Albert Almora

A year ago, some team might have made an offer that rocked Alex Young's world. The Pirates, Nationals or Red Sox, maybe even the Cubs, might have dug deep for the left-hander from Carmel High School. They still could, of course, but 2012 is definitely...

Talking baseball while hoping the Bulls can avoid leaking talent in the off-season. The White Sox have a new rallying cry, and it’s silly. Hey, we’re 17-21, look at us now! That was the talk coming out of the clubhouse and the broadcast...

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Go ahead, Theo Epstein. Make that splash your fans have been waiting for since you were hired. Trade Starlin Castro for Justin Upton. Javier Baez has your back. At 22, Castro is far from a polished product. But he's also...

Lots of people out there are just waiting to see Theo Epstein fail. They think he gets too much attention, that his deal with Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts is too sweet. They think he should have received more criticism for a run of failed free-agent...

New rules, new attitudes. That may be what's needed to understand the changes to the baseball draft. Always the quirkiest distribution system for talent in pro sports, Major League Baseball has added layers of complications with spending limits and...

So much for Anthony Rizzo's victory lap. On the day after Rizzo's critically acclaimed Chicago debut, the Cubs demonstrated nicely what exactly he has gotten himself into. The 17-1 loss to the Mets wasn't quite like that horrific, fireball-generating...

PITTSBURGH — No, you couldn't have gone ice fishing Wednesday in Pittsburgh. That season has come and gone. It's time for baseball, even if it didn't seem like it at PNC Park, along the banks of the Allegheny River. After a pitch shattered his...

MESA, Ariz. — Shawn Camp walked into Cubs camp late last March. It was only 10 days before opening day and he knew four people in the room. Luckily for Camp, one of those four was manager Dale Sveum. And perhaps even better for Camp, there were few...

MESA, Ariz. — A persistent father leaned into the Cubs dugout Tuesday at Hohokam Stadium to get Theo Epstein's attention. For several minutes in excruciating detail, the man asked Epstein's advice in dealing with a son struggling to make his...

TEMPE, Ariz. — And so it begins. On a cool, sunny Saturday alongside scenic Interstate 10, the Cubs played their first game with real promise since August 2009, when the worm turned for Lou Piniella. It didn't matter, of course, but it did suggest...

Nineteen cents. That's what tickets in the third row of Section 533 were advertised at on StubHub Monday afternoon. As for the rest of Wrigley Field, it looks like most of those tickets couldn't be given away. No surprise there, not with the Bears...

— Red Sox center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury is off to a poor start but remains one of the more interesting potential free agents. Cubs President Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer know Ellsbury well from their days in Boston and are aware...