Roy Halladay

Last week's ranking in parentheses 1. Rangers (1): Ran their top three pitchers at the Red Sox in an impressive weekend sweep started by Derek Holland and finished by Yu Darvish, with Alexi Ogando in between. Looking very smart for letting Josh Hamilton...

The Royals expect James Shields to be a difference maker. But were they close enough to being a playoff team before they added him? That's the question about the deal in which the Royals sent future All-Star Wil Myers to the Rays. It's too early to...

Baseball, perhaps more than any other sport, is a game of strategy. The glory is, that with 162 games, managers and coaches get the chance to tinker with things much more than football, ice hockey and basketball coaches. The downside to that is it means...

You almost never can boil a baseball season down to one game, let alone one pitch. But when I break down what happened to the White Sox down the stretch in 2012, when a potentially great season for rookie manager Robin Ventura turned into a learning...

The luxuries the Philadelphia Phillies have been afforded during their most recent spring trainings are no more. With their aging roster, with the injuries that afflicted three of their star players a season ago and with all the question marks in the...

The guy on the stage last week conducting the question-and-answer session with front-office personnel, players and manager Charlie Manuel at the Phillies Winter Banquet may not have been instantly recognizable to the 1,100 people gathered at the Sands...

Opening day for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs is on April 4, precisely 10 weeks or 70 days from Thursday night, and assistant GM Howard Scharf happily pointed out: "We've already had our first sellout of 2013." That's right, a sellout crowd of 1,100 at the...

The Giants gather in a tight circle at an end of the dugout before games, always with Hunter Pence somewhere in the middle. They scream, yell and throw things as they prepare for the game in a way that would upset the moms of most Little Leaguers. "(...

PHILADELPHIA — Fewer people are showing up for games, although the sellout streak is still technically intact. Sports talk radio shows are flooded with callers complaining about the lack of run production. And the time the general manager spends...

The Phillies went into the 2012 season expecting a sixth consecutive National League East division title. Their massive payroll, their past successes and their personnel made it hard to argue with their goals. By the end of May, they had already sunk...

It's an issue that's staring the Phillies in the face. What will be Jim Thome's role when Interleague play, along with the freedom to have him be the designated hitter, disappears today? It's always easier to put off the inevitable, especially when...

PHILADELPHIA — With a disabled list that has been overflowing with Phillies most of the season, the last thing you wanted was for Carlos Ruiz and Placido Polanco to join the list of visitors. Ruiz was among the league's top hitters when he went...