MLB’s year-long assault on its minor-league affiliates, first launched last fall, ended this month with unconditional surrender, as the nation’s farm teams fully capitulated to a plan that will see 43 franchises either get bumped to independent leagues, demoted to amateur leagues, or … Continue reading
Last week, baseball’s winter meetings in San Diego—normally a hotbed of trade activity—were also abuzz with talk of an even higher-stakes deal: Major League Baseball’s proposal, first revealed in October, to eliminate 42 minor league affiliates once the current operating … Continue reading
Major League Baseball saw attendance decline for the fifth straight year, falling to a mere 28,198 fans per game, the lowest mark since 2003. It’s a trend that has already prompted much public hand-wringing from baseball barons and the sportswriters … Continue reading
Nobody goes to baseball games anymore. That’s the common alarmist wisdom that has become one of the overarching themes of the 2019 season, which had barely gotten underway before USA Today was declaring that MLB’s attendance slide of recent years … Continue reading
Any self-respecting student of insane Machiavellian gambits should be familiar with the Madman Theory, Richard Nixon’s self-invented strategy for winning the war in Vietnam. The theory, as recounted by Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman after he got out of … Continue reading
The Mets swept the so-hapless-even-their-owner-is-mad-at-whoever-made-them-this-hapless Marlins this weekend to crawl back within a game of a .500 record, but first they unveiled a Friday surprise: an email announcing that starting next Monday, fans will no longer be allowed to bring … Continue reading
It’s not like everyone hadn’t been thinking it, but it took Tommy Pham to mention the elephant in the room. The outfielder, who one year earlier had celebrated his 6-WAR season in his first year as a starter at age … Continue reading
The baseball panic is rising. With every additional day that Bryce Harper and Manny Machado go unsigned—and Dallas Keuchel and Mike Moustakas and A.J. Pollock and Craig Kimbrel—the drumbeat strengthens: Something is wrong here. After all, as has been pointed … Continue reading
Attendance and World Series TV ratings may be down, but baseball fever is alive and well in cities without the erstwhile national pastime. ExposNation says the time is now! Portland’s wannabe owner took Russell Wilson and Ciara on a helicopter … Continue reading
Former home-run champ José Bautista made his debut for the Mets in left field last night, a string of words that becomes far less impressive once you realize that he was only available because he’d just been released by the … Continue reading