Major League Baseball News and Rumors
Rule Change! Third-to-first fake pickoff is now officially a balkMark Townsend, yahoo.com Like a professional wrestler hitting his opponent with brass knuckles behind the referee‘s back, the surest way to draw an angry reaction from baseball fans is to break out the old fake-to-third, throw-to-first pickoff move. Of course, the difference is… |
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Greg Johns, MLB.com Michael Morse was flooded with memories Saturday as he set foot in Safeco Field for the first time since rejoining the club in a trade with the Nationals. |
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Greg Johns, MLB.com The weather was typical Northwest winter, but with the Safeco Field roof closed and an enthusiastic crowd, you could almost feel spring in the air at the opening day of Mariners FanFest. |
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Quinn Roberts, MLB.com Driving to Dodger Stadium on Saturday for the team's first FanFest of the year, Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier wasn't sure what to expect. What he found were droves of fans lined up for nearly a mile, waiting to get into the event. |
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A person familiar with the negotiations says pitcher Jhoulys Chacin and the Colorado Rockies have agreed to a two-year, $6.5 million contract. |
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The heavy-hitting Milwaukee Brewers offense is going to be missing a big bat when the season begins. |
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Pitcher Carlos Villanueva and the Chicago Cubs have completed a two-year, $10 million contract. |
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Associated Press, ESPN.com Nationals second baseman Danny Espinosa says he played with a torn rotator cuff in his left, non-throwing, shoulder late last season. |
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Sam Eifling, deadspin.com The gee whiz school of sports coverage has lost ground for years to the aw nuts crowd, largely because fans and media alike don't like playing the patsy to athletes' bogus lore. Lance was doping. Bobby Thomson stole signs. Manti was mourning a photograp… |
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Mike Fish and T.J. Quinn, ESPN.com Major League Baseball is investigating multiple wellness clinics in South Florida armed with the belief that the region stretching 50 miles south from Boca Raton to Miami is "ground zero" for performance-enhancing drugs still filtering into the game. |
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Joe Frisaro, MLB.com Giancarlo Stanton's mindset has been a prevailing topic surrounding the Marlins since they made a blockbuster trade with the Blue Jays on Nov. 19. |
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Jason Beck, MLB.com If not for the snow on the ground and the rock salt on the sidewalks Saturday at Comerica Park, it would've been hard to tell that baseball season is still more than two months away. Yet in some ways, TigerFest is more special than the season itself. |
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Rhett Bollinger, MLB.com Last season, Joe Mauer only caught 74 games while serving as designated hitter in 42 games and playing first base in 30 games. So Mauer's goal this season is catch more games, and general manager Terry Ryan says it's not out of the realm of possibility … |
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Jeff Seidel, MLB.com The Nats enter the 2013 season as the defending NL East champions and one of the best teams in the Major Leagues. Yet, one of the highlights of NatsFest, was the introduction of William Howard Taft as the fifth member of the nightly Presidents Race. |
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Andrew Simon, MLB.com One of Mets catcher Landon Powell's twin 5-month-old daughters died on Friday night following an extensive illness, the family announced on Saturday through its Facebook page. |
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Brent Morel told MLB.com at the end of November that his bothersome back, hampering him all of the 2012 season, felt as good as it had in more than one year thanks to his work at Sparta Performance/Science in California. |
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Since 1996, the White Sox have nine second-place finishes, four third-place finishes, three division titles and one historic World Series crown in 2005. |
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As far as internal left-handed-hitting help for the White Sox, don't overlook Jared Mitchell, the team's top pick in the 2009 First-Year Player Draft, who received rave reviews for where he was offensively coming out of instructional leagues. |
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New addition Mike Pelfrey made his first appearance at TwinsFest on Saturday, and said that he's expecting to enter Spring Training without any limitations. |
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Bill Ladson, MLB.com Nationals reliever Drew Storen didn't look or sound like an angry man on Saturday afternoon. He was having fun at Fanfest, and talked about how great it was to see so many fans at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. |
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Sam Eifling, deadspin.com Today the New York Times' Brian Stelter crunches the (preposterous) numbers and finds runaway sports-programming costs weighing down the cable bill of everyone in America, whether or not they give Shit One about sports. The phrase "impending $7 bil… |
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Will Bobby Valentine have a TV alliance with the Mets this season? The possibility exists. MLB sources say SportsNet New York brass has reached out to Valentine to discuss a possible studio role on Mets telecasts. |
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Associated Press, ESPN.com The Washington Nationals' newest racing president may have to drop a few pounds to be competitive. |
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Associated Press, ESPN.com Retired Chicago White Sox slugger Frank Thomas says he feels even better about his career after watching steroids-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens fail to gain entry to the Hall of Fame. |
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ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Stan Musial was remembered as a Hall of Famer on and off the field during a 2-hour funeral Mass. |
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Mark Townsend, yahoo.com When you’re a Major League Baseball player there's no doubt you hold some degree clout in your community. In Southfield, Mich., apparently that power extends all the way to excusing tardiness from school when local students get caught up at one of your … |
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Brian McTaggart, MLB.com Hundreds of fans, many wearing the Astros' new blue and orange colors, mingled with current, former and future Astros on Saturday during the annual FanFest. |
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Isaac Rauch, deadspin.com At a fan fest today, the Nationals will announce the addition of a new American president to their much-beloved mascot race, which already saw a shake-up late in the Nationals' season when Teddy Roosevelt won for the first time ever. Crowd-pleasers that… |
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Evan Drellich, MLB.com The Rangers have added a veteran to their mix of potential bench players for 2013. |
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CHICAGO (AP) -- Reliever Matt Lindstrom and the Chicago White Sox have finalized a $2.8 million, one-year contract that includes a club option for 2014. |
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Cash Kruth, MLB.com The camaraderie among Paul Konerko, Joe Crede, Jermaine Dye and Aaron Rowand was on display Saturday at the Palmer House Hilton in downtown Chicago, where the four members of the 2005 World Series championship team reminisced that magical season. |
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Reliever David Robertson will earn $3.1 million under his one-year contract with the Yankees, a deal that increases New York's projected payroll to about $206 million. |
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Mark Sheldon, MLB.com Brandon Phillips and the rest of the caravan's northern leg -- Minor League catcher Tucker Barnhart, former Reds player Todd Benzinger, assistant general manager Bob Miller and broadcasters Marty Brennaman and Chris Welsh -- found plenty of fans waiting… |
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Mark Townsend, yahoo.com When Bryce Harper uttered the line ‘That’s a clown question, bro" in response to a reporter’s unappreciated question this past summer in Toronto, we knew right away a classic catchphrase was born. I just don’t know that anybody realized how popula… |
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Brian Cashman made an appearance on the Joe Benigno/Evan Roberts WFAN show Friday and suggested Alex Rodriguez could miss the entire 2013 season. What Cashman didn’t say was that A-Rod missing the entire season wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for … |
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Jay Schreiber, nytimes.com In 2005, the Mets gave a multiyear deal to Carlos Beltran, a Scott Boras client. Now, with less money and less overall talent, they appear to be eyeing Michael Bourn, another Boras's client. |
