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Eight years after he initially signed a professional contract with the Dodgers and a five-year stretch playing away from affiliated ball, Bubby Rossman became a major leaguer on Wednesday. Added as a substitute for pitcher Kyle Gibson, who is restricted from travel to Canada for the Phillies' series in Toronto, due to his medical inability to be vaccinated from COVID-19, Rossman took the mound for the first time in the majors. Rossman, who was a 22nd round draft selection in 2014 had pitched in 200 professional games before his one-inning outing in the Phillies' 8-2 loss to the Blue Jays. In 27 appearances with Double-A Reading this year, the 30-year-old right-hander has performed well, tallying a 2-2 record with a save, a 3.32 ERA and a .200 batting average against.   The embedded video below features a media session with Rossman from prior to opening day this year, in which the California native discusses his journey through independent baseball and back to affiliated ball w...

The following  post originally appeared on my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/phoulballz .  In order to get breaking news, exclusive interviews, early access and other content, please consider supporting my work there for just $5 per month. The long awaited announcement of a return for Major League Baseball came on Tuesday, as the league and the players have come to terms on a 60-game regular season schedule set to begin on either July 23rd or July 24th. The announcement comes on the heels of months-long negotiations between the two sides, as they struggled to agree on a way to safely come back from the Coronavirus related hiatus. With some rule tweaks, MLB will proceed despite considerable rises in COVID-19 cases in Arizona, Texas and Florida, where many games will be played. Rule changes include: The National League will use the designated hitter. The trading deadline will be August 31st. Much like the method used in the minor leagues in recent years, ...

Please consider supporting my work and subscribe to  my Patreon page .  Your patronage will get you exclusive interviews and other prospect related material as well as early access to all of my other content such as this post.  Thank you. It has been multiple weeks since I reported on my Patreon page that a cancellation of the 2020 minor league season is likely as a result of the global pandemic. Despite that, some minor leaguers staying active will be necessary in order to keep players ready in order to supplement each big league roster as needs and injuries arise.  That "taxi squad" could possibly travel with the team and play against the big league opponents' minor leaguers or they could remain stationed at a single location in order to play intrasquad games. This week, Baseball America has reported that in order to make up for the lost playing time, a plan being considered is to allow each of the 30 organizations to send a roster of their own prospe...

Minor League Baseball followed suit with Major League baseball, delaying the start of the 2020 season due to the risk off illness related to the coronavirus. Per a release from MiLB: “In light of the current coronavirus outbreak, and after consultation with medical professionals and our partners at Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball will delay the start of the 2020 Championship Season. We will continue to monitor the developments and will announce additional information about the 2020 season at a later date. We will work with Major League Baseball and our community partners to resume play as soon as it is safe to do so. The health and safety of Minor League Baseball fans, players and executives is our top priority, and our thoughts are with those around the world who have been affected by this outbreak.” It's unclear why Minor League Baseball would refer to the season as "the 2020 Championship Season". In a press release, the Phillies' Do...

Vierling w/ Lakewood in 2018, image- Jay Floyd Outfield prospect Matt Vierling took some time recently to offer some thoughts on his off-season. The 23-year-old was a 5th round draft selection by the Phillies in 2018.  This year, in his first full season in professional baseball, the Notre Dame product posted a .232 average with five home runs, 41 RBI and 22 stolen bases in 118 games with Class A Advanced Clearwater. Last week I asked Matt, a Missouri native, to offer some details on his workout routine in the fall and winter months, his thoughts on Major League Baseball's proposed elimination of certain affiliated minor league teams and plenty more.  Read ahead for that interview. - How much down time do you allow yourself before you get back to picking up a bat and/or taking swings? I try to give myself at least one to two months off from swinging. This year I was on the longer end because I was coming off of my first full year and felt like I needed the b...

This week on PhilliesNation.com, the writing staff took to predicting the 2012 MLB season. Site contributors including 97.5 The Fanatic's Pat Gallen, CSNPhilly's Corey Seidman, yours truly and others all took on the challenge of guessing which players would acquire some important hardware and proclaimed which individuals fans should look out for throughout the new season. Have a look at my predictions, then click the link that follows to see what the full Phillies Nation staff had to say. AL Cy Young Award Winner- Justin Verlander DET NL Cy Young Award Winner- Cliff Lee PHI AL Most Valuable Player- Albert Pujols ANA NL Most Valuable Player- Matt Kemp LAD AL Manager of the Year - John Farrell TOR NL Manager of the Year- Charlie Manuel PHI AL Rookie of the Year - Yu Darvish TEX NL Rookie of the Year- Yonder Alonso SD AL Hitter to Watch - Eric Hosmer KC NL Hitter to Watch- Paul Goldschmidt ARI AL Pitcher to Watch - Henderson Alvarez TOR NL Pitcher to Watch- Jake Diekman ...

The following is a guest post written by friend of this site, Jesse Goldberg-Strassler. A pro baseball broadcaster, Jesse is a life-long sports fan, who calls it like he sees it. The problem with baseball is not that the games go on for over three hours, or that Tony La Russa and Ron Washington used their entire bullpens in each World Series contest, or that the umpires' strike zones are inconsistent. It's much more simple than that. Baseball is my favorite sport. Basketball isn't. Yet this page of the NBA's greatest shots is better than anything baseball can ever produce online. Why? Because it has video links. Baseball's media department, run by Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) prohibits the sharing of any MLB video away from the official Major League website. It's asinine and counterproductive, and promotion of the game suffers because of it. If I wanted to show someone why Barry Sanders was so good, I type 'Barry Sanders' in...

On Wednesday, Major League Baseball announced an upcoming initiative to test players in its minor leagues for human growth hormone this coming season. In a released statement, MLB declared, "We are consulting with our experts concerning immediate steps for our minor league drug program and the next steps for our Major League program." Random urine testing for banned substances began in 2001 in baseball's minor leagues, but blood testing is required to detect the HGH. And while MLB can institute new blood testing for players in the minor leagues, it would need to reach an agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association to start blood testing for unionized players on the 40-man big league rosters. Looking forward, could this be cause for another baseball strike? Possibly. The HGH testing should be implemented. Ball players are aware of the banned drugs that are detected by the existing urine tests, and there are still players who get suspended for positive test...

Former Braves & Metropolitans pitcher Tom Glavine announced his retirement on Thursday. The first thought that popped into my head when I heard that was, "Wasn't Tom Glavine already retired?!" Glavine, a 5-time 20 game winner with Atlanta, will work with the Braves as a special assistant to team president John Schuerholz. Glavine is expected to work with Schuerholz on baseball and business projects and he will occasionally assist team manager Bobby Cox. There are also plans for the 43-year-old Glavine to work on a weekly basis with the Atlanta broadcast team. Many Phillies phans' favorite memory of Glavine is his final effort of the 2007 season with the Metropolitans. That was when NY collapsed in the final weeks of the season and coughed up the division title to our Phillies. On September 30th, 2007 , the final day of the season, the Phillies and Mets were tied for first place. The Mets needed a big game from a big time pitcher, but Glavine had one of his worst ...

For $1,000 in the category of foreign MLB players, the answer is: "The Japanese-born former AL Rookie of the Year, single season hit record holder and future Hall of Famer who trains during the off-season while wearing unnecessarily tight Zubaz style fruit-booty shorts." Who is Ichiro Suzuki? Correct! Cliff Lee's new teammate seems to dress questionably while practicing, near home, in the off-season. ------------------------------- Follow PhoulBallz.com on Twitter HERE for updates, games and generally good baseball facts. Share on Facebook

Taking a look at this AP graphic detailing 2009 MLB payrolls, the differences are clear. The fun part of looking over something like this is picking out the underachievers and the surprise performers. The difference between the Detroit Tigers' payroll and the Florida Marlins' total team salary is nearly 102 million dollars. The difference between the Tigers and Marlins in 2009 total wins is 1 (the Marlins has one more win than the Tigers). That is remarkable value from Florida. In fact, the Marlins, with the lowest payroll in MLB, had more wins than 19 teams and the same amount of wins as one other team. 15 of those 19 teams that the Marlins were better than had a payroll that was at least DOUBLE what the Marlins paid their 40 man roster. At 87 wins, the Marlins finished just 6 games out of the division lead and 5 games back in the wild card standings. Imagine if that team actually spent some money and brought in some help for the existing core of young players. Adding veteran ...

Tim McClelland, the Major League umpire famous from the George Brett pine tar incident, was the guest speaker at an Iowa baseball dinner last week and he had some interesting things to say about the steroids issue, in his sport. Here are some gems, from McClelland... "I'd like to see people kind of get over it. It was part of that era. In 2004, baseball instituted the ban on steroids. The previous 15 years, you just have to realize there were a lot of people taking steroids." "They used it to make themselves better. I can't fault a player for doing that." The Brett/pine tar incident was during a 1983 game with Brett's Royals visiting Yankee Stadium. While trailing in the 9th inning, Brett smacked a homer off closer Goose Gossage, and gave the Royals a lead. The Yankees knew of Brett's habits of adding too much pine tar (a legal substance used on bats for grip), too far up his bat. The Yanks chose a crucial time to point it out, and Tim McClelland rev...

In what continues to be a string of bad luck (Utley surgery, Amaro Jr. over-spending on Ibanez, Elton Brand's shoulder injury) since Pat Gillick retired as Phillies GM, news is unveiled tonight that JC Romero has been suspended for the first 50 games of next season. It's all very confusing, especially since the Phillies, MLB and Romero all knew about this during the post season. But it seems Romero purchased a supplement from a GNC store in Cherry Hill, NJ on July 22nd, and was told by a nutrionist, the Phillies' conditioning coach Dong Lien and MLB that the supplement was acceptable to use. 3 months later, it turns out, the supplement was not allowed. Romero was initially informed of the positive results on September 23rd. ESPN reports that during October Romero was told, by the Players' Association, that the case would be dropped because the findings of his drug screening were positive due to pills purchased over the counter. That did not prove true, obviously. Romero...