Fan News

When the Philadelphia Phillies beat the San Diego Padres 10-5 on Tuesday night, a couple important things happened.

The Phils went 10 games over .500 at 30-20 and 2 1/2 game lead over the New York Mets in the National League East. Certainly the race in the NL East is not over by a long shot. But temporarily, it gave the Phillies some breathing room from the week-to-week flip flop with the Mets.

The Phils followed up with a win the following night against the Padres, 5-1. The lead widened to three games, as the Mets got rained out Wednesday.

As if the news that J.J. Putz may need elbow surgery wasn’t bad enough. Now we learn from SNY Reporter Kevin Burkhardt via Twitter that Jose Reyes has a tear in his hamstring.

The Mets have not yet disclosed how long he will be out, however the word around the blogosphere is that he will be out until at least the All-Star break. Even then, one has to wonder how healthy Reyes will be, especially since speed and running are a huge part of his game.

Kevin Burkhardt of SNY recently posted a report on Twitter that will make Mets’ fans around the world want to crawl into a corner and die. “Jose Reyes has a tear in his right hamstring tendon. Add SS to the list of Mets needs,” wrote Burkhardt.

He later added, “The Mets say this is a new injury and that he will rest for two days before being reevaluated. My guess is you won’t see him until all star break.” This is obviously terrible news for the Mets, but hopefully the re-evaluation will reveal that this is a mistake, but let’s be real.

Last year, when the Mets acquired Ryan Church and Brian Schneider in exchange for Lastings Milledge, I was one of the people who was ecstatic about the deal. Church was always a guy who was underutilized during his time in Washington, and Schneider is the excellent defensive catcher that we have been looking for the past couple of years.

But unfortunately for Church, things haven’t panned out

Bryce Harper, meet the world.  World, meet Bryce Harper.  Oh, and you may want to add him to your contacts list.  That would be a very wise decision.

In the past 16 years, several events have changed the world.  America elects its first African-American President.  9/11.  The Dark Knight.  Bryce Harper was born. And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time, I introduce you to future Hall of Famer, Bryce Harper.

In what is perhaps the biggest news to come out of Georgia since the 1976 election of a peanut farmer to the White House, the much anticipated call to Gwinnett from Atlanta has happened.

Tommy Hanson will start for the Braves on Saturday versus the Milwaukee Brewers. 

The rookie from Tulsa, Oklahoma has dominated at every professional level. "Dominated" is perhaps too light of a word for Hanson's minor league accomplishments. 

Having been born and raised a proud Atlanta Braves fan, I am absolutely embarrassed and shocked on the release of Tom Glavine. Of course he’s not the same Tom Glavine he was when he won his two Cy Young awards—but come on—back in '06 he was an All-Star selection. 

The Braves sent the guy who gave his all to the city of Atlanta to the minors to recover, and when he felt he was ready to return, they cut him saying that he was destined for failure.

Hunter Pence reminds me of one of my favorite Jerry Reed songs: When You're Hot, You're Hot.

In last night's 6-4 win over the Colorado Rockies, the Houston Astros' Pence went 4-5 with a double, home run, and three RBI. He's currently hitting .346. Pence should receive All-Star consideration, but alas, since it's a popularity contest (i.e., fan-voted), as of May 26th he wasn't even in the top 15 outfielders. (Manny Ramirez, who's serving a 50-game suspension for a drug violation, was in fourth place).

I was watching today’s game while at work and boy-oh-boy was it packed with action.  We saw Jim Leyland get himself tossed, that’s always fun.  We saw Miguel Cabrera, the AL MVP up to this point in the season, pull his hamstring and have to leave the game.  Neither of those things is terribly unique, though.  What was unique was the performance of Dontrelle Willis.

Chien-Ming Wang gave up five runs in 4.2 innings in his return to the Yankees' rotation, but the Bombers overcame a 5-1 deficit to beat the Texas Rangers 8-6 thanks to big hits by Mark Teixeira and Melky Cabrera and 4.1 solid innings of relief by the bullpen.

Wang looked sharp through the first two frames of his first start since April 18, but things unraveled over the next three innings as New York fell behind by four runs.