Baseball is back. The elongated offseason meant it sort of never went away, but that was okay. Then the never-ending Spring Training made it seem like Opening Day was just a mirage amidst the split-squad games and minor league invitations.
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The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees are close to agreeing to a two-game, regular season series in London. The games will be played at the end of June at the London Stadium.
Clayton Kershaw will start on Opening Day for the eighth straight year. He will become the first Dodger to notch that mark, surpassing Don Drysdale and Don Sutton. There is only one active streak longer than Kershaw’s, which belongs to the Mariners’ ace, Felix Hernandez.
The San Francisco Giants were concerned about Steven Duggar’s bat. His Fall League and Spring Training performances have abolished such worries.
Spring Training is ramping up. Major league starting pitchers have edged their pitch counts higher, with aces now going five innings into games, just as Max Scherzer and Madison Bumgarner did on Tuesday.
Jake Arrieta became the second Scott Boras client to sign in two days when he agreed to a three-year, $75 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday.
It took until early March for Mike Moustakas to sign for a team. The power-hitting third baseman secured a deal before plenty of other stars, but his $6.5 million for 2018 is far short of what evaluators expected him to receive.
Yu Darvish’s free agency was dominated by talk of his World Series nightmares. Baseball relies on large sample sizes, and that dictates that two dire starts – even on the biggest stage of all – should be treated with no more concern than a poor two-innings in April. The Fall Classic mishaps are a distraction …
Darvish’s career trend is a warning sign for Cubs Read More »
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Eric Hosmer got the biggest contract of this slow-moving offseason. His eight-year, $144 million deal is far clear of what other star free agents received, such as JD Martinez, Lorenzo Cain and Yu Darvish. Given how much talk of ‘tanking’ there has been since the 2017 MLB season ended at Dodger Stadium, it was perhaps …
