AGRI Biz

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. There isn’t a single aspect of the team game that the Red Sox are doing well right now. The pitching has been poor. The hitting has been horrendous. The baserunning has been embarrassing. The defense has been indefensible. That’s a bad combination on a team that was built on pitching and defense. The starting staff—the same one that was thought to be the ...

Sitting in a doctor's office waiting room in mid-2007, I grabbed a magazine whose headline article read: 2010: The Devil Rays Are the Best Team in Baseball I read the article, and the only thing I could think of was "yea, right, like that'll ever happen." Three years later, here we are, April 19, 2010, and the Rays (10-3) have the best record in the majors. Sure, only 13 games have been ...

New York Mets’ prospect Ike Davis made his major league debut against the Cubs Monday night. The 23-year-old left-handed first baseman recorded a hit in his first at-bat, a bloop single to right. In the seventh inning, Davis drove in Jason Bay on a hard-hit grounder up the middle off southpaw Sean Marshall. Davis finished the night 2-for-4 with an RBI. Also Monday, Mets’ general manager Omar Minaya said Davis will be the ...

Over the past two years, Jon Lester has been one of the best pitchers in the game of baseball. In both 2008 and 2009, Lester won at least 15 games while maintaining an ERA under 3.45. Last year, Lester struck out 9.96 batters every nine innings while allowing just 2.83 walks. His 3.15 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching, a statistic combining strikeouts, walks and home runs) was better than all but fours ...

With the 2010 season less than two weeks old, this seems kind of premature, well, unless you're me than you're chomping at the bit to put a list together like this. There are several managers that should be on this list, maybe more than 10 but we'll stick to 10 and see where that leads us. The managers on this list either had it coming or just sucked enough this year ...

After a rough road trip, the Mets came back to Citi Field and took care of business as they rolled over the Cubs 6-1. Jon Neise pitched decently. Though he gave up eight hits and walked three, he managed to strike out seven and make it through 5 2/3 innings. Fernando Nieve , who relieved Neise in the sixth, ended with the win, as the Mets would ...

I was originally going to title this piece, “Five Reasons Houston Astros Fans Should Be Happy Right Now,” but during that momentary lapse of reason I guess I forgot the team is still 3-9 (regardless of playing well lately). However, there are reasons to be optimistic, and we’re now going to quickly count down five positives as Houston heads back to Minute Maid Park for their April 20 series opener against ...

The picture shown here could very well be the last time that Prince Fielder greets his teammates on Opening Day in a Milwaukee Brewers jersey. There, I wrote it. This is not a reality that I look forward to. In fact, Fielder playing Major League Baseball in a uniform other than the Brewers is probably the thing I'm least looking forward to as it relates to the Brewers since Robin Yount's retirement. To be ...

I'm not quite sure what Giants GM Brian Sabean was thinking he would get when he signed pitcher Todd Wellemeyer in the off-season. If he was expecting a quality starter, then he made a big mistake. The only time Wellemeyer was successful as a starter was in  St. Louis under the tutelage of pitching coach Dave Duncan and he barely managed a 4.31 ERA and a 23-21 record. Being away ...

If you tune into any one of the Cubs' four upcoming games against the New York Mets, you may get the impression that the umpires misread the calendar and bumped up the first pitch. But, no fear, Cubs fans, the umps did indeed start the game on time, and, no, they aren’t playing any tricks on you. That job is left for Lou Piniella, whose latest ...