Opinion

A week ago, a popular view among American League East scouts was that the Baltimore Orioles were a lot more likely to finish fourth than first.

They weren't catching the Toronto Blue Jays or Boston Red Sox. Not with that starting rotation.

"I hate boats," Maikel Jova tells me. Then he smiles.

We're sitting on plastic chairs an easy toss from the first base line at cozy Albert Park, adjacent to a playground and a maple-lined suburb. 

Jova has just finished batting practice. His cap is pulled low over reflective sunglasses. He slumps slightly in his seat, but his handshake is warm and his grin is broad and winning.

Yasiel Puig said what he needed to say upon his return to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was humble; he was contrite.

Major League Baseball's final month of the regular season has arrived, and with it, the pressure to perform has only increased. Some players thrive under the spotlight, raising their games to levels worthy of inclusion on B/R's Team of the Week.

Time waits for no man. It's mean like that. It's even meaner to baseball players, systematically robbing them of their skills as they drift further from their youth.

Except for Adrian Beltre, who's playing like he's 37 going on 27.

NEW YORK — There were four of them, four young starting pitchers, and last October they carried the New York Mets into the World Series.

If nothing else, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has been controversial since he became the 10th man to hold baseball’s top spot in January 2015.

He has made “pace of play” his cause celebre, an issue he feels is one of game’s biggest burdens. But in addressing it, Manfred has proposed radical changes that would be to the detriment of the issue at hand.

First, let's get this out of the way: Tim Tebow didn't make this installment of Bleacher Report's MLB Team of the Week.

In fact, according to B/R's own Scott Miller—who attended Tebow's recent, much-hyped baseball showcase—the former NFL quarterback isn't likely to make an MLB team of any kind anytime soon.

When the injury bug ambushed and carried off Giancarlo Stanton in mid-August, the Miami Marlins lost a power source that still hasn't been replaced.

But give it up to Christian Yelich for giving it his best shot.

PEARL, Miss. — Hang tight, because this is a happy story. Really. You wouldn't think so, not when someone loses an eye. Not when the pool of blood on the ground looks like something out of CSI: New York. Not when an emergency medical helicopter swoops in and rushes the man off to a nearby hospital, a life hanging in the balance.

Five years later, sitting in his office, that man looks across his desk at a visitor. Watch this, he says. My prosthetic eye moves right along with my good eye.