The Indians have a home game scheduled for Saturday at 4:10 PM.  Problem: the Cavaliers have their first round playoff game against the Bulls scheduled for around 3PM.  The arena and the ballpark are right next to each other, however, so that brings opportunity: ticket holders for the Cavs-Bulls game will be allowed to purchase…

Russ Ortiz took the loss in last night’s marathon Dodgers-Diamondbacks game, but a terrible play from Matt Kemp in center field was actually to blame. With that said, at this point any major-league team using Russ Ortiz in a game that counts in the standings probably deserves to lose. Ortiz went 103-60 with a 4.00…

Many people assumed that the Mets, obviously short of starting pitching, would go after Joel Piniero last winter. According to the Daily News, first among them was Joel Piniero. The Mets’ Alex Cora is reportedly tight with Omar Minaya, and he told Piniero that the Mets were definitely going to try to sign him. But…

Brad Lidge tossed a scoreless inning at Single-A yesterday in his third rehab appearance and general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said afterward that “he threw extremely well.” “He took a nice step forward,” Amaro said. “His slider was tighter. He had better location. I guess his velocity was 90-91. He felt good. He was much…

For the second post in a row I mean this quite literally: The Tribe took two hours, three minutes to beat the Rangers this afternoon.  I had the game on in the background and was kind of ignoring it for a while. I had plans to settle into it, oh, about 25 minutes ago, looked…

Quite literally, courtesy of an entrepreneur named Josh Fink: Starting in May, Pangea will roll out ProToast, a line of toasters – available in every team from the four major sports – that pops out with the teams logo burned into it. “Our motto is ‘Toast Your Team,‘” Fink says. Fink has big plans for…

Miguel Montero is undergoing knee surgery today, but the Diamondbacks got some relatively good news in that no ligament damage was found. That means rather than potentially missing the entire season Montero is expected to be out for 4-6 weeks with a torn meniscus. Chris Snyder was the Diamondbacks’ primary catcher from 2005 until Montero’s…

Not everyone was booing Javy Vazquez yesterday. Some were saving people’s lives. From the Daily News: An Army medic who served in Iraq became a hero in the stands at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday when he saved a prominent Bronx rabbi’s wife choking on a piece of kosher London broil. John Stone 38, of Montville,…

Three regulars are absent from the Red Sox’s lineup for today’s game against the Twins. Jacoby Ellsbury is still recovering from bruised ribs suffered Sunday in a collision with Adrian Beltre, Mike Cameron was a last-minute scratch with a strained abdomen, and David Ortiz has been benched in favor of Mike Lowell. Ortiz taking a…

There’s not much worse in this world than Creed, but I’d rather listen to a Creed album than listen to their lead singer remake one of their songs to be about the Florida Marlins.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Question: if you’re a Marlin, do you really want to “soar?”  You’re a fish. If…

One outlier of a game is not enough to say that Major League Baseball’s efforts at speeding things up are futile, but last night’s Dodgers-Dbacks game is probably worth pointing out if for no other reason than to show that long games are not the exclusive province of the Yankees and Red Sox. Extra innings?…

I and many others wondered why Trey Hillman never called Joakim Soria from the pen during the team’s seventh inning meltdown on Tuesday. He tried to explain himself yesterday: “There’s a thought there, but, No. 1, it’s a very unusual time for Joakim Soria to pitch in a ballgame. No. 2, you’ve still got those…

That’s the conventional wisdom: players try harder when free agency looms, resulting in big walk years and big contracts handed out by teams who get hung up on the whole recency thing. But it’s not true say the boys who run Bloomberg’s new baseball stats outfit: Over the past nine years, 177 players performing in…

My friend The Common Man is reviewing baseball team nicknames to see how their literal definition and description fits the teams to which they are applied. For example, blue jays, as birds, are kind of the jerks of the avian world, pushing out competitors whenever possible (query: did this contribute to the Expos leaving Canada?).…

Well, yes, I suppose they will simply because there are so many of them in a baseball season.  Perhaps the more germane questions are (a) when will they win a game; and (b) will they challenge the 1988 Orioles’ record for season-opening futility? Taking the second question first, I think the answer is no, they…

Surprisingly, some of you thought I was being serious yesterday when I made that crack about no one giving hell to Mariano Rivera for not changing his number on Jackie Robinson Day. Of course I know that he wears 42, the last player allowed to do so by virtue of being the last active player…

The Javier Vazquez party is progressing almost exactly as expected. After yesterday’s boos come today’s columns claiming that Vazquez simply “can’t handle New York” and otherwise ascribing moral failings to a pitcher for giving up four runs in an April start. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so predictable. Here’s my favorite retort to yesterday’s…

Giants 6, Pirates 0: Inside the park home run for Aubrey Huff. See it here. To say that Garrett Jones played that one off the wall poorly would be like saying that King George made some fiscal miscalculations when he increased the tax burden on the colonies to help pay for the Seven Years War.…