Swish Tribune

  The Yankees have a problem on their hands, and that problem is the production of Clay Holmes. After yet another win slipped out of their grasp, Clay Holmes was the cause for the meltdown.  Holmes currently leads the MLB in blown saves this season with 10. In a season where all the races are so tight, a little better production out of Holmes possibly could have cemented the Yankees as the top team in baseball.  The most recent downfall was this previous Sunday after the Yankees entered the bottom of the ninth with the lead and called on Holmes to throw away the game once again. In a sport where pitching is what separates a team from winning the World Series and another from falling short, it baffles me that the Yankees didn't do more at the trade deadline to improve their closer situation.  Yes, when Holmes is at his best, he looks like one of the best closers in baseball. But as of late, it seems as if even when he locks down a save, Yankee fans have to hold their ...

  In their first season as teammates, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto are looking more and more like the modern day Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. If you think this is an exaggeration, just take a look at the stat comparisons.  Judge is leading the majors in almost every important offensive category and Soto is not far behind as well. Besides being second in average and walks, he is first in home runs, RBIs, on base percentage, slugging, OPS. These stats aren't just regarding the American League, but all of Major League Baseball.  Soto is in the top five in all of these categories: home runs, walks (1st), runs, on base percentage (only behind Judge), slugging, and OPS (only behind Judge). This duo is the main reason why the Yankees have one of the best records in baseball at this point in the season.  It seems like almost every game, no matter the broadcast, there is a crazy stat reference of either Judge, Soto, or the both of them, to an MLB legend. The two have already made h...

Written by Carmine Tuosto of Swish Tribune Yesterday the Texas Rangers won their first world series ever winning the series 4-1 to the Arizona Diamondbacks. "We're sick of losing," Chris Young said at spring training in Arizona, answering a reporter's question about how and why the Rangers took an aggressive stance to free agency.  The Texas Rangers were 4th in the AL West with a record of 68-94. The past 3 seasons they had arguably one of the best rebuilding seasons getting a lot of depth of all positions In 2022 The Rangers had in place the makings of a solid offense, in large part because of Seager and Semien's success. Texas finished eighth with 198 homers and scored runs at a clip safely above the MLB average  and those two players set examples for the younger Rangers coming through the system which benefited the team a lot  The Rangers needed a lot more pitching because they were a bottom-10 team by ERA+. In response, Young signed righty Jake Odorizzi early ...

  Yankees: Grateful for Gerrit Cole Written by Max Turtz of Swish Tribune As the MLB regular season winds down, Yankee fans are disappointed. Coming off of an ALCS in 2022, fans expected the same or better. However, the Yankees have continued to struggle and this year, they finally began to fall apart. Manager Brian Cashman decided to essentially maintain the roster, hoping something would magically differ from the past few seasons. He refused to make any bold moves at the trade deadline and injuries only restricted the team further. Now, sitting at a game over 0.500, shock has set in. The Yanks sit at the bottom of the AL east, with playoff hopes reaching zero. Yet somehow, we have the AL Cy Young favorite, Gerrit Cole. Right now, he is the only thing keeping many fans remotely interested. I can’t imagine what is going through his head right now. One thing for sure is that he is contemplating his 2024 opt-out after next season. Hopefully, big changes happen sooner rather than late...

       Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune      As a Knicks and Yankees fan, I along with others have been traumatized by these two players shown here. For one, Jose Altuve cheated the Yankees out of 2 World Series appearances because of the stealing signs scandal. And Trae Young quickly became a villain when he not only knocked the Knicks out of the playoffs, but has taunted them ever since. So I thought, who is a bigger villain to New York between these two?           Altuve is not only a villain to NY, but also many other major league teams as well. His team, the Astros, and him and his teammates especially cheated many teams such as the Dodgers, Yanks, Red Sox, and many more teams out of a potential championship. So many other sports fans share the same hate for Altuve that we do as Yankee fans as well.            For Trae Young, after one game in the playoffs last year he was portrayed...

Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune Currently speaking on August 9th, the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros are separated by 2.5 games in the AL West standings. The Rangers have lead the division for the majority of the season with their high-powered offense and sneaky good pitching, but can the Astros make a late season push for the crown in the AL West? Since 2017, the Texas Rangers really haven't been very competitive. The Rangers have not made the postseason since 2016 when they last won the division. The Rangers just recently moved into a new stadium in Arlington and wanted to put a good team out there so fans can show up and enjoy the new stadium and newly revamped team.  This really started last year when the Rangers made two huge acquisitions when they acquired Marcus Semien and Corey Seager in two lucrative free agent deals. With some of their homegrown talent on the offensive side, and adding new pitching such as Jacob DeGrom this previous offseason, the Rangers re...

Written By: Ben Kasoff, of Swish Tribune As the trade deadline closed, it seemed like the Yankees did not even realize it started. The Yankees silence at the close of August 2nd did not come as such a surprise though.  Brian Cashman, yankees GM, with the fear of losing his job, decided absence would be the most neutral decision he could make to save his job. An aggressive push for the playoffs would mean the loss of many prospects. Many Yankees fans would oppose this. On the other hand, trading players for prospects would look like the Yankees are giving up on the season while only being 3.5 games away from the last wild card spot. There was essentially no correct decision Cashman could make in regards to trades. While his absence from trading could help his case slightly, his future with the Yankees is not looking good regardless.  The other side of Yankees management is not looking too bright either. Rumors having been spreading of Yankees head coach, Aaron Boone, being fire...

  Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune The trade deadline is past us and it is officially time to crown my biggest winner, the Miami Marlins. The Marlins who are characteristically sellers at the deadline, took a different approach this year and bought pieces that they believe will give them the best chance to compete and play games in October.  In the Marlins brief history, since they became a team in the early 1990s, they have only made the playoffs three times and most of their other seasons have been viewed as the laughing stock of the league. Well this season is much different than that, and although the Marlins are currently not sitting in a playoff spot, this team is special.  The Marlins needed a change after yet another down year last season, so they went out and hired Skip Schumaker to run the ball club and made arguably one of the biggest trades in franchise history when they acquired Luis Arraez from the Twins. Arraez has been the heart and soul of this...

Written By Carmine Tuosto, of Swish Tribune       Last week there was a huge trade in baseball. The Texas Rangers acquired Former New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer in exchange for shortstop prospect Luisangel Acuña. This Rangers team has shocked the MLB the last couple years. They've signed Cory Seager , Marcus Semien , and Jacob deGrom . They've picked up Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray, and Andrew Heaney. Now Scherzer.       The Rangers have already won as many games as they did the 2021 season, and will soon match their 2022 total. This from a franchise that has not put forth a winning campaign since the 2016 season. Perhaps accumulating talent, no matter the method, is the secret to success.      The Rangers have someone to replace the injured deGrom but Scherzer is having a pretty bad season, accumulating a 4.01 ERA and a 4.03 strikeout-to-walk ratio over his first 19 starts. He also had a 10-game suspension for violating MLB's poli...

 Written By: Max Freud, of Swish Tribune       Much to everyone’s surprise, the cubs are going for it. Just two weeks ago the cubs were below .500 and were far back in the standings. Now they have won 8 of their last 10 sit 4 games back of the division and 3.5 back in the Wildcard. Everyone thought that Cody Bellinger would be traded along with Marcus Stroman, but this team won 8 in a row and forced their general manager to not sell.       They had to buy. The Cubs went out and got Jeimer Candelario from the Nationals and Jose Cuas from the Royals and all they gave up were some lower level prospects. They added these two new players to a team also highlighted by Dansby Swanson and Justin Steele. Steele, a breakout starting pitcher, has been great for the cubs boasting an ERA of 2.66 and Swanson, the starting shortstop, has an ops of .796 with a .266 average. With retaining their guys and bringing in some help,  the Cubs will now look to ...

  Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune As the trade deadline officially passes, the New York Yankees were the biggest losers at this year's deadline mark. After 106 games into the season with a lackluster offense, New York makes zero trades for any offensive help while only making two minor reliever additions to the bullpen.  The Yankees were certainly very confused coming into this trade deadline. They've played some really bad baseball as of late and could've easily been sellers at the deadline but they did not sell. Although they sit last in a very tough AL East and are now only 3 games  above .500, the Yanks are only 3.5 games out of the last wild card spot and are still very much in the race with 55 games left to play.  No matter how bad the bats have been as of late, this team is still very well in it and it is just baffling to me that they didn't go out and acquire some new offensive talent to help this team out. Instead they go and add to what has been...

  Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune The Baltimore Orioles have surprised many faces around the league with how well they have played this year and look to keep it up as we get closer and closer to October. Although their ETA wasn't for another year or two, the Orioles are here and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. After six straight years of finishing either last or 4th in the division, the Orioles currently lead the AL East and have the second-best record in all of baseball. The main contributors to the success of this team were top prospects in the Orioles farm system not too long ago.  Those contributors being Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman. Both Rutschman and Henderson spent time as the #1 prospects in all of baseball and have made an immediate impact on the ball club ever since getting called up not too long ago. The Orioles maintain one of the best farm systems in the league and they continue to call up their top prospects, embracing the let the ki...

  Written By: Dylan Grodner, Of Swish Tribune       Shohei Ohtani is already the greatest baseball player of all time. At age 18, he started playing major league baseball in Japan, playing for the Fighters. He was so good his first year that he was even selected to be apart of the Pacific League All Star Game.      He took his talent to the MLB in 2018 after signing with the Angels. By the end of his first year, the Unicorn in Ohtani was discovered and he went on to win the American League Rookie of The Year award. Since then he has gone on to win the 2021 American league MVP and is making a strong case to be the unanimous American League MVP this year as well. He has a .302 batting average, along with smashing 39 homers just half way into the season.      What makes him even more valuable is that he is just as good of a pitcher as he is a hitter. In addition to making a strong case for MVP this year, he is in the running to win the...

Written By: Stuart Graeber, Swish Tribune The Los Angeles Angels have acquired CJ Cron (1B) and Randal Grichuk (OF) from the Colorado Rockies for minor league pitchers Jake Madden (RHP) and Mason Albright (LHP).  Only five games back from the AL West leading Texas Rangers, and only four games out of a Wildcard spot, the Angels have made their move to make a push for the Postseason. Despite gaining two strong bats for the middle of their order, the Angels will be losing their No. 8 prospect in Jake Madden and their No. 28 prospect Mason Albright. Giving up two top thirty prospects near the deadline is a clear indication that the Angels are looking to make a run this year.  This trade should also make it clear that Shohei Ohtani will remain an Angel for the rest of the season and maybe a last ditch effort from the Angels to show Ohtani that they are here to win now. With Mike Trout coming off a surgery that only took Jose Ramirez four weeks to recover from last season, the Angel...

                Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune                The big question that had been swirling around the league the past couple of weeks was if the Angels were going to choose to be buyers or sellers during this year's trade deadline. After their monumental move acquiring Lucas Giolito from the Chicago White Sox, it is clear that the Angels have determined that they will be buyers and remain highly competitive until October.              Late last night, the Angels finalized a deal to acquire starting pitcher Lucas Giolito and relief pitcher Reynaldo Lopez from the White Sox for two prospects. Giolito adds to a young Angels pitching rotation that is lead by Shohei Ohtani but has not received as much production from the others.              Giolito was one of the top arms on the market this...

                              Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune                The MLB trade deadline is just under a week away and there are a lot of big names coming up in potential trade conversations this deadline. We haven't seen a monumental trade yet, but in the upcoming days we should see a plethora of them.                This season has been a very unique one in the fact that many teams are winning before they were expected to, and that leaves the teams who were projected to succeed in a dark hole. Young teams that had ETA's in the upcoming years such as the Cincinnati Reds, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Baltimore Orioles, just to name a few, are currently taking the MLB by storm en route to a potential postseason birth.               These teams will be defin...

                Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune                While the rest of the MLB community is focused on Shohei Ohtani, Elly De La Cruz, and other major headlines currently ongoing throughout the league, no one is talking about the downfall that the Tampa Bay Rays have been going through.                39 games into the regular season, the Rays were dominating anyone who would try and step in their way, cruising to a 30-9 record. But, since their historically hot start, they have gone 31-33 ever since, fallen out of first place in the AL East, and do not hold the best record in baseball anymore.                Don't get me wrong, the Rays don't need a massive change and are not stuck in a big hole, they are still 19 games above .500 and own the top wild card spot in the AL. It's just surpr...

                              Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune               There have been plenty of underperforming teams in the MLB this year, but none of them top the disappointment levels that this team has currently. That team is the St. Louis Cardinals.                The Cardinals are in a very bad spot right now and they just can't seem to figure it out. Currently they sit at 27-42, not only in last place in the NL Central, but last place in the National League as well. It's confusing how a team who won its division last year by a good margin, and only got better in the offseason, fell off this much.                From a personal standpoint, I really like the players that the Cardinals currently have. Veterans that have been around the league for a long ...

                            Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune                For the past 55 years, since 1968, the Athletics have called Oakland home, but now in 2023 their home is in jeopardy because of their owner Mark Fisher not taking the proper measures to stay in Oakland and is trying to relocate his team to Las Vegas.              In recent history, the city of Oakland has seen two of its three major sports teams move away from the city. First, it was the Golden State Warriors moving from Oakland to San Francisco, then the Raiders moving from Oakland to Las Vegas. The only team currently left in Oakland is the Athletics and this may not even be the case in a couple of years.              There a plenty of fan bases throughout America in each of its prof...

                Written By: Spencer Teman, of Swish Tribune                  It's playoff time in both the NHL and the NBA and it got me thinking, what is the most meaningful championship trophy in all of the professional North American sports leagues?             This includes the Vince Lombardi trophy for the NFL (pictured to the left), the Larry O'Brien trophy for the NBA (pictured second to left), the Commissioner's Trophy for the MLB (pictured second to right), and finally the Stanley Cup for the NHL (pictured to the right).                 It takes great talent and effort to be able to obtain one of these trophies through an intense playoffs each and every year. But what trophy is actually the most meaningful trophy to the athletes themselves?            ...