ESPN Search

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: "...

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. The Indians just completed a four-game sw...

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 defen...

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. The bum. Cabrera was a one-man ...

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,...

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...

Welcome to Sportsnation! On Tuesday, ESPN.com's SweetSpot blogger David Schoenfield stops by to chat some baseball.Schoenfield is a senior writer for ESPN.com and he's been with ESPN.com since 1995 and has served in a variety of roles, including base...

San Francisco Giants ace Matt Cain struggled again on Thursday in Colorado, giving up six runs, including three home runs, although he managed to get the win as the Giants won 8-6. Cain's ERA rose to 5.43 and he's now allowed 13 home runs in just ...

Eric Karabell and myself discuss four teams off to surprising starts: The Yankees, Indians, Pirates and Rockies. Which ones are for real?...

The baseball gods don't give us these matchups often enough: Justin Verlander versus Yu Darvish, two first-place teams, a beautiful 81-degree night in Arlington, Texas. Seems like a good time for a running diary. So let's do it. First i...

Watching Felix Hernandez the other night prompted me to look up the pitchers with the highest career Wins Above Replacement who never started a postseason game. Hernandez's career WAR is 36.3 and I had no idea if he would top the list or even be near...

From a newspaper report of April 5, 1948: Connie Mack, 85-year-old boss of the Philadelphia Athletics, and 78-year-old Clark Griffith of the Washington Senators, finished their heralded foot race in a dead heat at Orlando, Fla., yesterday. Both d...

The ESPN Fantasy staff has published its mid-May rankings -- their top 250 players for the rest of the season. It's always interesting to see the different opinions. Everybody agrees on guys like Miguel Cabrera and Ryan Braun, but here are some gu...

David Price's rough season got worse last night when he left his start with a triceps injury and might miss a start or two. Let's hope it's nothing more severe than that. Eric Karabell speculates on who the Rays will start in his place. As Eric po...

Reaction to Wednesday's games ... Watched a lot of the Indians' 10-4 win against the Phillies on Wednesday afternoon as Cleveland knocked around Cole Hamels, who fell to 1-6 with a 4.61 ERA. Ignore the win-loss record since that's dependent upo...

The San Francisco Giants are built around their starting rotation. That would seem more a statement of fact than an assertion of opinion. After all, conventional wisdom tells us the rotation carried the Giants to a World Series title in...