Fan News

Call-ups can make or break your team, and that's why they are so important.

Injuries in the MLB are not a given, so any player at any time could be called up to replace a roster spot.

Here is a look at the five biggest call-ups of the 2010 baseball season.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers phoned the Boston Red Sox today to tell them they finally pulled a prank equal to the one done to them three years ago when they got Manny Ramirezed. The Dodgers famously fell for a classic Manny Ramirez, one of the most popular juvenile pranks, when they took Manny off waivers from Boston in 2007.

The Seattle Mariners have shut down top pitching prospect Michael Pineda for the season after throwing 139.1 innings for the year (last season he was limited to just 12 appearances and 47.1 innings).  Let’s take a look back and review his year.

Aroldis Chapman is coming to The Queen City. As if the Reds' biggest division lead in 15 years isn't enough to have fans in a tizzy, this is the quintuple cherry.

"Look for the city of Cincinnati to explode when Aroldis does get the call." Back on March 6, those words were written in a Bleacher Report article.

For the past few weeks or so, the Giants starting pitching has been the subject of much criticism. The blame for the Giants' dismal 12-15 August record has been placed upon this quintet.

The hitting was doing fine: Sanchez, Sandoval, and Torres were heating up, and Guillen, Burrell, Huff, and Uribe were providing jolts of offense here and there. But on Monday, the hitting fell silent. The Giants managed to get just four hits, and nine different Giants struck out at least once.

Fact is, the New York Yankees love returning to the Bronx.

Why wouldn’t they love coming home, with a packed stadium full of fans?

The Yanks are tied for the first place, and they also share the best record in baseball and Yankee fans will cheer the team till the end.

The other team leading the pack is the Tampa Bay Rays, a 12-year-old franchise with loads of potential and hands-down has the best young talent in all of MLB.

When news broke last week that Nationals phenom Steven Strasburg needed Tommy John surgery and likely won't throw a pitch in the Major Leagues until 2012, the mood around D.C. was predictably apocalyptic.

For a team that hasn't finished better than .500 since their 2005 move to Washington, losing their crown jewel in Strasburg seemed like an unusually cruel blow to Nats fans. All hope is not lost however.

With the calendar down to the last day of August, Major League Baseball is about to fire the starting gun on its stretch run.

In 1995, the owner of the Oakland Athletics, Walter Hass Jr., died. Successors Stephen Scott and Ken Hofman had watched Hass spend an abundant amount of money on players, and they wanted to go into an entirely different direction.

For eight innings it looked like the same old story was writing itself. "Rockies fall flat on the road," "Rockies leave bats at Coors Field...again."