Tony Boselli puts Chris Simms on blast for being awful at football

The Jaguars are going to the Championship game with the #70 ranked QB, according to both Chris Simms, who should be ashamed of himself, and that chortling, ESPN-moron, Dan LeBeRetard, who is a perma-fool. 

Simms is worse than an idiot. I still hope Boselli punches him in the face, it might raise his IQ.

After what his Dad went through in NY with ignorant fans and media, Chris Simms should know better. Phil Simms was known as Simms Sucks right up until the first Super Bowl, from which he emerged as the MVP. 

The New York Post had letters from fans in the week leading up to that first Super Bowl saying "It's nice that the Giants got this far, but Simms will blow it." The Broncos logo, John Elway was destined to roll over the vaunted Giants D and win easily. Didn't happen. The quotes below, attributed to the junior Simms, are of the same tone and tenor as those leveled at the senior Simms back in the day. 

For that, I would excuse Phil Simms from the charge of child abuse if he beat Boselli to the punch, both literally and figuratively. 

Fan-boys, media pseudo-experts and amateur pseudo-analysts were stupid back then and they remain stupid today. 

Chris Simms is a horses ass. He's still the same guy that rode up to the University of Texas in a limo and lost the team to the unheralded Major Applewhite. Stupid then, stupid now.

from blackandteal.com
https://blackandteal.com/2018/01/10/tony-boselli-puts-chris-simms-blast-awful-elevator-quarterbacks/

Tony Boselli puts Chris Simms on blast for being awful at evaluating quarterbacks

by Daniel Lago8 hours agoFollow @dlago89Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles has taken plenty of undue flack and Tony Boselli had enough when he heard Chris Simms trashing him.

 "Because, you know, that was a subpar quarterback.""He trash." "As long as Bortles is back there, if the ball game is in his hands, he's going to choke.""I'm trying to go out there and win the game. I want to make him look like Blake Bortles"

Blake Bortles has been a national whipping boy since his disappointing 2016 campaign, but it's been taken to another level in 2017.

Bortles has improved significantly this year, but instead of gaining the respect of his peers he's been the subject of undeserved insults.

The latest came at the hands of the completely unremarkable former quarterback Chris Simms, who said Bortles was the 70th best quarterback in the NFL.

Simms was on the Dan Le Batard show, discussing the quarterbacks left in the playoffs, and openly discussed guys like Mark Sanchez, Chad Henne, T.J. Yates, Cardale Jones, and Nathan Peterman being better than quarterbacks than Blake Bortles.

Obviously blinded by confirmation bias and presumably some level of jealously since he flamed out of the NFL spectacularly while Bortles just won a playoff game, Simms stayed on the show long enough for Tony Boselli to call in and rip him a new one.

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'Tebow Effect' Paid Off For Sally League Clubs | BaseballAmerica.com

No denying that there was a purely business component to this signing right from the get-go, primarily from the Mets standpoint. But when are people going to give this guy credit for his accomplishments?

He's doing even better in High-A than he was in the Sally League, showing legitimate power, even to the opposite field, after putting the game down for ten years.

Remember that was supposed to be a lark for Timmy. He was going to make a fool of himself and major league baseball. Hasn't happened. Time to give credit where credit is due.

If the Mets are out of it and bring him up in September, so what? He's earned it.

The same fools that hate this guys and ran him out of the NFL now want us to feel sorry for Colin Kaperdink.

F-you, ESPN, NFL, SJW's of all stripes and especially BLM ass-hats. You folks, and your ilk, ran Tebow out of the league for kneeling to God and now you want this POS Kapershit back in the league for kneeling to piss on the flag and this country?

Don't need y'all and don't miss y'all and apparently neither does Tim Tebow.

ESPN = garbage network
NFL = garbage league

from Baseball America:
http://www.baseballamerica.com/business/tebow-effect-paid-off-for-sally-league-clubs/#7WpjHwAexIBJC2ty.97

'Tebow Effect' Paid Off For Sally League Clubs

June 28, 2017 By J.J. Cooper

Tim Tebow has brought in tens of thousands of extra fans to South Atlantic League games this year.

Tim Tebow has been promoted to the Florida State League and has played his last game in the South Atlantic League. On pure baseball terms, it's fair to say that a 29-year-old outfielder who hit .220/.311/.336 is as forgettable as a prospect could be.

But at the box office, Tebow is the greatest star the South Atlantic League has ever seen.

When we first wrote about the "Tebow effect" on fan attendance a little over a month ago, we calculated that Tebow was worth roughly 2,200 fans per game whenever the Columbia Fireflies hit the road. Since then, the Tebow Effect grew.

In comparing what teams have drawn in games where they played host to Tebow teams versus the rest of their home schedule without Tebow, it now appears that Tebow was worth 2,591 fans per game when the Fireflies were on the road.

To explain it more simply, there are 14 teams in the Sally League this year, but through Tebow's final game on June 25, nearly one of every four fans who have walked through the gate at a Sally League game has done so to see Tebow's Columbia Fireflies play.

BBWAA writers should relinquish throne as HOF's moral gatekeepers-MLB - Buster Olney Blog- ESPN

Glad to see my original thoughts, from years and years ago, are starting to gain some mainstream traction. IMO, it will be too little, too late from both Clemens and Bonds. The BBWAA will take the easy way out and pass it along to the Veterans Committee as they have historically.

Time to revamp the whole process. They are weeding out the "undesirables", the guys in the BBWAA who do not even watch baseball but retained a Hall of Fame vote. That made sense, although it mimics what we do in this country to vote for a POTUS, so WTFDIK?!?

I like them both, but under the circumstances as we now know them, how Clemens garners more support than Bonds, under than covert, subtle racism among the voting bloc, is beyond my understanding.

Also, if there is place for Piazza and his back-ne, then explain to me again, like I'm a second grader, how Clemens and Bonds don't belong. Once again, other than a "good old boys" wink-wink, nod-nod, HTF does that happen?

Oh, what a tangled web these good old boys weave.....

from ESPN:
http://espn.go.com/blog/buster-olney/insider/post?id=11997

BBWAA writers should relinquish throne as HOF's moral gatekeepers

Thom Loverro attaches a label to the writers who have changed their minds and voted for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
The ballot machinations have been interesting this year. Some voters hid behind the so-called character clause for years in declining to vote for Bonds, Clemens, Mike Piazza or others linked to performance-enhancing drugs, and are now reversing course without truly acknowledging a complete flip-flop or any previous mistake they've made. Which is a cop-out.
It's OK to change your mind; we all do that. But nobody should attempt to write, at least with any credibility, that the character clause should be given weight and then switch a vote on a player from the PED group.
What that really means is that voter has never actually developed a true standard for election, which has always been the core challenge. Either the character clause matters in the process, or it doesn't; there can be no middle ground on that question.
And as has been written here for years, the character clause should hold no weight, because even with current Hall of Famers, it cannot possibly apply, given the high number of people with personal flaws -- human flaws -- among the group.
For starters, the person believed to have written the character clause, former commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, worked to keep the sport segregated, and that in itself should have been enough to appraise the depth and significance of the character clause.
For the record: I stopped voting in the Hall of Fame last year. Before that, I voted for who I believed to be the best players on the ballot, regardless of PED history, for a couple of reasons:
1. There was never a way to know exactly who did what, and when, and in what volume, and ascertain a proper context for any one player's use of performance-enhancing drugs.Yes, we know some things about what a small handful of prominent players did, like Mark McGwire, but was he one of 500 players who did something? A thousand? Maybe he was one of 10,000 or more when you include the number of minor league players (and other various circuits) attempting to elbow their way to The Show?
This is what made the Mitchell investigation and report so disgustingly abhorrent: There was absolutely no chance of reaching anything close to a necessary understanding of the scope of drug use within the sport, and yet the folks who generated that information singled out fewer than 100 in their final rendering, while knowing they were effectively demonizing the handful they threw to the mob.
Sadly, writers have done the same with the handling of the Hall of Fame voting.
Insider

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from Yahoo Sports:

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/barry-bonds--roger-clemens-inch-closer-to-hall-of-fame-induction-021548714.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens inch closer to Hall of Fame inductions

Slowly, improbably, the tide is turning and the Baseball Writers Association of America is seeing the valley of its illogic. This year, it's a legitimate, substantial jump. Next year, a likely leap into a majority. And after that, perhaps the rolling snowball turns into an avalanche that sweeps Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens into their rightful place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
.
The Hall reveals the results of balloting at 6 p.m. ET Wednesday, and the only sure thing is Ken Griffey Jr. waltzing into Cooperstown. Momentum – and exit polling – are in Mike Piazza's favor. Jeff Bagwell could sneak in past the 75 percent threshold. And Tim Raines is close enough that he should book a ticket to upstate New York for July 2017.
Amid it all are the suddenly ascendant candidacies of Bonds and Clemens, steroid pariah Nos. 1 and 2. Their first two years on the ballot were thought to have been a litmus test, and the results were more acidic than alkaline. Bonds received 34.7 percent in 2014 and 36.8 percent in 2015, Clemens 35.4 percent and 37.5 percent.
What once seemed a lost cause now can be categorized merely as a longshot. A confluence of events is breathing life into the candidacies of Bonds and Clemens, who occupied two of the nine names on my ballot, alongside Piazza, Bagwell, Raines, Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling and Edgar Martinez.
As of early Tuesday evening, the Hall of Fame vote tracker kept by Ryan Thibodaux showed Bonds tracking at 49.7 percent and Clemens at 49.1 percent of the 171 ballots shared publicly by BBWAA members. That's about 10 percent ahead of where they were on public ballots last year, and those numbers – particularly for those who used or are suspected to have used steroids – tend to end up about 5 percent higher than the entire lot of ballots.
While their gains don't match some – Mussina is up 22 percent, Bagwell and Martinez 19 percent, Raines 15 percent and Schilling 13 percent – they are gains nevertheless, and they may not stop despite the Hall's clear – if not publicly stated – desire to keep them away from walls dotted with cheaters already.
Certainly it's possible that the exit polling is deceiving and Bonds and Clemens remain stagnant, though if history does hold, there are two explanations for the jump: winnowing upward of 100 voters and others beginning to rationalize why keeping Bonds and Clemens off their ballots went against logic.
Taking away votes from voters who haven't written about baseball in decades made sense. The best electorate is the most informed, and to expect those far removed from the industry to understand the game's shift – and the according increase in knowledge – places an unfair burden. Those new to Bonds and Clemens have their reasons, though the most compelling comes from San Francisco Chronicle national baseball writer John Shea, who wrote: "How could I in good faith not vote for Bonds when I might be voting for other PED guys?"
Shea isn't the only national voice to add Bonds and Clemens to their ballot. Fox's Ken Rosenthal, the most respected voice in baseball writing, checked off Bonds and Clemens for the first time this year. ESPN's Jerry Crasnick, another writer known for intelligent and measured thought, did the same. At least seven others publicly acknowledged adding Bonds and Clemens, and longtime writer Jon Heyman said he voted for Bonds for the first time.
Not only do the votes of big-name writers help this season, they could subtly nudge others to reconsider their positions in future seasons. Advancing the case even more would be the induction of Piazza. By the twisted reasoning of some, it will take a player believed to have taken steroids – though dogged by suspicion, Piazza never tested positive nor was proven to have used performance-enhancing drugs – entering the Hall before voters are comfortable allowing others in.
Treating Piazza like some sort of steroid pioneer is so twisted, so backward, so very Hall of Fame. If that's what it takes to help voters recognize that leaving out Bonds and Clemens – the greatest hitter since Babe Ruth and one of the finest pitchers ever – is an abdication of duty, so be it. Just because the Hall of Fame refuses to wipe out its antiquated character clause, one ignored by our voting predecessors and that has no business in choosing players who best represented their era through the quality of their play, doesn't mean that writers who vote must hem themselves to it.
No matter what any writer believes, he or she doesn't understand what happened during the height of steroid use in baseball. Even if opinions can be rendered without a full accounting, anything but an all-or-nothing vote – either you consider all players from an era or don't bother casting a ballot – is a cop-out. Not voting for players because of suspicion is hubristic considering how little we truly know; not voting for those who tested positive is more understandable, though it lends credence to tests that athletes employ chemists to beat.
All of these things are conspiring for a step forward from the BBWAA. The moralists won't go away, and they may well occupy more than 25 percent of the electorate. That's not a surprise. Nobody ever accused the middle- to late-aged white male – the vast majority of BBWAA voters – of being the most progressive group.
At the same time, as the ballot glut of recent votes clears over the next few years and more writers who don't stigmatize steroids quite the same as others earn their votes, Bonds and Clemens adorning plaques in Cooperstown looks possible. It would be a striking moment for baseball, one that places accused cheaters alongside those who will argue the Hall would be ruined by their inclusion. Those are the words of obstructionists, of hypocrites, of a group that should welcome the game's best and brightest.
And whatever they might've been – liars, cheats, abusers of the privilege that is playing baseball – Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were the best and brightest. Forget all the rest. The voters have seven years left to get it right.

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Jessica Mendoza versus John Kruk: Tale of the Tape (psst...spoiler alert: it's no contest)

OK, tale of the tape, Mendoza versus Kruk:

Intellectual Appeal:
Advantage Mendoza. The average IQ level in the booth goes up by 30-40 points easily with this move alone, we'll get to the Boone - Schilling trade-off later. Mendoza, a Stanford grad. Kruk, IDK room temperature IQ maybe?

Visual Appeal:
Advantage Mendoza. Not that this is, or should be that important because the camera faces in the opposite direction 99% of the time, but I'm just saying.....again the Q-rating, or whatever measures this sort of frivolousness just went through the roof.

Auditory Appeal:
Advantage Mendoza. This was the one area where Kruk may have had a shot to win, but he has't really offered much to the broadcast in years. Other than a certain self-deprecating, Uecker-esque appeal to his career -- which was actually pretty good -- there's only so many beer-swilling, crotch-grabbing locker room stories one can slip in to a baseball broadcast without detracting from the game. Mendoza has transitioned almost seamlessly from the softball side to the baseball side, leaving behind the urge to present opinions with a "this is how we did it in softball" caveat. She gets the game of baseball as if she was the one who had Kruk's career and presents a well-rounded, intelligent viewpoint nine times out of ten.

Easier to listen too, easier to watch, easy decision to make. Mendoza by unanimous decision.

As to the Boone for Schilling trade-off, neither one is particularly easy to listen to. Schilling gets removed for shooting his mouth off  too often outside the booth. Instead of putting down the gun or removing the ammunition, he just kept shooting himself in the foot.

And he'll probably blame anybody or anything but himself for the removal. Too bad. Some people live in houses without mirrors. 

from Big Story:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0ba4005862c14acc8d321c01d2741e0f/jessica-mendoza-joins-sunday-night-baseball-full-time

Jessica Mendoza joins 'Sunday Night Baseball' full-time

Jessica Mendoza wonders what she'd be doing during the upcoming Major League Baseball season if not for some events out of her control.
The retired softball star was scheduled to call two Monday night MLB games late in 2015 for ESPN and hoped to get a regular gig this year, but figured she might need to wait longer for a slot to open up.
Instead, six days after her debut, she leapt onto the network's showcase platform of "Sunday Night Baseball" — and hasn't left since.
ESPN announced Wednesday that the 35-year-old Mendoza is now a permanent fixture in the Sunday prime-time booth. She'll join another new analyst, Aaron Boone, alongside returning play-by-play voice Dan Shulman.
They replace Curt Schilling, who moves to Monday, and John Kruk, who returns to "Baseball Tonight."
"It's just crazy when I look back, and literally less than six months ago I had no idea what was going to happen after the Monday night games," Mendoza says.
Just like that, she's the most prominent woman calling national games for a major men's sport — one of the few in the booth, not limited to sideline reporter. It's an ascension that seems to have happened blindingly fast, and yet it was also a slow and steady climb.
An Olympic gold medalist and the sport's premier hitter, Mendoza found herself needing a new career when softball was dropped from the Summer Games. The Stanford alum joined ESPN in 2007 and didn't give much thought to calling baseball until the following year, when Kruk took part in Women's College World Series coverage.
Mendoza saw how knowledge of one sport could translate to the other. Still, she acknowledged, historically there was just "one-way traffic" — her father, a baseball coach, would guide her softball teams, but a woman typically wouldn't instruct baseball players.
She later did some sideline reporting on men's sports and studio work for "Baseball Tonight." In June, Mendoza became the first female game analyst for a men's College World Series telecast.
Meeting with senior coordinating producer Phil Orlins in April, she was eager to work games but wary of seeming like a gimmick. Mendoza remembered watching in 2012 when former U.S. teammate Michele Smith appeared on a nationally televised MLB game on TBS and "feeling like she was a guest."
She dryly describes how she didn't want her male colleagues to promote her presence in the booth: "We have a female with us today, yay."
But Mendoza came away from that meeting confident ESPN was serious about her long-term prospects as an MLB game analyst. Not that she ever imagined a spot on "Sunday Night Baseball" could come anytime soon. She laughs in recalling that when she attended a Sunday night game early last season to observe the crew, she felt like a total groupie.
On Aug. 24, she called the Monday night matchup between the Cardinals and Diamondbacks. The next morning, Schilling posted then quickly deleted a tweet comparing Muslims to Nazis. ESPN pulled him from that Sunday's game and replace him with Mendoza.
She couldn't eat, couldn't sleep — squeezed by the pressure that her performance could sway whether other women received future opportunities to call men's sports.
"I knew even the smallest mistake, it felt like the world would come after me," Mendoza says.
As a player, she would visualize how a huge game would go, but "it's hard to do that when you've never done it." On the field, she would take confidence from her preparation, but now there wasn't time.
"I could have totally sucked," she says.
Yet while this was her first "Sunday Night Baseball" assignment, it was hardly her first live sporting event. As the pitchers started throwing and the batters swinging, she realized it was no different from the dozens of softball games she worked each season.
"You could feel the change in her comfort level inning by inning even in the first game," Shulman says.
The Cubs' Jake Arrieta made history that night by no-hitting the Dodgers. Mendoza made history after her debut earned rave reviews, sticking on Sunday night the rest of the season and becoming the first female analyst to call a nationally televised MLB playoff game when she worked the AL wild-card matchup.
John Wildhack, ESPN's executive vice president for programming and production, doesn't want to speculate about what kind of position Mendoza would've held in 2016 if not for Schilling's tweet. She was undoubtedly a big part of the network's long-term baseball plans before that, he adds, preferring to focus on how she managed the circumstances that were in her control.
"She seized the moment," he says.
As Wildhack talked to others in the industry about Mendoza's performance, he realized: "Wow, this was not just good. This was really, really, really good."
Boone adds that what he heard "from very smart people I respect is she said some things on games from an analysis standpoint that made them take note."
Still, there were occasions in those first couple of broadcasts that Mendoza hesitated before making a point, fearful of the repercussions of a misstep. The moment would pass and she'd never get in that observation.
That happened less and less by the wild-card round. The additional games, along with her studio work during the playoffs, also allowed her to introduce herself to players and managers around the batting cage and in the clubhouse.
She fondly remembers chatting with Royals star Eric Hosmer during the World Series, his bat in her hand, just two great hitters talking shop. Mendoza hopes that soon she'll no longer need to start each conversation explaining who she is, why she's there, and how she understands the intricacies of their swings.
"It just felt so good for the guys to see me as a peer and not just a female," she says.
And now with the benefit of a whole offseason, Mendoza has time for her beloved preparation. She expects to put together an Excel spreadsheet on each team.
Returning from the World Series, Mendoza happened to be on the same flight as "Monday Night Football" producer Jay Rothman. He showed her video clips that coach-turned-analyst Jon Gruden compiles and narrates for his colleagues to highlight areas he's focusing on.
Hoping to learn more, she shadowed the Monday night crew for three days before the Nov. 9 game between the Bears and Chargers in San Diego. Mendoza attended all the meetings, sat down with play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico for three hours, and peppered Gruden with questions about his routine. She wanted to know everything from the volume of his notes to where his eyes go during a play.
With her new role, Mendoza, who lives in California and has two young children, made one particular request: She'll still call the Women's College World Series.
She and Boone will be the fifth different analyst team in six seasons for "Sunday Night Baseball" since Jon Miller and Joe Morgan departed after 21 years in 2010 — partly because Bobby Valentine and Terry Francona each left the booth to return to managing.
The 42-year-old Boone, who joined ESPN in 2010 after playing a dozen seasons in the majors, moves up from the Monday night games. "Sunday Night Baseball" also gets a new producer in Andy Reichwald, who also comes over from Mondays, while Buster Olney returns as the reporter.
"If this team establishes themselves as we hope and we think they can," Wildhack said, "it will be terrific for us, terrific for 'Sunday Night Baseball' and terrific for the sport."

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Tweet by ESPN Stats & Info on Twitter

	ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo)
12/14/15, 5:20 PM Johnny Cueto last season vs NL: 2.30 ERA, 0.86 WHIP, 5.6 K/BB vs AL: 4.42 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 2.8 K/BB

Thank God he'll be pitching in the NL for the most part.

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Cam Heyward thwarted by the Tebow Rule

	ESPN (@espn)
10/19/15, 9:04 PM "A lot of people are struggling with cancer and that's what my message was." Defiant Cam Heyward keeps eye black: es.pn/1klnP3P

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So rather than have a feel-good story, the NFL PR machine would once again rather play the fool and the bad-guy. This precedent may have started when they pre-empted Tim Tebow's eye black back in the day and to a lesser extent, Jim McMahon's headband.

So blame those two wild and crazy guys for Heyward's recent dust-up with the NFL.

It almost seems like they would prefer wife-beaters, whore chasers and degenerate gamblers both on the field and in the stands. Not to mention as sponsors,

Maybe the NFL is the national pastime after all. And ESPN, their head cheer-leader.

God Bless America!!!

from Tebowzone.net:

http://www.tebowzone.net/2010/02/the-tim-tebow-rule/

THE TIM TEBOW RULE

 February 15th, 2010  Pajo 

A recent report from the Palm Beach Post described how the NCAA Rules Committee is proposing a ban on wearing special messages on a player's eye black – the rule could be known as the Tim Tebow Rule. During his final season, Tim Tebow wore a new Bible verse under his eyes for every game. It became very popular… in fact, I created a special page here on Tebow Zone just for fans to keep track of what verse he wore on what day: Tim Tebow's Eye Black.

The eye black generated a lot of buzz, some 92 million people Googled "John 3:16″ after Tim wore it during the 2009 BCS Championship Game. The messages were highly effective, but if the new rule passes players will not be allowed to wear them. The report goes into how Urban Meyer had to be an "eye black cop" at times…always policing what his players were writing to make sure there was nothing bad and damaging to the University's image.

The rule was proposed on Thursday and if passed will become official for the 2010 season. I think that it will pass – there is just too much extra stuff going on and the whole monitoring thing to deal with. They will probably require all players on a team to wear the same eye black.

The NFL already enforces this rule, so Tim Tebow will have to abide by it once he signs on with a team. 

The Tim Tebow Eye Black was fun – but it looks like those days are over.

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Buster boofs on bat flips

ESPN.com: It's not auto racing

Wow!!

GRANTLAND: THE DEATH OF EVAN MURRAYCharles P. Pierce: "Among the spectacles of our sports-entertainment complex, there are only two in which people are regularly killed — not accidentally, but directly as a result of that sport's essential identity and, more ghoulishly, that sport's essential public appeal. One of them is auto racing. The other is American football. Of the two, there is only one in which children are now regularly killed." It's not auto racing

"It's not auto racing" is located at http://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-death-of-evan-murray/?ex_cid=espnapi_public&ex_cid=espnapi_public

2015 MLB Baseball Power Rankings Week 11 - Major League Baseball - ESPN

Nice!! Four of the top six teams are NL teams. That's how it should be, but uh-oh, wait a minute...four of the bottom six teams are NL teams as well. That's not parity, that's disparity. The middle is just a mosh pit of mediocrity, although I like the Rays in first-place and the Sawks in last place in the AL East and the Cubs and Joe Maddon making noise in the NL Central.



There's still about 100 games left for each team so, maybe too early to waive the white flag, but it's getting there for some teams.



from ESPN:

2015 MLB Baseball Power Rankings Week 11 - Major League Baseball - ESPN:

2015 Power Rankings: June 15
RANK	TEAM / RECORD	TRENDING	COMMENTS
1	Cardinals 41-21	-- Last Week: 1	Second-year second baseman Kolten Wong (.353 OBP/.465 SLG) helped the Cardinals maintain their comfortable lead in the NL Central despite losing another key player to the disabled list in starting pitcher Lance Lynn. -- Matt Philip (@fungoes), Fungoes
2	Dodgers 37-26	1 Last Week: 3	Clayton Kershaw in his past four starts: 39 strikeouts, three runs allowed on 14 hits in 28 2/3 innings (0.94 ERA). Friday's 117-pitch outing was the longest of the season for Kershaw. Los Angeles is three games into a stretch of 15 of 20 games away from home. -- Diane Firstman (@dianagram), Replacement Grit
3	Royals 34-25	3 Last Week: 6	After hitting well over the first two months of the season (a combined .304 batting average in April and May), Kendrys Morales has struggled mightily in June, batting just .162. -- ESPN.com
4	Pirates 35-27	-- Last Week: 4	In 26 combined starts, Gerrit Cole (1.71) and A.J. Burnett (1.89) rank first and second in the National League in ERA. -- ESPN.com
5	Blue Jays 34-30	13 Last Week: 18	Armed with an improved bullpen and some timely home runs, the Jays' winning streak now stands at 11. Unfortunately, the Yankees have won seven of 10 and the Rays have won nine of 12 over the same span. Undeterred, with Devon Travis soon returning, the Jays will look to continue their meteoric rise up the AL standings. -- Matt Gwin (@Matt_HBB), Blue Jays Plus
6	Giants 34-30	1 Last Week: 7	The Giants continue to do their best work away from AT&T Park and have a NL-best 18 road wins. Their .289 team average on the road is 21 points higher than the next closest team. -- Connor Grossman (@connorgrossman), West Coast Bias

'via Blog this'

25	Marlins 27-37	2 Last Week: 27	Mat Latos came off the disabled list Saturday and had his best start of the season: seven innings, four hits, two walks and 11 strikeouts. Former closer Steve Cishek returned from his demotion to Triple-A, where he tossed six scoreless innings. Miami has committed the fewest errors in the majors. -- Diane Firstman (@dianagram), Replacement Grit
26	Athletics 26-39	2 Last Week: 28	Despite being on an A's team that has the worst record in the American League, Sonny Gray continues to dazzle. He has a 1.60 ERA in 14 starts. -- ESPN.com
27	Rockies 28-34	2 Last Week: 25	The Rockies spent a second straight weekend flopping around as they struggled to fight the fish. However, the Denver nine took two of three from baseball's best team, the Cardinals, last week. The Rockies have played .500 ball recently, mostly playing outside of their division and they will now hit an interleague stretch. -- Jake Shapiro (@Shapalicious), Rockies Zingers
28	Red Sox 27-37	7 Last Week: 21	An 8-17 stretch left the Red Sox as the only team in the AL East with a losing record. Dropping six games in a row to the Orioles and Blue Jays -- their fourth losing streak of three or more games in the past month -- could be enough for the front office to start thinking about 2016. -- Ryan P. Morrison (@ryanpmorrison), Inside the 'Zona
29	Brewers 24-40	-- Last Week: 29	The Brewers produced another four-win week, this time behind an excellent debut by Taylor Jungmann, and a strong comeback against Washington. After Tyler Cravy's great debut the previous week, the Brewers' replacement starters now claim two of the best MLB pitching debuts in 2015. -- Nicholas Zettel (@spectivewax), Disciples of Uecker
30	Phillies 22-42	-- Last Week: 30	The Phillies were winless last week (0-6) as they continue to struggle to score runs. They're last in the majors in runs (197 in 64 games). -- ESPN.com