#babe-dahlgren

#babe-dahlgren

To hit for the Saint Cycle, a player must only sacrifice themselves in every plate appearance. They cannot be glorified with a hit, and in each trip to the plate, they must be saintly in a new way.

I think it was good. Came up, obviously a young guy, didn't really know what to expect. Obviously struggled at the start. Being in a new clubhouse, being around guys who had show time, kind of everything, playing against better competition. I think just getting up here, getting my feet wet, it made the transition coming into this year super easy, just because I'm pretty comfortable.

In 1966, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale were set to pitch for the defending World Series champion Dodgers. The only issue for the future Hall of Famers, though, was their compensation. The players were offered slight raises coming into 1966: From $85,000 to $100,000 for Koufax, and from $80,000 to $85,000 for Drysdale. Despite that, the pair of pitchers were determined to not let the team play them against each other in contract negotiations.

Even though it's not a veteran presence, he can still take command of the clubhouse. There's a respect to his name.

I love being here. I'm from Southern California. I've had a great time with fans. You guys treat me great. Everyone's treating my family good....I'm not worried about another contract, not going to bring it up, not going to talk about it. I got two years left. I'm just an employee. I just do my job, and if they want me back, they want me back. But I think Andrew [president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman] and everyone knows that I love being here.

For most franchises, this sort of thing is cause for celebration and the warm embrace of nostalgia. But this is the Yankees we're talking about, and so of course fans and media members managed to turn it into one more thing to yell at each other over.

Baseball doesn't actually need defending. It's one of the world's great global games and is enjoyed in various forms by hundreds of millions of people every year. It's going to outlive all of us, I promise. But because of baseball's historical and cultural position in America, it is constantly subjected to a weird kind of forensic analysis that isn't usually applied to other sports: is it dying? Is it too slow?

Mets legend David Wright's Hall-of-Fame credentials had been pretty cut and dry. When healthy, he was on a fast track to Cooperstown, but spinal stenosis derailed his career during his age-32 season in 2015, relegating him to one of the more prominent what ifs? in recent baseball history. Yet the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) appears to be taking his entire journey, and just how good he was during his peak years, into consideration, which surprisingly bodes well for potential enshrinement down the road.

For generations the leadoff hitter was easy for a manger to identify: A fast guy. A slap hitter. Someone who could be the "spark plug." Then you stick another guy as the table setter in the second spot. Probably your best hitter third. And your power guy at the four spot. And in some ways this wasn't terrible advice to follow. The problem was that those skills needed to be driven by something else: the ability to get on base.

I don't like to speak ill of any player. I'd like to say that he's a wonderful person. But, of course, when we had an injury at first base his unwillingness to play that position was extremely discouraging. It was a discouraging episode. Just pick up a glove.

The Baseball Hall of Fame will have two new members in a few months, as Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones were officially elected yesterday. The two Red Sox legends on the ballot, Dustin Pedroia and Manny Ramirez, failed to hit the 75% vote threshold. Pedroia, though, is only in his second year on the ballot and saw his vote percentage jump from 11.9 to 20.7, which bodes well for his campaign going forward.

Good morning! Boston saw its first significant snow storm of 2026 yesterday, and it's well below freezing today. In other words, it very much does not feel like baseball season here. But baseball is being played all around the world, including in the Dominican, where a spot in the LIDOM championship series was decided by a walkoff walk: Game 1 of the championship series is on Wednesday and you can stream it on MLB.TV.

One thing the sabermetric revolution has taught us is that batting order doesn't matter all that much. At least, not in the traditional sense of putting a speedy runner at the the top, someone who can handle the bat and move him over second, and power hitters in the middle. The general consensus now is that a team's best hitter should hit second with a high-OBP hitter in front of him.

Timlin was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the fifth round in 1987 out of Southwestern University. He made his big league debut in 1991, appearing in 63 games (three starts) and pitching to a 3.16 ERA and a 1.329 WHIP across 108 1/3 innings. He appeared in four games in the ALCS series against the Minnesota Twins that season and finished sixth in Rookie of the Year voting.