3:17 PM ET The Texas Collegiate League, a wood-bat summer circuit for college players, is being expanded to include several minor league franchises, the league announced Thursday. Five affiliated minor league teams will host newly-created teams in the in a 30-game season that begins July 3. While the league is an amateur circuit, the news

7:00 AM ET The first night of the 2020 MLB draft is in the books, but there are still several big names left on draft boards whom some expected to be long gone by Day 2. Among them are prep stars expecting bigger money to lure them away from their college commitments and college players

6:30 PM ET ESPN.com staff From the first round Wednesday night to the second through fifth rounds that follow Thursday night, the 2020 MLB draft is here and we’ve got everything you need for all 160 picks. The Detroit Tigers had the No. 1 overall pick and grabbed Arizona State slugger Spencer Torkelson, followed by

6:56 AM ET The past two quarterbacks to win a Super Bowl could have been pro baseball players. Before Tom Brady won six rings, he was chosen in the 18th round of the 1995 draft by the Montreal Expos. “He was a left-handed-hitting catcher with power. He had a good future,” the Expos’ then-director of

7:00 AM ET I’ve been on the phone almost nonstop for the past few days after mostly being on and off the phone for the past few weeks. I’ve noticed that most conversations until about dinnertime Tuesday started with hope, then began fizzling about 10 minutes in when both sides realized nobody knew anything yet.

10:50 PM ET With the 2020 baseball season hanging in the balance in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have been trading proposals to return to action. Here, we boil down the salient details of the offers and counteroffers from the owners and the union as both

7:00 AM ET Maybe the most remarkable aspect of the Great Home Run Chase of 1998 was that everyone expected Roger Maris’ record to fall. Mark McGwire hit 58 the previous season and Ken Griffey Jr. 56, putting Maris’ mark of 61 in obvious jeopardy. Sports Illustrated put McGwire on the cover of its baseball

4:45 PM ET Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein said he is questioning his own hiring practices in light of the social unrest following the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “I’ve hired a black scouting director, [a] farm director in the past, but the majority of people that I’ve hired,

7:50 PM ET The morning before he became the only baseball player to kneel for the national anthem, then-Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell called outfielder Delino DeShields, then a member of the Texas Rangers, to tell him about his plans. After President Donald Trump had called kneeling NFL players “sons of bitches” in 2017, Maxwell

11:19 AM ET Major League Baseball made an updated proposal to the MLB Players Association on Monday, moving to have a 76-game season with players getting 75% of their prorated salaries, a source familiar with the negotiations told ESPN’s Karl Ravech. The proposal includes eliminating draft pick compensation for free agents for a year. Teams