the-mlb Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
What does the MLB have against birds?
The Randy Johnson bird hunting club is the fastest-growing inner circle in Major League Baseball. For the second time in a span of seven days, a bird was brutally killed on the field of a major league ballpark. Last week it was Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen taking out a bird mid-flight wit...
Meet the Mets…they stink
The thing about being Steve Cohen, and being the New York Mets, is that it has to work. Otherwise, it’s less likely that other owners are going to feel the need to compete with him. The MLB expanded playoffs kills a lot of that urge anyway, but if the Mets are running away with the NL East year afte...
Chris Sale is cooked
The Boston Red Sox are going to have to have a sale at the MLB trade deadline, which could include a pitcher (Chris) with that surname....
A Major League Baseball team in Utah is a terrible idea
At a time in which it appears that Major League Baseball is seemingly doing all it can to keep African-Americans from being on Big League rosters, a group in Salt Lake, Utah is throwing its hat in the ring to land a franchise in the coming years. Remember this the next time MLB Commissioner Rob Manf...
Is the Cubs hot start a mirage? Will the Astros remain under .500? Let's examine
It’s about 20 games into the MLB regular season. It’s a small sample size, but no longer so small that we can completely dismiss it. Just like every year, there are some teams that are over-performing and underperforming expectations, but which of these surprising records are actually telling the tr...
Sports claims just a little more of its soul
Though I’m from the Midwest, the Oakland Athletics were always a fascination for me. It started well before the Moneyball era. When I first became a baseball fan was the rise of the Mark McGwire-Jose Canseco A’s. Even beyond McGwire and Canseco, when the A’s would be on the national game…they just l...
The NHL Playoffs Attention Meter
It’s that time again. When the loudest and most obnoxious guy in the bar tells you it’s the best time in sports, the NHL Playoffs. There will be a few tweets coming across your timeline that say something that has some combination of puking and snorting coke together, and they’re likely about watchi...
Javier Báez is already in some kind of form, but it’s not ‘midseason’
We’re 12 games into the MLB season, so no good team should panic, and no bad team is too far gone — one would think. The Detroit Tigers were projected to be especially awful, but you’d hope to at least get through *checks calendar* April 14 without the manager having to intervene like A.J. Hinch did...
MLB’s rule changes have made baseball more like itself
One week into the MLB season, the rule changes are by and large a huge success. It seems that fans and players alike overwhelmingly like the changes. ...
Opening Day is a reminder of how little Major League Baseball thinks of African-Americans
Hot dogs. Peanuts. Cracker Jacks. Racism. It can only mean one thing — Opening Day of a new Major League Baseball season is here. And today, of all days, is a great example of how things haven’t changed and remain the same, or gotten worse. ...
How every MLB division will shake out
Welcome to Opening Day! It was a long, cold winter, but Spring is, at last, officially upon us. Sure, the ivy at Wrigley might be sparse and brown, and your favorite broadcaster might be wearing Gore-Tex for the next few weeks, but baseball is back. As Bart Giamatti once said, “It breaks your heart....
The fans Rob Manfred is trying to service are prudes
This year’s MLB Opening Day feels different than recent iterations because the media doesn’t have (most of) its usual talking points to complain about. The rule changes are going to shorten the games, discontinue the dialog about shifts, and provide baserunners with throw pillows to slide into. Yay!...
You can’t script baseball, but sometimes it can seem like it
What they tell you about baseball a lot, is that because everyone gets a turn, you can’t guarantee that your best player will get to the plate with the game on the line. Sometimes it’s your second baseman with no concept of the strike zone who wets himself at the sight of any fastball over 96 MPH. S...
Meaningless baseball continues to thrill millions
I think maybe what I might take most out of the World Baseball Classic is its insistence on portraying the entire scope of the best moments, what makes baseball the most artful game. ...
Here are some MLB prop bets to look into
As the MLB season approaches nearer each day, the time to look forward and make predictions is upon us. Making predictions is tough though. There is no direction involved. With each player comes a myriad of statistics to look at, and trying to find one specific figure to follow and make a prediction...
Winners and losers of the MLB offseason
With the MLB season around the corner, most of the offseason moves we saw over the last few months seem like they happened eons ago. One of the most coveted young players in baseball, Bryan Reynolds, requesting a trade would’ve made waves in any other offseason, but even as rumors surrounding his fu...
Read an excerpt from MLB pitcher Joe Kelly's new book: A Damn Near Perfect Game — Reclaiming America's Pastime
White Sox pitcher Joe Kelly’s book, “A Damn Near Perfect Game: Reclaiming America’s Pastime,” delves into many of the issues frustrating fans of major league baseball, and is on sale tomorrow wherever you get your books. Here’s an excerpt:...
The Milwaukee Brewers are why small-market baseball is dying
How much money is $750,000 to a baseball team, hm? According to Spotrac, the Milwaukee Brewers have already determined the 2023 salaries for 20 of their players. All of them will be earning more than $1 million. Given that MLB rosters can consist of 26 people, we can say that, at most, six Brewers w...
Nothing ever improves when MLB takes control
We stand here today on the precipice of one of the largest downfalls in broadcasting. Diamond Sports Group, the company that owns all of Bally’s regional sports networks, announced Wednesday that it would be skipping its $140 million payment for February. ...
Bally Sports possibly plunges baseball toward caring about what happens on the field
MLB’s biggest problem in the last few years is that too many teams have not really cared about whether their teams win or lose. They’ll say all the right things, and maybe make just enough signings or trades to fool their idiotic portion of their fanbases into buying tickets or for a new Carlton Fis...