Great moment after the guy in the middle threw out the first pitch to the guy on the right at the Angels home opener last night. Then the rambunctious kid on the left snuck in for a big hug, a couple of handshakes and a photo op.



All of them wear number 27. Odds are better than even that all 3 end up in the Baseball Hall of Fame..Since Guerrero senior's already in, and Trout's done enough already to qualify from a WAR perspective.

And more than anything about Vlad Junior? He just loves playing baseball, and the joy of it all shows. Everyone - not just Canadians - are lucky to have players like these guys

Dayum.
Kyle Farmer is fast becoming my favorite Twin.

Yes.
When Polanco comes back, move Miranda to first, put Farmer at 3B.

The A’s lost again.
They have given up 61 runs in 8 games.
If they maintain that pace, they will give up 1235 runs, the highest total since 1890.

Since being the MVP of the 2019 World Series, Stephen Strasberg has earned approximately $83 million dollars.
He has thrown 530 pitches.
$156,000 a pitch.

I think baseball is stuck with them now.

"New York Presbyterian" was chalked on the mound today, too.

Kodai Senga was great again today. I'm calling it now -- he's going to win Rookie Of The Year and Cy Young. The batters have no idea where the ball is when he throws the ghost fork. Also, in the K Korner they were posting pictures of a ghost for every strikeout.

Tampa Bay-you are amazing and so much fun to watch.

I wish you had more fans, and it’s way up this year, but 17,000 a game is weak.

Hopefully more people turn out!

Gail Miller, former longtime owner of the Utah Jazz, is leading a Salt Lake City-based group that plans to pursue an MLB expansion team in the coming years.

The group is called Big League Utah, according to ESPN. In addition to Miller, it reportedly includes the Larry H. Miller Company (founded by Gail's late husband), a number of local businesses and former MLB players Dale Murphy and Jeremy Guthrie, who both live in Utah.

Salt Lake City is one of several cities that have thrown their hats into the ring to be the future home of an MLB team. Others include Nashville, Tennessee, Portland, Oregon, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Leaders of the Salt Lake City group highlighted a media market larger than that of four current major-league teams: San Diego, Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. They stressed Utah's significant growth, as its population of about 3.3 million swelled by a higher percentage than any state from 2010 to 2020, according to the Census Bureau, and the Wasatch Front population — stretching from Ogden to Provo — is around 2.7 million. On top of that, the group said, Utah's 2.4% unemployment rate in February was the fourth-lowest in the country, with an economy trumpeted in recent years as among the strongest in the United States.

Big League Utah says the state is ready for an expansion team, and commissioner Rob Manfred said in July that he "would love to get to 32 teams." However, there's other business to handle first.

The Oakland Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays, two teams with significant, sustained attendance issues, have stadium leases up in a few years (A's in 2024, Rays in 2027). Both want new stadiums but don't appear to be close to getting them. It's possible that either or both teams could move to a new city if stadium deals aren't completed.

When all that is finally taken care of, two-time National League MVP Dale Murphy, who moved to Utah after retiring, believes Salt Lake City is the perfect place for MLB to put a new team.

"It's time," Murphy told ESPN. "It can happen. And it'd be a great market. There's a healthy love of baseball out here."

32 teams would be nice, if only to establish more balanced divisions and schedules.

Now that both leagues use the same rules, will they attempt to merge them or divide them further,
perhaps into eight regions of four teams each, or four regions of eight teams each instead of two
leagues of 16 teams each? Baseball is built on a foundation of traditions.

Good question.

My guess is realignment would be a topic of discussion.

But MLB hasn’t expanded since 1998 and it’s long overdue.

Sure, pitching will be awful for these new teams at first, but that’s what they said when Tampa and Arizona joined.

shit, pitching is more than awful for the red sox right now.

chaim bloom is a raging tool.

Expansion plus realignment would work. Keep the NL and AL names for tradition's sake, and split each league into four divisions of four teams each so there are more legitimate champions and less Wild Card flukes going deep into the playoffs.

I was leaning this way myself.

Totally agree.

This article didn’t mention that Montreal is also in play, but the ESPN article mentioned that.

I can’t see Oakland staying, but maybe Tampa can, only if they get a real stadium.

The latest NHL expansion teams (Vegas, Seattle) got good right away with excellent GMs, so I could see the same happening in MLB.

A good close game tonight with Twins @ Yankees. Nice for the Twins to finally win some of these matchups.
The game easily could have gone either way.

Met's calling up Baty before the game tonight.

The Las Vegas Athletics are coming.

ooh, las vegas......

On one hand, I feel back for the city of Oakland, but on the other hand, the current situation with the Alameda Colisseum has been untenable for 30 years, and they have chosen / not been able to do anything about it, and I think most of the fans gave up as a result.

I'm not sold on the idea of playing an outdoor game in Las Vegas in the summer, so I expect it will need to be a convertible or fixed dome stadium.

Shows you how little I pay attention to football. I had no idea that the Oakland Raiders had moved to Las Vegas.
The new A's land is close to the Raiders stadium and the Golden Knights hockey team. Makes a lot of sense to
build another stadium there and form an even bigger sporting district.

I saw in the article that the proposed A's stadium was to have a partially retractable roof, Jason.

vegas definitely needs more traffic.