Baseball

There are two types of baseball fans: duckers and grabbers.

Eileen Depesa is a grabber, and her quick reflexes likely saved an infant from taking a bat to the head during Monday’s White Sox game.

Depesa was sitting in the stands near the left-field line when Tyler Flowers lost the handle on his bat and sent the article whipping toward her section.

After seven long weeks atop the Reds player power rankings, Johnny Cueto was officially lifted from the throne following a disastrous outing against the Washington Nationals. It was an odd sequence of events; the first two runs to cross the plate were unearned. By that time, Cueto had already been laboring, working nearly every full.

The Chicago Cubs turned in a 3-3 performance last week, splitting series with the New York Yankees and San Diego Padres. However, that wasn't enough for them to climb out of the No.

It was another good week for Atlanta Braves prospects. The two hitters at Triple-A, Tommy La Stella and Christian Bethancourt, are really starting to swing the bat.

Meanwhile on the mound, the organization’s top prospect seems to have righted the ship, and several other pitchers on this list are doing better than the basic stats seem to indicate. We’ll use advanced stats to find the truth behind the numbers.

The 2014 MLB All-Star Game will be played on July 15, or a little over a month-and-a-half from now, but it's never too soon to start diving into what this year's rosters might look like.

Arguing about who deserves to be on the rosters and who the biggest snubs are each year is half the fun of the game itself, and there will no doubt be some notable snubs once again this coming season.

We're nearly two full months into the 2014 season and we've seen enough from many of the Boston Red Sox's top prospects to judge their developmental progress so far this year.

Many of their starting pitching prospects have made 10-plus starts. Many of their hitters are nearing 200 plate appearances. We're even seeing some players promoted on the backs of fast starts and organizational need. The sample sizes may be too small to hold predictive value, but they're no longer too small to tell us part of a story in many cases.

With the 2014 MLB draft just about a month away, the Cubs once again have a top-five pick. Last season they appeared to hit a home run by taking 3B Kris Bryant with the No. 2 overall pick in the draft, and this season they hold pick No. 4. There are several different directions the club could go, but pitching is likely to be a top priority. 

In years past, we haven't gotten many excuses to ask what's wrong with Clayton Kershaw. That's a question that you ask when a pitcher is either hurt or ineffective, and Kershaw has rarely been either.

Updates from Saturday, May 24

The Rockies' PR Twitter feed delivered bad news regarding Nolan Arenado on Saturday:

Joe Morgan of MLB.com provides more from Arenado:

Original Text

In years past, the New York Mets have been notorious for making deals that don’t pan out. While it’s still too early to determine whether Chris Young and Curtis Granderson will have a big impact for the team, one thing is for sure—they haven’t put up the numbers Nelson Cruz has so far in 2014.