AGRI Biz

The All-Star teams were announced two days ago, and, as always, the fans, players, and managers all made some idiotic decisions . So Bleacher Report's Featured Columnists decided to see if we could do better. In this slideshow are the results of a poll conducted during the last week of All-Star voting. We've certainly got some different ideas about who should play in the Midsummer Classic; in the American League alone, three ...

Last week, I wrote an article comparing MLB players to Pokémon. After the article was published, I started thinking: if similarities can be found between athletes and fictional quasi-animals with superpowers, surely connections could also be drawn between the people who control them. Each Pokémon trainer is in it for a different reason. Some want fame, some want power, and some have other ridiculous reasons for turning innocent creatures into effective gladiators ...

A Phillies fan leafing through his Philadelphia Inquirer on May 23 would have seen his team sitting atop the NL East with a 26-16 record—the best in the NL. The Phillies had a fairly comfortable 3.5-game lead on the second-place Atlanta Braves, and that was only after the Tomahawks had amassed a five-game winning streak. The Phillies were the all-but unanimous favorites to win the division, if not the pennant, for ...

Are you a Phillies or Dodgers fan who wants to ensure that your team will have the home field advantage if they make the World Series? Do you want to see the National League get revenge at the Midsummer Classic after going home empty-handed 13 years in a row? Are you a sadistic sociopath who likes messing with people for the pure schadenfreude? If you answered "yes" to any of those ...

Boy, this season is going by fast. It's hard to believe that the All-Star game is just one month away. But because it is, and because our last All-Star vote took place in April, Bleacher Report's MLB Featured Columnists are back with an update. This is part-one of this week's poll: the AL results (look for the NL results tomorrow). For each position, I've listed the full vote totals, as well as ...

For those of you who’ve been living in a cave for the last few weeks, some crazy stuff is going on in Arizona. A new state law requires police officers to check for immigration papers whenever they spot someone who “looks illegal.” Another new policy forbids people with accents from teaching English—I’m betting that won’t be enforced against Brooklyn inflections or Texas drawls—and bans ethnic studies in schools—because God forbid the ...

Welcome to the Cleveland Indians Trading Post, a new weekly segment to help my fellow Tribe fans sort out which of the few familiar faces we have left might not be around much longer. This week’s potential trade candidate is Jake Westbrook.   The basics After throwing six no-hitters (including a perfect game) in high school, Westbrook was taken by the Rockies in the first round of the 1996 draft. A ...

Every year, there are a handful of players who shock us in the season's opening weeks. There are nobodies, rookies, and washed-up veterans who emerge as the game's top players by May, while some of baseball's biggest stars make their fans embarrassed to don their jerseys. In this week's Featured Columnist poll, 16 of Bleacher Report's top baseball writers weighed in on which hot hands and slow starters we should begin idolizing ...

Admit it: you've started thinking about next winter's free agent market. It's nothing to be ashamed about. Baseball's Hot Stove is boiling all year long; it's only natural to be curious about who will sign where. This week, the Bleacher Report Featured Columnists are here to assure you that you are not alone. For this survey, I asked each respondent to say how much money and how many years eight big names should ...

The “Susan G. Komen for the Cure” breast cancer awareness organization condemned Oakland Athletics pitcher Dallas Braden for his perfect game in a press release issued Sunday night. Continuing a tradition begun last year, Major League Baseball celebrated Mother’s Day by teaming up with the Komen Foundation for its “Going to Bat Against Cancer" Initiative, according to an article on MLB.com. “When we said we were 'going to bat against cancer,' we ...