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SoxFest Live kicked off Friday night at the Ramova Theatre as the baseball offseason wraps up and pitchers and catchers prepare to report for Spring Training. The White Sox had a decent rebound season last year while sporting a very young team in 2025 and coming off a historically horrific 2024. However, the vibes were high all night on the South Side, as fans feel more optimistic about the organization’s future.

Of course, the part of the night that drove the most buzz was the announcement of the 2026 promo items, and trust me, they are SHARP.

Miguel Vargas, Colson Montgomery, Chase Meidroth, and Kyle Teel all opened a gift bag on stage that featured their own bobbleheads, including a catcher’s duo bobblehead with Teel and his counterpart, Edgar Quero. While all of them are awesome, in my opinion, the real star of the show is the Bobby Jenks and A.J. Pierzynski bobblehead as they celebrate winning the 2005 World Series. A perfect tribute to the glue of the championship-winning team and to Bobby, who was lost way too soon last year.

Home opening weekend is full of fun giveaways, including the Bobby and A.J. bobble, an Opening Day t-shirt featuring Munetaka Murakami, a few jackets, and plenty of City Connect swag. I know I initially talked some smack about the new City Connect jerseys’ lack of creativity, but they do make some pretty epic gear. And let’s not forget the Mexican heritage items because every year these games are beyond fun with a sellout crowd, and the Los White Sox jersey is always a hit.

When chatting with several season ticket holders, the consensus is that they have more faith in the front office over the last year, and there is heightened positivity around the Rebuild 2.0 that GM Chris Getz has been forced to undertake. Many players seem to share the same sentiment, as every player we were able to speak with said they were “excited to get back together with the guys, and get back to playing and working on being consistent.”

There were 10 South Siders in the building on Friday night. The legendary Gene Honda began the evening by introducing everyone, with his smooth, iconic voice easily hyping up the crowd as if it were a Saturday night game at the Rate, and he’s announcing the starting lineup. A sort of frightening starting lineup considering there were just four position players and six pitchers, but perhaps Davis Martin or Shane Smith is a secret weapon at the plate, though I’m not sure I want to find out.

First up was the broadcast team, with in-game reporters Brooke Fletcher and Connor McKnight, followed by the TV and radio crew, featuring Chuck Garfein, Len Kasper, and John Schriffen. Getz and manager Will Venable repped the front office and coaching staff, followed by two minor league prospects who joined this year: infielder Sam Antonacci and righthander Tanner McDougal.

Last up were the major leaguers — the stars of the show. Grant Taylor, Anthony Kay, Davis Martin, and Shane Smith represented the South Side pitching staff. Kay joined the team for the first time this offseason, signing out of the NPB in Japan, and is thrilled to be meeting some of the guys and looking forward to Spring Training and another chance in MLB.

Last but certainly not least: infielders Vargas, Meidroth, and Montgomery, and catcher Teel, who recently committed to playing for Italy in the World Baseball Classic this March. There was, however, one player who was unable to attend, but Munetaka Murakami was there in spirit and shared a message to fans, earning a roar from the crowd upon hearing “Go White Sox!”

Fans were also able to ask questions to Getz and Venable in a segment called “Pardon the Pitch Clock”, which gave them four minutes to answer some questions from the crowd. The five categories before a final “lightning round” were: the 2026 outlook, offseason acquisitions and roster philosophy, players to watch, new initiatives and innovations, and clubhouse culture and leadership. This year was probably much easier to manage, considering they aren’t coming off of the worst season ever, but the positivity and buy-in from Getz and Venable seem to reinforce the fans’ hope for the future of the team.

Props to the White Sox for putting on a great event for the first day, and a big thank you to the players for being so welcoming and willing to talk with us and answer questions. We’ll be back with more coverage throughout the rest of the event!

MLB.com | Sweeny Murti: Two-time Yankees reliever David Robertson has announced his retirement at the age of 40 after 17 big league seasons. It marks the end of an era, as Robertson was the last remaining active player in MLB from the Yankees 2009 World Series winning roster. The Yankees drafted Robertson in 2006, and he played seven seasons in his first stint in the Bronx. After two-and-a-half years with the White Sox, the Yankees brought Robertson back near the 2017 trade deadline as part of a deal that also brought Todd Frazier and Tommy Kahnle to the Bronx. Robertson played six more seasons after departing the Yankees for a second time in 2018, and you can read a full tribute to his time in pinstripes here. Congratulations, D-Rob, on a fantastic career and best of luck with your future endeavors!

MLB Trade Rumors | Darragh McDonald: Earlier this week, we reported on the Yankees’ interest in a reunion with Paul Goldschmidt, and it appears the Yankees have stepped up their engagement with his representatives. Goldschmidt slashed .274/.328/.403 with ten home runs and a 103 wRC+ in 146 games with the Yankees after signing a one-year, $12.5 million deal last offseason. Goldschmidt was far more productive against lefties (169 wRC+) and could be brought back as the short side of a first base platoon with Ben Rice. However, he’s entering his age-38 season, and would futher clog up a bench that already includes J.C. Escarra and Amed Rosario.

Goldschmidt isn’t the only player the Yankees have checked in with this week. They are rumored to have interest in swingman Nick Martinez, who could help cover in the rotation at the start of the season before transitioning to the bullpen as their injured starters get healthy. They’ve also been linked to reliever Michael Kopech, who won a World Series with the Dodgers two years ago before missing most of 2025 to injury. As for outfield depth, there are rumors of a reunion with Austin Slater and interest in Randal Grichuk.

New York Post | Greg Joyce: Brian Cashman believes that his new-look bullpen can emerge as a strength of the team in 2026. He acknowledged the subtractions of Devin Williams and Luke Weaver to the Mets in free agency, but held firm in his belief that they have the people in place to fill those voids. He cited Rule 5 draftee Cade Winquest and trade acquisition Angel Chivilli as a pair of examples of the guys who could step up, as well as younger pitchers they have developed including Carlos Lagrange and Brent Headrick.

SNY | Phillip Martinez: With the Yankees running it back with their 2025 outfield, Aaron Boone admitted that the outlook for Jasson Domínguez and Spencer Jones has changed. Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham are back in the fold, reducing the number of opportunities available to the Yankees’ pair of former top prospects. Rumors of the Yankees dangling either Domínguez or Jones in pursuit of pitching grew after Bellinger re-upped, though many of the top starting pitching trade candidates have already been dealt.

The Athletic | Chris Kirschner ($): Kirschner answers a handful of questions in his end-of-the-month mailbag, and Domínguez’s future features heavily, with Kirschner predicting that the Yankees will retain him as an option off the bench rather that trade him away. He also touches on the $42.5 million the Yankees will be paying Bellinger in each of the next two seasons and why the team did not allocate that money to a different player (mostly, Bellinger’s fit on the roster). Kirschner backs the front office’s decision to run it back with last year’s offense given the unit had the highest wRC+ (119) in MLB in 2025, though he also admits that it is impossible to know what version of Anthony Volpe the Yankees are going to get once he returns from his shoulder surgery rehab.

After signing with the Astros ahead of the 2019 season, it didn’t take long for former All-Star outfielder Michael Brantley to hear about his new organization’s top prospect.

“They were comparing this kid to Ted Williams,” Brantley recalled. “And I was like, ‘Well, that’s kind of special.’ I want to see this.”

The kid, Brantley would soon learn, was named Kyle Tucker.

And the comparison, he still marvels at now, was shockingly apt.

“It made me laugh at first, because he does a lot of things that are unorthodox,” Brantley said. “But when you actually break down his swing, he gets into such great positions.”

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Long before he became a touted young talent, then a four-time All-Star slugger, then a blockbuster $240 million signing with the Dodgers this offseason, Tucker’s baseball career began in the backyard of his Tampa-area home — where childhood games of stick and Wiffle ball with his older brother, Preston, first helped mold one of the most complete hitters in Major League Baseball today.

The origin story is simple. Growing up, Tucker would emulate Preston (who was six years his elder, and destined for his own MLB career) in their backyard games. Because Preston hit right-handed, Tucker would mirror him from the left side of the plate. And because Preston had a similarly unusual swing, Tucker’s mechanics naturally followed suit.

Some days, the boys would pitch a small ball of cork to each other, letting natural instinct take over as they whacked at it with the handle of a broomstick. Other times, they used a standard-issue Wiffle ball set, learning how to adjust to the serpentine movement of the perforated plastic sphere.

“All they had time to do was just use their hands,” said Dennis Braun, Tucker’s high school coach at Plant High in Tampa. “That’s how they learned how to hit.”

For Tucker, the result was a swing with seemingly flawed fundamentals.

He’d step up to the plate with the wrong foot. His hands would drop low as he started to attack the ball. His bat path had an atypically sweepy motion. He would drop his back knee and almost scissor his legs as he made contact and completed his follow-through.

Years of practice, however, had taught him how to sync it all together; giving him the ability to hit for power, adjust to breaking pitches and most importantly keep his hands inside the ball consistently on every pitch.

“You can’t teach somebody to do it,” Braun said. “But I told him, ‘Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t hit that way, because I think it’s a thing.’ ”

All along, the comparisons to Williams — who earned the moniker of “the greatest hitter who ever lived” with an eerily similar swing — steadily grew.

When Tucker was a high school freshman, one of Braun’s assistant coaches, former Yankees catcher John Ramos, first bestowed him with the “Ted Williams” nickname.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute,’ ” Braun recalled with a laugh, “the kid’s got nowhere to go but down.’ ”

As Tucker became a top draft prospect in the 2015 class, eventually going fifth overall to the Astros (who also had Preston in their organization), scouts began drawing parallels in their reports, too.

“I’m not one of those guys who thinks anybody’s gonna be a first-rounder when they show up as a freshman,” Braun said. “But as we went along each year, he got bigger and bigger. By the time he got to his senior year, the amount of people that were out here watching BP was in the hundreds.”

In 2018, a few months before making his highly anticipated MLB debut as a 21-year-old, Tucker was even enlisted to impersonate Williams in a PBS documentary about the late Hall of Famer, donning a 1950s-era uniform as filmmakers captured slow-motion shots of his swing.

“He’s tweaked it a little bit over the years,” Tucker’s mom, Lisa, said. “But if it’s gotten you to where you’re at, it’s like, ‘Why change?’ ”

That was also Brantley’s initial impression after meeting Tucker for the first time and watching him swing up close.

“It doesn’t always look as pretty as a normal swing would,” Brantley said. “But if you really break down the science of the swing, and see where his hands get to, his foot is at the time of contact, and the position at contact, it is very special.”

And over the last five years, Tucker has used the swing to make his own name in the majors.

In 2020, he cemented himself as an everyday player for a contending Astros team, flashing plus outfield defense and an ability to steal bases to go along with offensive production. In 2021, he received MVP votes after batting a career-best .294 with 30 home runs. In 2022, he earned what would become the first of four consecutive All-Star selections. And now, he has established himself as one of the most consistent players in the sport, one of only four big-leaguers to post at least 4.5 wins above replacement every year since 2021, per Baseball Reference.

For that, Tucker has given much credit to Brantley.

When the veteran first arrived in Houston, he made a point of taking Tucker under his wing, becoming his catch partner, his hitting cage confidant, and his locker-mate in the clubhouse.

During spring training, he’d challenge Tucker to beat him to the facility in the mornings. “I’d usually get to the field around 7 a.m.” Brantley joked. “And Tuck’s not a morning guy.” Yet, Tucker would be there, ready to warm-up in the gym and get to work early on the field.

Brantley retired from the majors at the end of the 2023 season. Tucker left Houston a year later, getting traded to the Cubs in his final season before free agency. But the two remain close. So much so, Tucker said he will wear Brantley’s old jersey number, 23, with the Dodgers as a nod to his former teammate.

To Brantley, that was a “very special” gesture. However, he emphasized that Tucker’s success has been all his own doing — going back to the superstar’s five-tool skillset, a deep “passion” for the game that goes overlooked by his outwardly quiet demeanor, and of course the Ted Williams-esque swing that remains universally admired and largely unchanged.

“He just settled into his own, and took the world by storm,” Brantley said. “As he should have, because he was such a big prospect. But he panned out because of the hard work he put in.”

Look at Leo Balcazar running away with the vote for spot #13 in this year’s edition of the Community Prospect Rankings!

Perhaps that’s an indictment of which prospects I included in this particular round of voting. Or, perhaps it’s an indication that you fine voters here at Red Reporter are awfully high on Balcazar’s prospects as, well, a prospect once again.

There was a time when that was something of a no-brainer. He mauled Dominican Summer League play with an .882 OPS in 2021 at just 17 years of age, and he backed it up the following year with an equally impressive .886 OPS in Arizona Complex League play in his first season in the states. Then, in a 19 game sample to begin the 2023 season with Class-A Daytona in the pitching-friendly Florida State League, he roared out of the gate with an .897 OPS only to tear his ACL and miss the remainder of the year.

When he returned in 2024, he was a shell of his former self. He’d been an athletic shortstop whose quickness helped make up for an average arm, but his quickness had been sapped. His work at the plate slumped, too, and suddenly there was wonder whether he’d be able to work his way back.

2025 was a much more positive step in the right direction. He posted a modest .720 OPS as he reached AA Chattanooga, but the athleticism began to return – as did some of the excellent exit velocities off his bat. He finished the year with a positive showing in 24 Arizona Fall League games, and he still won’t even turn 22 until this summer.

There’s beginning to be some buzz again about Balcazar, and I think it’s warranted, even if he’s destined to stick at 2B long term.

He’s the #13 prospect in this year’s CPR!