[ad_1] Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper isn’t thrilled with the start to his 14th major-league season. He will go searching for the swing that’s made him an eight-time All Star and two-time NL Most Valuable Player when the Phillies open a three-game series on the road against the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday. Harper…
[ad_1] I actually have the NL Manager of the Year ballot this year, an award on which I think I’ve only voted once previously in my 15ish years in the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), and certainly my least favorite one to vote on, because I don’t think there’s a good way to evaluate…
[ad_1] PHILADELPHIA — There were two outs in the 10th inning Monday night when Bryce Harper stepped into the on-deck circle as the potential tying run. Backup catcher Garrett Stubbs was in the dugout and he found Whit Merrifield, one of the only new guys on this Phillies team. “Man,” Stubbs said, “you’re going to…
[ad_1] The Athletic’s MLB offseason grades 1.0. By Tim Britton, Grant Brisbee and Aaron Gleeman According to a report by an economics professor at Yale University, roughly 80 percent of all grades handed out to undergraduate students last year were As. Too bad for major-league executives, then, that they don’t attend Yale (at least not anymore, in several…
[ad_1] By Zack Meisel, Cody Stavenhagen and Stephen J. Nesbitt GOODYEAR, Ariz. — A decade ago, on a dusty baseball diamond in Puerto Rico, a veteran pitcher shared with Fernando Cruz the secrets of throwing a splitter, a pitch treated like a black-market product, a dark art best learned in the shadows and deployed at…
[ad_1] As Jonah Heim squeezed the final strike of the 2023 postseason and Josh Sborz spiked his mitt on the mound to celebrate the Texas Rangers’ first World Series title, a thought crossed my mind: How will this change the franchise rankings? See, the Wild-Card Era (1995 to present) franchise rankings are not a creation…
[ad_1] Welcome to this year’s ranking of the top 100 prospects in baseball. I’ve been compiling and writing such rankings for 17 years now, and those of you who’ve read them before will find the format here similar to those from the recent past. My farm reports covering at least 20 prospects in each team’s…
[ad_1] COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — There were Adrián Beltré and Joe Mauer. This was their first Hall of Fame election. They won’t need a second. On Tuesday, they became baseball’s newest first-ballot Hall of Famers. And that stamps them as baseball royalty, connected forever to this special stamp of greatness. Beltré reeled in 95.1 percent of…
[ad_1] Look, we get it. The Baseball Hall of Fame is a breathtaking idea. It’s a celebration. It’s a history lesson. It’s a pilgrimage. The museum in Cooperstown is home to heroes and memories and the posters on our walls. The very notion can fill a fan with wonder, and actually being there feels like…
[ad_1] CLEARWATER, Fla. — When Charlie Manuel began to speak again, he could not talk. It had been five days since his stroke. His heart was better. He’d regain the feeling in his right side with time. But, last September, there were no words. “I knew what I wanted to say,” Manuel said months later….
