MLB

11:10 PM ET We’ve gotten used to seeing the Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series. The Tampa Bay Rays? Not so much. The Astros bashed their way into their fourth straight ALCS, the longest streak since the 1998-2001 Yankees. Houston scored 33 runs and hit 12 home runs in its four-game division series

11:18 PM ET ESPN News Services With one swing of the bat, Mike Brosseau put the Tampa Bay Rays into the AL Championship Series on Friday night. But he insisted afterward that the home run off Aroldis Chapman was especially sweet because of where it put the Rays — and not what it did to

11:00 PM ET MLB InsidersESPN It came down to a winner-take-all between the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays to determine the last spot in the next round of the MLB playoffs, but the final four teams for the League Championship Series are officially set. Here are the stars, turning points and takeaways from

9:40 PM ET Associated Press NEW YORK — Major League Baseball players extended their streak of consecutive days with no new COVID-19 tests to 33 through Thursday. Players did not have positive tests in 41 of the previous 42 days, the commissioner’s office said Friday. There were two positive tests among 15,024 samples collected in

12:02 PM ET ESPN News Services Whitey Ford, a Hall of Fame pitcher who won more World Series games than any other pitcher, died at the age of 91, the New York Yankees announced Friday. A family member told The Associated Press on Friday that Ford died at his Long Island home Thursday night. The

1:25 AM ET If you like offense, this is the series for you. The Los Angeles Dodgers boast a deep and powerful lineup that led baseball in runs scored, while the Atlanta Braves scored just one fewer time than L.A. this season. There are few teams in baseball that match the Dodgers group highlighted by

Kevin Cash may be second guessing himself for not pulling Ryan Yarbrough an inning earlier after Gleyber Torres turned a 2-1 Yankees lead into a 4-1 lead with a two-run home run. Yarbrough is pretty effective against righties, it was the bottom of the Yankee lineup and Yarbrough had been pitching well, plus Cash didn’t

Lineups are out for Thursday’s Game 3 between the Braves and Marlins, a contest Miami has to win . Marlins manager Don Mattingly will start rookie Jazz Chisholm at second base today, bumping Jon Berti to right field and Matt Joyce to the bench. Chisholm, 22, made his big-league debut earlier this season, hitting .161

2:50 AM ET Jeff PassanESPN Close ESPN MLB insiderAuthor of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports” ARLINGTON, Texas — They played this year, amid the fear and the death and the anguish and discomfort, so they could have a night like this. The baseball game staged here Wednesday

7:55 PM ET Padres ace Mike Clevinger is off the team’s NLDS roster because of an injury, a move that means he is ineligible to take part in the NLCS should San Diego advance. Major League Baseball approved the roster move Wednesday. According to its release, Dr. Gary Green, the league’s medical director, confirmed that

1:21 PM ET LOS ANGELES — Zack Greinke‘s ailing right arm is structurally sound and the Houston Astros are still hopeful that he can contribute again at some point this postseason, manager Dusty Baker said Wednesday morning, hours before Game 3 of their American League Division Series. Greinke, who hasn’t pitched since Game 1 of

7:33 PM ET MLB InsidersESPN It’s another busy day in the MLB playoffs, with all four division series in action — two series openers in the National League and two Game 2s in the American League. Here are the stars, turning points and takeaways from each of Tuesday’s games as they conclude. Key links: Ranking

8:13 PM ET If the Miami Marlins are the Cinderellas of this baseball postseason, they maybe should have considered how the fairytale would have turned out had the heroine taken off her glass slippers and hurled them at her stepsisters. Atlanta Braves catcher Travis d’Arnaud and starting pitcher Max Fried might not have been reading

7:00 AM ET Sam MillerESPN.com Close ESPN baseball columnist/feature writerFormer editor-in-chief of Baseball ProspectusCo-author of “The Only Rule Is It Has To Work” The writer Kurt Vonnegut once took to a chalkboard to lecture on the simple shapes that most popular stories follow. In his first example — “Man in Hole” — a protagonist starts

2:57 AM ET Marly RiveraESPN Writer Close Marly Rivera is a writer for ESPNdeportes.com and ESPN.com. SAN DIEGO — All-Star slugger Giancarlo Stanton may have finally endeared himself to Yankees fans by having a signature postseason moment. Stanton lived up to his former National League MVP pedigree Monday night, hitting the first postseason grand slam

7:47 PM ET Associated Press PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins had Tommy John surgery on his left elbow last week, and the team says he is expected to return to play in four to six months. Hoskins injured his ulnar collateral ligament when his non-throwing arm collided with a baserunner on Sept.

7:00 AM ET And just like that, we’re down to eight playoff teams in the strangest Major League Baseball season in memory, with eight opponents left steaming over their 2020 MLB playoffs experience being so brief. But for these eight teams, there are no maybes or might-have-beens — they’re baseball’s elite eight. And that means

9:20 PM ET I don’t expect Fernando Tatis Jr. to hit a triple, slide into third base, get tangled up with Justin Turner and then pop up and try to punch Turner in the face, like what happened with George Brett and Graig Nettles in the 1976 American League Championship Series. I don’t expect the