Baseball

As most have us Mets fans know by now, Jose Reyes is expected to be on the disabled list for an overactive thyroid when the season begins, but now it appears, according to the team, Reyes will be replaced with 20-year-old Ruben Tejada, who played in Double-A last year, this according to the New York Daily News . 

Tejada batted .289 last season and hit five homers in 488 at-bats in the minors but claims he'll be ready to play in the bigs.

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line I began enjoying Major League Baseball's offseason more than the regular season itself.  Something about being a Mets fan from November through March is encouraging.  At the start of every season the Mets are "the team to beat"...and then all of a sudden the season starts. 

Mets fans are constantly given a false sense of optimism and are cursed with an old New York tradition of "waiting 'til next year."

Baseball is a game of numbers and here are a few that influenced the Dodgers and Hiroki Kuroda last season: 117.1 innings pitched, 20 games started, 12 HR allowed and a 40.50 postseason ERA.

Many insiders and fans alike criticize the Dodgers for the lack of offseason pick-ups after another loss to the Phillies in the NLCS.

The fact is, the Dodgers made it to the NLCS again, and believe they have what it takes to make it there and beyond this upcoming season. 

In a list of greatest players in the history of one of baseball’s most storied franchise, the names at the top of Boston’s list are Hall of Famers.

Williams. Yastrzemski. Rice. Doerr. Young.

So it is not every day that a player comes along with enough caliber to crack the top part of such a list.

One such player did emerge in the summer of 1997.

If Nate Robertson were a right-handed pitcher, he’d be as expendable as a finished bag of potato chips.

Robertson ought to thank the right-minded God who made him a lefty, because that’s what’s keeping him in the big leagues right now.

The Tigers say that, if worst comes to worst, they’d be happy to venture north with five righties in their starting rotation—if they are the five best, most capable starters.

That’s a bunch of bull excrement.

Before we get to Mr. Scruggs' comments during his "Newy and Richie" show on 105.3 FM in Dallas this morning, let me start by saying that I'm a big fan of Newy's and a loyal listener to his show.

That being said, I grew up as a San Diego Padre fan and lived in Southern California for almost eight years of my life. I spent a lot of Sunday afternoons at Petco Park watching the Padres and guys like Trevor Hoffman, Jake Peavy, and Adrian Gonzalez.

Many baseball lifers point to center field as the immortalized position in Yankee history—and potentially in all of Major League Baseball. Any list headed by Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle deserves such acclaim, but some may forget what is slipping in under the radar in a close second place.

The Yankees have celebrated a long lineage of world class backstops in their illustrious history.

Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers' president, made an explosive revelation at the Wilberforce State University annual football dinner on Feb. 16, 1948.

In a candid and passionate speech to an audience of about 250 individuals, Mr. Rickey disclosed extremely damaging information about a document that allegedly was approved before Jackie Robinson became the major leagues' first black player.

Just hours after the news about Jose Reyes' pending stint on the DL filtered down to the players at Tradition Field, it was business as usual as spring training continued in earnest.

There wasn't too much of note coming out of the 8-2 defeat to the Boston Red Sox.  But here are a few pieces of information to consider when you're looking to whet your appetite now that today's game with the Twins has been rained out.

Starting Pitching

In Seattle Mariners' history, there have been dry spells (see 1980s) and hot streaks (see late 1990s and early 2000s). In most franchise-changing moments, the winning play can be traced to a single at-bat that changed the course of the game.

In this article, I have identified what I believe to be the five most important hits in Seattle Mariners history. Some of these are milestones accomplished by the franchise's most prestigious players. Others are single at-bats in which one man turned the fate of a series upside down.