And now, some comments about baseball's top news stories: * The Milwaukee Brewers fired manager Ron Roenicke even though the team seemed to be getting healthy and digging out from its April slump. The Brewers had won three of four when general manager Doug Melvin made the announcement Sunday night, but long-term the Brewers had been fading. They led the National Central by 6½ games at the end of June last season and were still only a game behind first-place St. Louis when September began....

Two of the Nationals' top right-handed pitching prospects, Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez, will officially join high Single-A Potomac this week, a high-ranking club source confirmed to MASNsports.com. The duo has been working out and logging innings at the Nationals training facility in Viera, Fla., over the past month. Giolito and Lopez's first starts with the P-Nats are imminent, and will be announced this week. Potomac's published game notes list "TBA" for Wednesday night's scheduled...

This is the Nationals pitching staff we've been waiting to see. Since coming back from 9-1 and 10-2 deficits to beat the Braves 13-12 last Tuesday in a game that may well be remembered as the defining moment of the 2015 season, the Nats have won four of five games behind starting pitching that has been just about lights out. In this latest turn through the rotation, Jordan Zimmermann, Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer, Gio Gonzalez and Doug Fister have gone 4-1 with a cumulative 1.65 ERA. They...

Baseball rosters fascinate me - the way they are constructed, they way certain players must pass through waivers or be optioned to the minor leagues. It's all a messy and complicated puzzle. Now that we are through the first month of the season, the most intriguing part to the Orioles puzzle is Jimmy Paredes. I wonder every day how that puzzle piece fits into the bigger picture long term. The biggest problem with Paredes going forward is the fact that he doesn't really have a position. He's...

The Nationals clubhouse was quiet last Sunday night as the players packed up having just been easily swept by the Marlins. It wasn't the start anyone expected from a Nats team that was focused on the 10-day excursion against three National League East opponents as a way to fix the surprising mistakes of the early season. Seven days later, after displaying tremendous fortitude in Atlanta, the Nationals finished the road trip, celebrating with blaring beats among a smoke-filled locker room after...

It is an important stat, but according to many that play in and/or cover the game, hitting with runners in scoring position is not a skill - and certainly not one a player can work on like he can in trying to improve his power, speed or fielding. It is a stat the Orioles are excelling in so far during the 2015 season. Their team batting average with RISP is .317 and that leads the American League. Since April 26, when the Orioles scored 18 runs at home against Boston, they are batting .488...

The Orioles are back home today, and not in the dome sense of the word. They're really home until later this afternoon, when they board a train to New York. Coming up are two games against the Mets followed by four against the Yankees. They don't return to Camden Yards until May 11 against the Blue Jays. The Orioles are preparing for their first interleague series. They should be excited just to get out of the American League East. The most positive development at Tropicana Field involved a...

FLUSHING, N.Y. - For the second straight day, the Nationals received an incredible pitching performance, this time from right-hander Doug Fister, as they held on to shut out the Mets 1-0 and take the four-game series. "Well, the last two have been kind of the same," Nationals manager Matt Williams said. Good starting pitching. Good bullpen and then turning it over to Drew (Storen). It's good. 1-0 is never fun but we'll take it any way we can get it." It's the second time the Nationals...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - The Orioles took two of three games at Oriole Park at Tropicana Field, or OPATF for short, and moved above .500 for the first time since April 20. They handled their latest challenge like all the others, in businesslike fashion and refusing to accept any sort of pity. "People have been through worse, man. People have been through worse," said center fielder Adam Jones, who went 4-for-4 with a tie-breaking two-run single in a 4-2 win over the Rays before 16,652. "We're...

The bullpen has started to set itself recently. After Saturday's contest, the Nationals' relievers had put together 8 2/3 innings over their last four games, allowing only four hits, three earned runs and one walk, and registering 10 strikeouts. Then Sunday, Tanner Roark notched two huge outs, including a strikeout of Ruben Tejada in the seventh. Matt Thornton battled past two walks to get two outs himself. Aaron Barrett struck out Michael Cuddyer to end the threat. As we noted on "Nats...