Maybe Don Mattingly is a good manager. Maybe he's a bad manager. Maybe, like his mentor Joe Torre, he's just four jobs away from the job that will turn him into a Hall of Famer. (The headline in the New York Daily News when the Yankees hired Torre: "CLUELESS JOE.
This is one of those stretches that makes you happy to be a baseball fan. Or a baseball fan in Cleveland, at least. If you're a baseball fan in Seattle you may be starting to look ahead to football season.
I don't know where this post is going, but wherever it leads, it's not meant to rip on Brandon Phillips, if it does wind up sounding negative. Reds fans jumped on me a few weeks ago when I called Phillips overrated, and that's fine: Fans should defend their players, especially the good ones, and Phillips is an excellent player and has been since 2007.
Well, Miguel Cabrera was due. I mean, he'd gone a whole four games without a home run. He'd driven in just two runs in his previous eight games. He was probably taking extra batting practice before Sunday's game.
A quick warning about Jurickson Profar's call to the majors to replace the disabled Ian Kinsler: Do not expect Mike Trout; do not expect Bryce Harper; do not expect Manny Machado. Yes, the performance of those three wunderkinds has, unfortunately, raised the expectations for all prospects, especially one deemed the best in the game entering this season.
When the Tampa Bay Rays changed their name in 2008 and transformed overnight from the hapless laughingstock of the American League to 97-win division champions, their rotation featured five pitchers 26 or younger: At 26, James Shields was the old man of the group, which included Scott Kazmir, Matt Garza, Edwin Jackson and Andy Sonnanstine.
For a four-season stretch, from 2008 to 2011, Jair Jurrjens started 108 games for the Atlanta Braves and posted a 47-32 record with a 3.34 ERA. He maintained decent but not great strikeout-to-walk ratios, and allowed fewer than a home run per nine innings.
The Braves might be atop the National League East, the beneficiaries of Justin Upton's slugging largesse, and they just got Jason Heyward back from the disabled list after getting Brian McCann back in action earlier this week.
CHICAGO -- As Anna McDonald noted, there are plenty of reasons to question why anyone would move Troy Tulowitzki from shortstop anytime soon. Despite his checkered injury history, only one of Tulo’s injuries came while fielding.
ST. LOUIS -- Troy Tulowitzki belongs on the baseball field. Whether a product of self-determination or God-given talent or a little of both, he was made to play shortstop. Where other shortstops simply take their position on the field, Tulowitzki becomes one with his.
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