DENVER (AP) ― Brandon Phillips tripled, homered and doubled in his first three at-bats, Greg Reynolds beat his former team for his first major league win in two years, and the Cincinnati Reds defeated the Colorado Rockies 8-3 on Saturday night.Phillips scored three times, drove in two runs and just missed becoming the first Reds player to hit for the cycle since Eric Davis did it against the San Diego Padres on June 2, 1989. Phillips struck out and grounded sharply to third in his last two at-ba

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― After four innings of watching Yasiel Puig, manager Don Mattingly had seen enough.The Cuban rookie was pulled from the game, and he then met with Mattingly and general manager Ned Colletti behind closed doors after the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs 4-0 on Wednesday.Mattingly wasn’t willing to specify exactly why he pulled Puig for Skip Schumaker, saying only, “I felt I was going to get a better effort out of Skip.” Reds rout Cardinals 10-0 ST. LOUIS (AP) ― Jay Bruc

Heo Min, the owner of the South Korean independent baseball team the Goyang Wonders, will join a North American independent league as a pitcher, the Wonders announced on Thursday.The 37-year-old entrepreneur will pitch for the Rockland Boulders in the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball, commonly known as the Can-Am League, the Wonders said, calling Heo “the first South Korean knuckleballer to reach a U.S. league.” (Yonhap News)

Choo Shin-soo of the Cincinnati Reds belted his 100th career Major League Baseball home run on Tuesday against the St. Louis Cardinals on the road.Choo hit the milestone home run off St. Louis starter Joe Kelly in the fifth inning at Busch Stadium. It was his 17th long ball of this season.In his first season with the Reds, Choo has been one of the most productive outfielders and leadoff men in all of National League. Before the game against the Cards, Choo ranked second in the NL in on-base perc

South Korea’s youth baseball team on Tuesday vowed to bring home the winner’s trophy from the upcoming world championship in Taiwan.South Korea is set to compete at the U18 Baseball World Cup from Aug. 30-Sept. 8 in Taichung, Taiwan. The country is paired with Australia, Colombia, Cuba, Italy and the United States in Pool B. Pool A teams are Canada, the Czech Republic, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and Venezuela. South Korea’s opening game will be against Italy on Friday.“Our team will be led by strong

The top domestic baseball league on Tuesday announced schedules for games that were previously rained out, with an aim to finish the regular season in the first week of October.The Korea Baseball Organization said 49 rained out games, along with eight other previously unscheduled games, will be played from Sept. 16 to Oct. 3.The league said games that are canceled due to rain after Tuesday will be played on a handful of open dates. It added that it will ensure no one team will play more than sev

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― Zack Greinke came within one strike of his fifth career shutout, Hanley Ramirez and Yasiel Puig homered, and the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Chicago Cubs 6-2 Monday night, ending a two-game skid.The Cubs lost for the eighth straight time to the Dodgers, including a four-game sweep at Wrigley Field earlier this month. The Dodgers equaled their longest winning streak against the Cubs in franchise history, set from June 9, 1974-May 19, 1975.Greinke (13-3) tied his season hig

A month after acknowledging only that he made “mistakes,” Ryan Braun admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs during his NL MVP season of 2011.The suspended Milwaukee slugger said he took a cream and a lozenge containing banned substances while rehabilitating an injury.“It was a huge mistake for which I am deeply ashamed and I compounded the situation by not admitting my mistakes immediately,” Braun said in a statement released by the Brewers.Braun tested positive for elevated testosterone in

Jung Sang-chul has been a fan of the LG Twins, a Seoul-based Korea Baseball Organization club, since 1994, the team’s last championship season.In the intervening years, like most other KBO teams, the Twins have had their shares of ups and downs ― mostly downs.In a league where nearly half the teams make the playoffs, the Twins last reached the postseason in 2002, when they lost to the Samsung Lions in Game 6 of the Korean Series by giving up two home runs in the bottom of the ninth. Since then,