No one ever started a career the way Trevor Story did. Playing shortstop for the Colorado Rockies in place of the suspended Jose Reyes, Story hit home runs in each of his first four games, a total of six. He added a seventh home run in his sixth game.

The early flurry of home runs overshadowed Story’s strikeouts – eight in those first six games, 15 in the first nine, a trio of 3-strikeout games in a 5-game span.

Now, approaching the halfway point of the season, the 23-year-old Story has struck out 104 times (before Sunday), more than any other major league hitter.

He is the leader of a pack of hitters who are headed toward an all-time high number of strikeouts, projected to top …

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This is a column about two women. They may not belong in the same column, but they are here as the result of the coincidence of recent news development. One of the women, Jen Pawol, whom I talked with, is ecstatically happy, and I am happy for her. I have not talked to the other woman so I don’t know how she feels, but she very likely has mixed feelings.

Katherine Ramirez is the wife of Jose Reyes, the 2011 National League batting champion, who was suspended for the first two months of this season for violating Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy. Ramirez can’t be happy because she was the target of the alleged domestic violence, but she is happy that Reyes was not criminally convicted and, following his suspension, is free to play baseball.

Reyes avoided criminal prosecution because Ramirez …

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There are various ways to react to the idea that Madison Bumgarner has raised. The San Francisco Giants pitcher said earlier this month that pitchers should be allowed to compete in Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby, which is staged the day before the All-Star Game.

My immediate reaction was absolutely not…dumbest idea I’ve heard…why make a joke of events surrounding the All-Star Game, the oldest and most popular all-star game of the four major sports? The other leagues have already made a joke of their all-star games; why join them?

But I thought about it for another second and said why not? MLB has already made a joke of its once glamorous All-Star Game; what’s one more joke in July?

In saying he wanted to compete in the Home Run Derby, Bumgarner was feeling his …

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