brightest hope for the Washington Nationals on Friday was the fact that they had been rained out for a second consecutive game.
Since this site has already mocked up the most awesome ballpark and most awesome hitter, it seemed only natural to attempt to create the theoretical man that would be Major League Baseball’s best pitcher.
But given the deceptive nature of pitching mechanics and how difficult it is to isolate the specific physical tools that make great pitchers great, it feels better to provide our Frankenpitchers with the nastiest possible four-pitch arsenal than to assign them one guy’s shoulder, one ...
Dietrich said he had just finished up with an appearance at the MLB Fan Cave and was headed to the subway when his agent, David Meter, nudged him: “Hey, D, that’s Daniel-Day Lewis on the corner.”
...As Dietrich recalled this morning, “We look and he’s talking to a young kid, who was his son. We stood there and we waited. He handed his son some money. His son went one way, he went the other. He started walking towards us.
A man barreled over his son trying to catch Kyle Seager’s historic grand slam ball at Wednesday’s Mariners game.
“He was crying because he was got hurt, he fell down the steps,” said Zac Wilch, who was at the game with his little league team. Wilch caught the whole thing. He picked up the ball and handed it to the boy.
After saying he “cannot stand” the New York Yankees in a pre-draft video, Yankees first-round pick Ian Clarkin used his first comments to the New York media to say he was sorry.
I really wonder if players play better for a team they grew up rooting for or worse for a team they grew up rooting against. It seems like there could be a psychological factor there.
Because the easiest way to obtain a young star is to do so high in the draft. But tomorrow — for the 20th straight year — the Yankees will not have a pick in the top half of the first round of the MLB draft. In fact, in the past two decades the highest the Yankees have picked is 17th. Usually, it is in the 20s, sometimes in the 30s and in two extreme cases not until the 51st and 71st selections (with that 71st pick they took current Browns quarterback Brandon Weeden in 2002 as the ...
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Pinch-runner Skip Schumaker scored on the second wild pitch by Anthony Varvaro in the 10th inning, giving the Los Angeles Dodgers a 2-1 victory over the Atlanta Braves on Friday night.
Ramon Hernandez started the rally with a one-out single, took second on the first wild pitch and advanced to third on a single by Luis Cruz.
Varvaro (3-1) then bounced another wild pitch to Juan Uribe, allowing Schumaker to score. Dodgers rookie Yasiel Puig was on-deck, but he wasn’t needed ...
By the time the dust settled, Kennedy had thrown an alarming total of 50 pitches in the inning — the second-highest single-inning total in the majors this year, and the highest by a Diamondback since Doug Davis threw 44 in an inning on June 10, 2009 — long before Gibson was manager. Asked about his starter after the game, Gibson told MLB.com:
“We need around 100 [pitches] from him, no matter what…
But the same advice worked so well for Doc Gooden!
How different would Mariano Rivera’s career have been if baseball’s all-time saves leader had mastered what Mel Stottlemyre was teaching in the spring of 1996?
In his first year as Joe Torre’s pitching coach, Stottlemyre was doing his job when he tried to add off-speed pitches to Rivera’s explosive fastball.
“We didn’t know what we had but the fastball, and we wanted to work on a curveball and changeup,’’ Stottlemyre said ...
While Apel’s story is surely one to watch moving forward, 16th-overall pick, J.P. Crawford is compelling as well.
Crawford, who ranked 19th on MLB.com’s Top 100 Draft Prospects list, is the cousin of the Dodgers outfielder Carl Crawford, so you know multi-tooled dopeness is in the genes.
He’s also a rare “black” shortstop, considered by many experts to be the best middle infielder in the draft and only one of three taken in the first 20 picks.
As another famous Wally once said…“Look, don’t get sloppy on me. I might just slug you one.”
Wally Backman no longer is a reclamation project or the subject of a baseball rubbernecking endeavor. As manager of the Las Vegas 51s, baseball’s most challenging Triple-A affiliate, he’s an accomplished baseball man in his fourth year back as a Mets employee.
He has won back his full resume.
“I think I’ve served my time,” Backman told The Post yesterday, before his club took on Tacoma at ...
