Up two games to none on the Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series, the Tampa Bay Rays are proving with every contest that they are not to be underestimated. Although the franchise had the sixth-most wins in baseball during the 2010s, it also struggled to make the playoffs — and on the rare […]
Starting pitching tactics in baseball’s postseason, which starts today, often differ from those of the regular season. Because of the off days needed for travel between cities in a playoff series, pitchers typically enjoy more rest. That allows teams to lean on their best pitchers more than they can in the regular season. For instance, […]
When Major League Baseball finally starts its 2020 season on July 23, it will be a very different kind of campaign than any we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Not only will it be much shorter than usual (60 games per team instead of 162) and feature a strange mix of division and interleague matchups, but […]
There are scandals with legs, and then there’s the Houston Astros sign-stealing affair, which first broke in November and shows no trace of letting up, even as — or perhaps especially as — MLB players report to spring training this month. (You can tell the scandal is particularly bad, by the way, because we haven’t […]
After an offseason focused on the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, pitchers and catchers have reported to camps across Florida and Arizona this week, and Major League Baseball is hoping to turn the page — though that figures to be difficult. The sport is facing challenges beyond electronically aided theft, including the gathering threat of a […]