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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: "...

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,...

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...

Thoughts on Sunday's games ... A brutal weekend for the suddenly disintegrating Dodgers. Swept by the Giants, including two on walk-off home runs. Hanley Ramirez, just activated from the DL earlier in the weekend, landed back on it after strainin...

With apologies to the nice starts of the Pirates and Rockies, the most important story line of April has been the Braves' opening up a 3.5-game lead over the Nationals in the NL East. Considering the importance of winning the division and avoiding...

Not a lot has gone right for the Dodgers so far, and a lot went wrong on Wednesday night in New York when Carl Crawford dropped a fly ball in the ninth inning (it was generously ruled a double for Mike Baxter) that led to the tying run scorin...

Quick thoughts on Monday's games ... The Blue Jays' lineup on Monday included just three players who finished the game with an OBP over .300, and one of those was ex-Mariners backup infielder Munenori Kawasaki, playing shortstop for the injured J...

Earlier, the SweetSpot bloggers overwhelmingly supported Mike Trout for AL MVP and Justin Verlander for the AL Cy Young Award. Let's see how the predictions line up in the NL. MOST VALUABLE PLAYER For the second straight, the SweetSpot bloggers s...

Earlier, we listed our top five stealth MVP candidates for the National League. As a reminder, MVP winners usually meet these criteria: 1. Be on a playoff team (see Miguel Cabrera over Mike Trout, Ryan Braun over Matt Kemp, etc.) 2. Be an RBI guy...

Dodgers fans: Quit reading now. This article is going to be painful. Here's the deal: The Dodgers could be awesome. Of course they could. They have the best pitcher in the National League in Clayton Kershaw, and the guy who probably should have wo...

If you like the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the NL West in 2013, you probably like Matt Kemp's chances of repeating his spectacular 2011, when he was arguably the best player in baseball. Some would argue there wasn't actually an argument to be had. ...

One of the key players of 2013 is Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez. After ranking 13th in the National League in runs in 2012, the Dodgers are looking for Gonzalez to provide that second big bat alongside Matt Kemp. But who is Adrian Gonzalez...

Last weekend, I presented the top 10 teams in my personal power rankings. That was before the Blue Jays officially acquired R.A. Dickey, so I updated my top 10 after that trade, and, to spur on more debate, now present the rest of my rankings. Agree ...

The Oakland Athletics play on a home field with washed-out football yard lines still visible. They currently have an all-rookie starting rotation and a rookie starting catcher. Josh Reddick, their leading home run hitter, had hit .147 with one homer ...

"I mean, guys, I know how to hit. I promise you, I know how to hit. It's just right now, it's been pretty tough." -- Matt Kemp to reporters a few days ago Kemp has not had a good September. He's been mired in such a terrible slump that Cardinals ma...

You have to love August baseball. This is when the grind of the long season settles in, when depth becomes even more important, when pitchers have to pitch through fatigue and soreness and maybe a little pain. It's when we find out if the pretenders ...