Home Clips Contact
Baseball America •

Freddie Freeman Echoes Kirk Gibson, Demonstrates Beauty Of Baseball

LOS ANGELES – Baseball is a funny game.

It is often characterized as a game of failure, which it undoubtedly is. It tests your mettle and your toughness and your perseverance to push through six months of constant play with little to no rest. The reward for doing so? Another grueling, pressure-packed month that is the postseason, where every mistake is magnified and a single, ill-timed error or misc...
MLB.com •

Relevant? Profar's double reverberates in LA

LOS ANGELES -- Jurickson Profar found himself the subject of some harsh words during the middle game of the Padres’ weekend series against the Dodgers. After Profar was at the center of a benches-clearing incident, Dodgers catcher Will Smith said after the game that Profar is “kind of irrelevant.”

LOS ANGELES -- Jurickson Profar found himself the subject of some harsh words during the middle game of the Padres’ weekend series against the Dodgers. After Profar was at the center of a benches-clea...
Baseball America •

Comeback Complete: Rangers Beat D-Backs in 2023 World Series To Win First Title and Cap Historic Turnaround —

PHOENIX — For the first 62 years of their history, the Rangers were a franchise alternately defined by futility, disappointment and heartbreak.

They failed to make the playoffs for the first 35 years of their existence. Their late-1990s superteams starring Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, Will Clark, Dean Palmer and Rusty Greer failed to win a single postseason series. The golden era of their franchise, reaching the World Series in back-to-back seasons in 2010-11, ended with zero
Baseball America •

80 PROOF: The Standard-Bearer For Each Scouting Tool In MLB Today —

When it comes to evaluating players’ scouting tools grades, an 80 is the holy grail.

An 80-grade tool represents the best of the best on the 20-to-80 scouting scale. Some evaluators consider only one player’s tool to be an 80 at a given time, simply because only one can be the best.

When you think of 80 tools, think of Tony Gwynn’s hitting ability, Mark McGwire’s power, Rickey Henderson’s speed, Ozzie Smith’s defense, Randy Johnson’s fastball and Mariano Rivera’s cutter. They are the tools tha
Baseball America •

2023 MLB Midseason Review: Surprises, Disappointments, Best And Worst Players And Second-Half Callups To Watch —

Believe it or not, the halfway point of the 2023 season has arrived. Nineteen of the 30 teams have played at least 81 games, and the other 11 are all within two games of reaching that point.

The first half of the season has been a wild one, with plenty of early-season surprises, a chase for .400, exhilarating prospect callups and a quicker, more action-packed brand of baseball as part of the offseason rules changes.

Here is a midseason review of the first half of the year, and what to watch fo
Baseball America •

After Falling Short As A Player, Jaime Jones Rises Again As An Ascendant Scout —

At some point in every day, Jaime Jones feels the pangs of regret.

He doesn’t know when they’ll hit, but inevitably they do. They are the regrets of not having the major league career expected, of not putting in the work to fulfill his potential.

Jones was the sixth overall pick in the 1995 draft by the Marlins out of Rancho Bernardo High in San Diego. To this day, longtime scouts and coaches still consider him one of the gre
Baseball America •

'It's Just Absurd': Double-A Tulsa Starters Having Banner Season In Dodgers Organization —

At minor league stadiums across the country, scouts and front office officials are buzzing about the starting rotation at Double-A Tulsa.

Tulsa, the Dodgers’ Double-A affiliate, features a six-man rotation that has torn through the hitter-friendly Texas League this season. Righthanders Emmet Sheehan, Nick Frasso, Landon Knack, River Ryan, Nick Nastrini and Kyle Hurt have made every start for the Drillers and combined for a 2.78 ERA. The rotation with the league’s next-lowest mark, Padres affili
Baseball America •

New 'Enhanced Grip' Baseball Raising Concerns, Strikeouts in Double-A Southern League —

Back in March, Major League Baseball sent a memo to club executives announcing the Double-A Southern League would use a prototype “enhanced grip” baseball for the first half of the season as part of experimental rules changes across the minor leagues.

MLB briefly experimented with pre-tacked baseballs at Triple-A in 2021 and Double-A in 2022, as well as in the Arizona Fall League, but none were used for long. This marked the first time a minor league would use one, pre-tacked ball for as a long
Baseball America •

The A's Ran The Tried-and-True Playbook For Relocation —

Earlier this week, the Athletics fielded a starting lineup in which their 3-4-5 hitters were Aledmys Diaz, Brent Rooker and Jace Peterson.

It was a Triple-A lineup masquerading as a major league one, with predictable results. The A’s managed just two hits and were shut out in a 4-0 loss to the Cubs. It was their 15th loss in 18 games to open the season and took place in front of just 5,196 fans in attendance.

Twenty-four hours later, the A’s announced they had signed a binding agreement to pur
Baseball America •

Shohei Ohtani, Japan Top Team USA To Win World Baseball Classic Championship —

MIAMI — It came down to the matchup everyone wanted to see.

Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout. Bottom of the ninth. Two outs. One-run game. World Baseball Classic championship on the line. It was the stuff of childhood dreams, as well as the dreams of millions of baseball fans across the globe. The game’s two most talented players, teammates the rest of the year but opponents on this night, facing off for the first championship of their professional careers.

The Angels teammates went back and forth
Baseball America •

Mission Accomplished: Astros Complete Historic Run With 2022 World Series Title —

HOUSTON — For the past six seasons, the Astros have been a dominant force like few others in baseball history.

The Astros reached six consecutive American League Championship Series, breaking a record held by the dynastic Athletics teams of the early 1970s. They won at least 95 games in every full season, and notched 100 wins in all but one.

Not since the Yankees of the late 1990s and early 2000s has a team represented its league in the World Series as often as the Astros have over these past
Baseball America •

Cristian Javier Continues Remarkable Rise As Astros Pitch Combined No-Hitter In World Series —

PHILADELPHIA—When Cristian Javier was 16 years old, he was an outfielder with a light bat, little speed and a strong arm. He wasn’t a top prospect on anybody’s radar in the Dominican Republic. With no future as a position player, he converted to pitching at the suggestion of family friend and Astros scout Leocadio Guevara, who lived in the same town as Javier and had known him since he was seven.

Javier’s fastball sat just 84-86 mph in his first workouts as a pitcher. He topped out at 89 after
Baseball America •

After Years Of Pain, Padres Finally Best The Dodgers —

SAN DIEGO — As the rain steadily fell on downtown San Diego on a crisp Saturday night, more than a decade of pain in the country’s eighth-largest city washed away.

The Padres spent the past 11 years—heck, most of their existence—chasing the Dodgers. Their “rivalry” was one that existed only by virtue of their geographic proximity. On the field, the matchup was more of an annual beatdown, with the Dodgers reigning supreme again and again.

Every move the Padres made under the stewardship of gene
Load More