Community Picks: Texas Rangers 0% vs Toronto Blue Jays 0%

Ryan Boyer examines impressive rookie Nomar Mazara, another major injury for Devin Mesoraco and more in Tuesday's Daily Dose. Continue to Article

May 03, 2016 1:36:am EST

Cubs 7, Pirates 2 Jason Hammel raised his record to 4-0 and Anthony Rizzo hit a pair of doubles as the Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-2 on Monday night. Hammel's ERA rose to 1.24 after entering the game with a National League-leading 0.75 mark as he gave up two runs and five hits in five-plus innings with three strikeouts and one walk. The Cubs improved to 18-6, tops in the major leagues, and avoided losing consecutive games for the first time this season while winning for the fifth time in six games. Continue to Article

May 02, 2016 11:30:pm EST

Nomar Mazara hit a tiebreaking home run in the eighth inning and the Texas Rangers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 2-1 on Monday night for their fifth win in six games. In the bottom of the eighth, Mazara preserved the one-run lead by throwing out Michael Saunders at home plate to end the inning. Tony Barnette (1-1) worked one inning for the win and Shawn Tolleson finished for his ninth save as the Rangers handed the Blue Jays their fourth consecutive home loss. Continue to Article

May 02, 2016 10:02:pm EST

If the Raptors winning a playoff series and the Leafs getting lotto-lucky amount to the earth turning over on Toronto’s scruffy pro sports acreage, perhaps they’re best seen as mere aftershocks from last Oct. 14 and Jose Bautista’s bat flip heard 'round the 6, and beyond. Bautista’s emphatic hoist after launching a Sam Dyson pitch into history was a lot of things: a game and series winner, an eraser of Toronto’s ongoing narrative of sporting disappointment, a maker of memes and legends, the craziest exclamation point on what’s been called the craziest inning in baseball’s playoff history, and if you’re of a Goose Gossage vintage, everything that is wrong with baseball in 2015. And of course, there was this. #VIEWS pic.twitter.com/7OIN9NPd6a — Jose Bautista (@JoeyBats19) April 28, 2016 If you were anywhere near Toronto -- or watching on TV across Canada, among the record audience -- it was the stuff of which dreams are made. And ugly Christmas sweaters . Monday night in Toronto, the Texas Rangers are back to revisit the scene of the crime, which the bottom of that nearly hour-long seventh inning really was from their standpoint -- the only way to describe how they set the stage for Bautista’s moment by becoming the first major-league team to open a playoff inning EEE on the scorecard. Then came one swing ... "It sounded like an explosion, like a gunshot," says catcher Chris Gimenez, who was behind the plate. "I still see it. I'll never forget it." Time to reload, then, and in particular for Bautista's at-bats (and perhaps every ground ball that rolls into Elvis Andrus’ territory, the Texas infielder having butchered a couple of balls for two of those errors). If the Rangers are going to honour the ensuing 200 days of stewing since that ALDS-deciding inning with a vengeful purpose pitch, Monday's starter A.J. Griffin seems an unlikely hit man. Griffin wasn’t around last fall -- the A’s gave up on him, and with Texas on a minors deal he was the last man to make the roster out of spring training. Two years on from Tommy John surgery, his fastball barely tops 90 miles an hour, so at least he shouldn't make much of a bruise if indeed, the dictates of the Grand Old Game are followed and his first pitch arrives right between Bautista’s shoulder blades (cue the Dyson reaction shot). Just as watchable will be how Bautista and the Rogers Centre crowd mark the occasion, however -- not an earthquake, I reckon, but given these heady days in the neighbourhood and the Jays’ halting start to their own new season, signs of that October rumbling would go down well.   Continue to Article

May 02, 2016 1:49:pm EST

If the Raptors winning a playoff series and the Leafs getting lotto-lucky amount to the earth turning over on Toronto’s scruffy pro sports acreage, perhaps they’re best seen as mere aftershocks from last Oct. 14 and Jose Bautista’s bat flip heard 'round the 6, and beyond. Bautista’s emphatic hoist after launching a Sam Dyson pitch into history was a lot of things: a game and series winner, an eraser of Toronto’s ongoing narrative of sporting disappointment, a maker of memes and legends, the craziest exclamation point on what’s been called the craziest inning in baseball’s playoff history, and if you’re of a Goose Gossage vintage, everything that is wrong with baseball in 2015. And of course, there was this. #VIEWS pic.twitter.com/7OIN9NPd6a — Jose Bautista (@JoeyBats19) April 28, 2016 If you were anywhere near Toronto -- or watching on TV across Canada, among the record audience -- it was the stuff of which dreams are made. And ugly Christmas sweaters . Monday night in Toronto, the Texas Rangers are back to revisit the scene of the crime, which the bottom of that nearly hour-long seventh inning really was from their standpoint -- the only way to describe how they set the stage for Bautista’s moment by becoming the first major-league team to open a playoff inning EEE on the scorecard. Then came one swing ... "It sounded like an explosion, like a gunshot," says catcher Chris Gimenez, who was behind the plate. "I still see it. I'll never forget it." Time to reload, then, and in particular for Bautista's at-bats (and perhaps every ground ball that rolls into Elvis Andrus’ territory, the Texas infielder having butchered a couple of balls for two of those errors). If the Rangers are going to honour the ensuing 200 days of stewing since that ALDS-deciding inning with a vengeful purpose pitch, Monday's starter A.J. Griffin seems an unlikely hit man. Griffin wasn’t around last fall -- the A’s gave up on him, and with Texas on a minors deal he was the last man to make the roster out of spring training. Two years on from Tommy John surgery, his fastball barely tops 90 miles an hour, so at least he shouldn't make much of a bruise if indeed, the dictates of the Grand Old Game are followed and his first pitch arrives right between Bautista’s shoulder blades (cue the Dyson reaction shot). Just as watchable will be how Bautista and the Rogers Centre crowd mark the occasion, however -- not an earthquake, I reckon, but given these heady days in the neighbourhood and the Jays’ halting start to their own new season, signs of that October rumbling would go down well.   Continue to Article

May 02, 2016 1:49:pm EST