1:46 PM ET Associated Press ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Rays‘ proposed plan to split the season between Florida and Montreal has been rejected by Major League Baseball. Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg announced the news on Thursday. “Today’s news is flat-out deflating,” Sternberg said. The idea of playing in both the Tampa

4:06 PM ET Associated Press NEW YORK — Robot umpires have been given a promotion and will be just one step from the major leagues this season. Major League Baseball is expanding its automated strike zone experiment to Triple-A, the highest level of the minor leagues. MLB’s website posted a hiring notice seeking seasonal employees

7:00 AM ET It started with J.P. Crawford. I was digging into some statistics and noticed Crawford ranked as the worst baserunner in the majors according to Baseball-Reference’s baserunning metric at minus-5 runs below average. How could that be? Crawford isn’t slow. Well, he’s not slow, but he was 3-for-9 stealing bases and he was

7:24 PM ET A woman who fell to her death at Petco Park while holding her toddler son last September died by suicide, according to a statement Wednesday from the San Diego Police Department. Authorities ruled her 2-year-old son’s death a homicide. San Diego residents Raquel Wilkins, 40, and her son, Denzel Browning-Wilkins, fell around

7:00 AM ET Who will make this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame class? We don’t quite know that yet (results will be announced Tuesday), but there are a number of players who we’re pretty sure won’t make it. Either they’re not getting enough support on public ballots or they’re staring at a too-significant deficit from

10:51 PM ET Jeff PassanESPN Close ESPN MLB insiderAuthor of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports” Star free-agent shortstop Carlos Correa has hired agent Scott Boras, Correa told ESPN over the phone Tuesday night. On the 47th day of Major League Baseball’s lockout, with transactions frozen and Correa

3:54 PM ET Brandon Gomes, a former major league pitcher just six years removed from his playing days, has been named general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, a position left vacant since Farhan Zaidi’s departure to the San Francisco Giants. Gomes, 37, has a long history with Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman,

7:00 AM ET Six first basemen have attained nine-figure contracts in their 30s, and the results haven’t necessarily been great. The megadeals for Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols became problems almost immediately. So did the one for Ryan Howard. Deals for Jason Giambi and Carlos Lee started off well but fizzled in the back halves.

7:00 AM ET NEW YORK — Three days into the MLB lockout, when New York Yankees fan Ray Sbarra checked Reddit for his baseball fix, he came up empty. So, with the lockout leaving the hot stove freezing cold and no end in sight, he decided to fill in the gap. “I just figured, let

4:32 PM ET Associated Press ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The death of Tampa Bay Rays bullpen catcher Jean Ramirez near his home in Fort Worth, Texas, has been ruled a suicide. The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office released the finding on Thursday, three days after the 28-year-old’s body was found. The Ramirez family released a