Stephen J. Nesbitt

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Stephen J. Nesbitt

About once a week last summer, Jim Riggleman found himself checking the Pittsburgh Pirates schedule to see when Paul Skenes pitched next. Riggleman spent almost five decades in baseball. He managed five major league teams and coached for four other clubs, but never the Pirates. And yet here he was, 72 years old and out of the game, reaching for the TV remote at his home near Clearwater, Fla., and watching the last-place Pirates.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Stephen J. Nesbitt

MARS, Pa. - It's just after lunch on a snowy January day, and the math teacher in Room 222 is sketching Pascal's triangle on the whiteboard. Andy Bednar did not go to Cornell to teach advanced algebra. He went there to pitch for the baseball team, kick for the football team and study civil environmental engineering. But after spending his 20s sampling soil and groundwater around landfills, Andy, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, wanted a job that gave him more time with his kids.

1 month ago | pressnewsagency.org | Grant Brisbee |Andy McCullough |Stephen J. Nesbitt

By Grant Brisbee, Andy McCullough and Stephen J. NesbittEvery week,​ we​ ask a selected group of our baseball​ writers​ — local and national — to rank the teams from first to worst. Here are the collective results. It’s been 139 days since the New York Yankees fumbled Game 5 of the World Series and the Los Angeles Dodgers were crowned champions. Offseason transactions transformed the look of several contenders. The Dodgers loaded up for a title defense. The Yankees lost a superstar and an ace.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Stephen J. Nesbitt

Sorry, Baltimore. We have a new No. 1. And congratulations, Colorado. We have a new No. 30. For the fourth year in a row, we asked our readers a simple question - Are you optimistic about your favorite MLB team in 2025? - and sorted your answers into optimism scores for all 30 teams. Overall, 66 percent said they were optimistic about their favorite team this year, compared to 64 percent in 2024, 75 percent in 2023 and 66 percent after the 2022 lockout.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Stephen J. Nesbitt

First, a change: Rather than span the Wild-Card Era (1995 to present) as we have done previously, the franchise rankings will henceforth cover the past 25 years, a floating time frame that feels right to start this year - 25 for '25. The scoring system we borrowed years ago from football writer Bob Sturm and tweaked to fit baseball postseason structure has not changed since last year's edition.