7:00 AM ET Since time immemorial, a favorite offseason pastime for the passionate baseball fan has been to scratch out possible batting orders for their favorite team for the coming season. You might do it on a text file you bring up surreptitiously on your office computer. You might do it on the back of
MLB
4:47 PM ET ESPN News Services Dusty Baker has been hired as the new manager of the Houston Astros, owner Jim Crane announced Wednesday. The deal is for one year and includes a team option for the 2021 season, a source told ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Wednesday. Baker will be formally introduced by the team
12:30 PM ET It took most of the offseason but the decision is finally in: Kris Bryant lost the service time grievance that he filed in 2015, after the Chicago Cubs kept him in the minors for the first 10 days of that season before promoting him to the major leagues. The ruling in favor
11:55 PM ET COSTA MESA, Calif. — Nate Johnson spent the last seven years as an assistant baseball coach at Orange Coast College, working underneath the legendary John Altobelli. He was promoted to associate head coach before this season began, which put Johnson in line to take over when Altobelli retired — which Altobelli continued
7:00 AM ET COSTA MESA, California — IT WAS SUNDAY morning in Balboa Island, a harborside community off Newport Beach, and Tony Altobelli was getting his steps in. At around 11 a.m., his phone buzzed with a text message from his brother Jim. TMZ was reporting that Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter accident.
7:00 AM ET Former manager Bobby Bragan once described baseball statistics like this: “Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable.” Good one. Nonetheless, baseball is a numbers game. As we peel away from the Astros’
7:00 AM ET Earlier this winter, I researched free-agent spending over the past decade and discovered the Cincinnati Reds had committed just $121.1 million in free agency during the 2010s, the lowest total of any team. Less than the Rays. Less than the Marlins. Less than the A’s. The Reds do not spend in free
7:10 AM ET It was August 2019, still a couple of months before David Ross would be introduced as the 55th manager of the Chicago Cubs. It also was the day before the Alabama Crimson Tide football team would begin practice. Alabama head coach Nick Saban had asked Ross to speak with his team about
7:00 AM ET Mike Trout has been baseball’s best player for nearly a decade and still has not won a postseason game. We know this, and yet the mere mention of it always seems to make our heads spin. Such a thing is actually a very rare circumstance, even within a sport that so greatly
4:50 PM ET It was the one trade everyone has predicted all offseason and it finally happened on Monday: The Pittsburgh Pirates traded outfielder Starling Marte to the Arizona Diamondbacks for two prospects. The Diamondbacks needed an outfielder, and with the Pirates stuck in the mire of Nowhere Land it was for them to trade
9:00 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” America’s second attempt at exporting its national pastime to England was called off this week. Regardless of when Major League Baseball begins play again, the 2020 season will not include a London