Baseball

A baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint.

Seven months from now, the Boston Red Sox will realize the truth in that cliché as they watch the MLB postseason from home.

At times, the Sox will look unstoppable this season—just like they did last year. But in the end, Boston will not make the playoffs.

There’s no question that Joe Mauer’s contract extension is good for Major League Baseball.

Rumors had been swirling for months that Mauer, the unquestioned best catcher in the game, would command more money than the Minnesota Twins could afford, and would inevitably be playing his home games in Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium by 2011.

When the Cleveland Indians traded for Chris Perez last year, they envisioned him as the closer of the future. Well, for the next six to eight weeks, the Indians are going to get a glimpse of what their future at the closer position is going to look like.

With fantasy baseball drafts for the 2010 season in full swing, I indulged a particular question of mine and did a little research. What intrigued me is this question: What is the age of an average Major League Baseball player?

Eight years and $184 million can do a lot of things, but prying inexpensive, top-tier closing talent away from a small-market club is a gargantuan task, regardless of the resources available.

Yet if the Minnesota Twins have any designs on persuading the San Diego Padres to part with their All-Star closer, Heath Bell, they took the first and most important step on Sunday.

That is when they agreed to a mega-deal with catcher Joe Mauer, extending him through the 2018 season and solidifying their catcher situation for the majority of the new decade. 

Some of these players are already household names. Some soon will be. As the past couple of offseasons have shown, older players are having a harder time finding work. Philadelphia's Dominic Brown has GM Pat Gillick breathing easier at the possibility of not resigning Jayson Werth. Tampa's Andrew Friedman can sleep a little better knowing Carl Crawford's impending free agency is met by the arrival of Baseball America's sixth-best rated prospect, Desmond Jennings.

Get to know these players. They represent the lifeline for small and midmarket teams.

Spring Training is like Jesse James at this point- nobody wants it around.

A mere 2 weeks from Opening Day and I think we’ve all seen enough fake baseball for the year. We don’t want to watch fake baseball, the players don’t want to play fake baseball, and the announcers don’t want to announce fake baseball. It’s the dog days of spring training.

But now that we’re officially into spring we can look forward to real baseball in days. Bad for veteran pitcher X’s golf game, but good for the rest of us.

Opening Day in St.

Here's a quick 3:15 video of Yankees pitcher Phil Hughes discussing the grips he uses on his pitches and some of the different change-up techniques he’s using.

The video was shot by Marc Carig of The Star-Ledger .

Is a bomb going to go off in the Arizona desert?

Over the past couple weeks, the Chicago White Sox's Spring Training has overtaken the new ownership of the Cubs as the front page news all over baseball. And it hasn’t been because of anything the team has done on the field.

Did anyone in the surrounding areas of the upper midwest feel a strong breeze come upon them on Sunday afternoon? That was the collective sigh of an entire fan base. 

The Minnesota Twins signed their catcher, and 2009 League MVP Joe Mauer to an 8 year $184 million contract extension. 

The significance of this deal cannot be summed up in few words. 

There are actually so many different angles you can take on the exact importance of what this deal means to the player, the franchise, and the fan base.