AGRI Biz

The two men will be forever linked as the offensive catalysts for the 2004 and 2007 Boston Red Sox World Series Championships. They will also be forever linked by the appearance of their names on the infamous Æ03 performance-enhancing drug tests. But with David Ortiz staying behind in Boston and Manny Ramirez taking his antics to Hollywood, each former superstar heads into this October looking to contribute to a World Series run ...

Take that finger off the panic button, Dodger fans.á The division race is over. Finally. After dragging their victory champagne from Pittsburgh to San Diego, the Los Angeles Dodgers were able to pop bottles on the second-to-last day of the season. They claimed the NL West title for the second consecutive year, the first time the club has won back-to-back division titles since Æ77-Æ78, and have now been to the playoffs three times ...

No matter what they do this weekend, the Los Angeles Dodgers will head into the postseason with a bagful of doubts and concerns. This is the sixth day that the DodgersÆ magic number has been stuck at one and Dodgers fans around the country are cringing at the thought of entering the playoffs as a Wild Card team. The Colorado Rockies were 15-and-a-half games out of first place on June 3, but ...

The Los Angeles Dodgers season has turned into a riddle so difficult to crack that only the Riddler himself could have thought it up. It has become a guessing game as to which club will show up for the playoffs: the one that went 56-32 in the first half of the season, or the one that has regressed to a 37-34 second-half record. Joe TorreÆs club clinched a playoff berth with an ...

á The Major League Baseball Playoffs start next Wednesday, Oct. 7. Thus far, only three divisions have been clinched: the AL East (New York Yankees), the AL West, and the NL Central (St. Louis Cardinals). But the playoff picture is strikingly clear at this point, with only two races up in question (AL Central/NL Wild Card). This breakdown is intended to diagnose which teams are peaking at the right time and which teams ...

I mean, really, you couldnÆt split a series with the Pittsburgh Pirates and just clinch the NL West? It was supposed to be a weekend of celebration; heck, the champagne was on ice in the DodgersÆ locker room on Sunday afternoon following a three-run ninth inning rally to surge ahead of the Pirates 5-2. Then, Jonathon Broxton went all Brad Lidge on us, and the clubhouse crew frantically ripped the plastic from ...

Chad Billingsley still hasn’t broken out of his funk. Fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers had high hopes for the former ace in his “return” to the mound last night, but he had an all-too-familiar collapse in the sixth inning to spoil what started as a promising outing. The performance was a microcosm of his entire season, which began with Billingsley winning his first four starts and an All-Star game appearance, but ...

The Los Angeles Dodgers have rebounded from a below average month of August to surge in September and whittle their magic number to clinch a playoff berth down to two. Tonight, the Dodgers could be the first National League team to lock up a spot in the postseason by notching a victory against the Washington Nationals coupled with losses from the San Francisco Giants and the Atlanta Braves.  Chad Billingsley will return ...

While the Los Angeles Dodgers have nothing but clinching a playoff spot and eventually the division title on their mind, an interesting side plot has developed with their All-Star second baseman. Orlando Hudson was praised as the key offseason pickup for general manager Ned Colletti over the winter, because for the first half of the season Hudson tore the cover off the ball. He batted .283 with seven home runs and 48 ...

While the National League playoff picture is virtually locked into place, the American League has some gut-wrenching late-season baseball on tap in the final two weeks of the season. The Philadelphia Phillies will win the NL East, having pulled to eight games in front of the Florida Marlins and on the verge on clinching a title with 14 games remaining. In the Central, the St. Louis Cardinals fan-base has to be ...