Worldwide Sports News

Brice Turang’s homer in the ninth inning gave Milwaukee a three-game sweep of the New Yankees and was the latest example of an early-season trend.

The American League has been taking it on the chin.

By the end of the night Sunday, only three AL teams had a winning record, and one of them was the Athletics, who were only two games above .500. The Rays (26-13) and Yankees (26-15) are the only junior circuit teams that have been really impressive, and the latter ran into quite a roadblock against the NL Central’s Brewers.

If the season ended now, the last two AL wild cards would be the White Sox and Rangers, who are both 19-21.

Eleven AL teams are under .500. That’s the most through May 10 of any league in the divisional play era, according to Sportradar. The 2019 AL and the 2012 and 2010 NL each had nine teams under .500 at this point in the year.

Part of what makes this scenario possible is the proliferation of interleague play. The NL is 107-82 against the AL this season for a .566 winning percentage. The best interleague season was when the AL had a .611 winning percentage against the NL in 2006. But there were only 252 interleague games that whole year. There have already been 189 this season.

The more interleague games, the further one league can move ahead of the other. And even at the top of the AL East, the Rays are 8-10 against the NL and 18-3 against the AL.

Crucial stretch

Despite the soft AL playoff race, Orioles fans have become increasingly ornery as their team sputters at the start of a second straight season. Baltimore is 18-23, just 1 1/2 games out of a postseason spot, but May has already included a four-game sweep in the Bronx in which the Orioles were outscored 39-10.

Now the Yankees come to Baltimore for a three-game set, and the Orioles host the Rays in a series that starts Memorial Day. The big question in Baltimore is whether the Orioles can simply stay afloat for the rest of the month and avoid digging too big a hole.

Motown mess

It was a rough week for the starting rotation that was supposed to be such a strength in Detroit. Tarik Skubal was scratched from his start Monday and could be out a while because of loose bodies in his elbow. Then Framber Valdez was shelled by Boston on Tuesday and hit Trevor Story with a pitch, drawing a five-game suspension.

Jack Flaherty hasn’t been good either and Justin Verlander has made only one start.

The Tigers are 19-22, although that means they’re only a half-game out of a wild card and 1 1/2 out of first place in the AL Central.

Trivia time

Milwaukee’s Aaron Ashby is already 7-0 in relief this season. Pittsburgh’s Roy Face holds the modern single-season record for relief wins with 18 in 1959. But who has the career mark?

Performance of the week

Andy Pages had three homers and six RBIs for the Los Angeles Dodgers in a 12-2 win over Houston on Wednesday. It’s been Pages — not Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman or Kyle Tucker — making an outsized offensive contribution early this season for the two-time defending champs. Pages is hitting .333 with nine home runs and 35 RBIs.

Comeback of the week

Down to their last out Sunday, the San Diego Padres tied the game against St. Louis on Nick Castellanos’ two-run homer. Then they won 3-2 in 10 innings on Manny Machado’s walk-off sacrifice fly.

The Cardinals had a win probability of 95.4% in the bottom of the ninth, according to Baseball Savant.

San Diego already has four walk-off victories this season, second to the Chicago Cubs’ six. Neither has a walk-off defeat.

Trivia answer

Hall of Fame knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm earned 124 of his 143 wins in relief.

Welcome to your fantasy baseball starting pitcher happy place. This is a new column for me this year that will combine a few things I've done in the past. In this article, every Monday, you'll not only get a list of my favorite streaming starting pitchers for the whole week, but underneath that, you'll get a breakdown of a few pitchers who are making interesting changes to their pitch mix. Today I covered Robby Snelling, Griffin Jax, Griffin Canning, and Christian Scott.

It's a little bit of rankings and a little bit of analysis, and hopefully a lot of help for your teams.

As far as which pitchers on this list you'll want to stream, your decisions will change based on your league type and settings. Since I'm listing starters for all week, I'm not going to be able to give a detailed analysis for each one; I'll just highlight the matchup and some quick thoughts. As is usual with my articles, a streaming starter pitcher is rostered in less than 40% of Yahoo formats, so just keep that in mind as we’re going through because I won't be mentioning pitchers who are rostered in more leagues than that, and I also won't be mentioning pitchers who I would not start in any format.

Check out this week’s MLB Power Rankings!

Starting Pitcher Streamers of the Week

There are not a lot of games on Monday, so not a ton of streaming choices. I like this matchup for Joey Cantillo. As we've discussed a bunch of times, if his changeup is located well, he's going to pitch well against any team. This is a bit of a stiffer test for Peter Lambert, but he has been good for Houston, and it'll just be nice to see what Alek Manoah can do in bulk relief innings. I'm not starting him anywhere.

None of the options today really stand out as being elite. Walbert Urena has shown flashes but is tough to trust, and Cleveland is going to throw all lefties at him. Andre Pallante is in a terrible ballpark, Brady Singer and Brandon Sproat have not been pitching well enough to inspire confidence, and the rest of the guys are all matchup plays.

Reid Detmers is going to need his changeup in this one, and the Guardians offense is pretty good against lefties, so I'm a little worried, but I'm going to perhaps foolishly trust Detmers here. The Tigers' offense is also far better against righties, which gives me mild pause with Christian Scott, but I do like him as a pitcher. I also don't know what we're getting out of Griffin Jax, who is being stretched out as a starter, and Noah Schultz, who is just inconsistent. I know J.T. Ginn also had a tremendous last game, but using him in Sacramento is incredibly risky.

This is the best day for streaming this week. I know Connor Prielipp hasn't thrown more than five innings yet, but he's gone over 90 pitches in back-to-back games, and his defense really let him down in the last outing. We also always start Chase Dollander on the road, but Carmen Mlodzinski gets to face the Rockies outside of Coors, which we love. I also think prospects tend to perform much better after the nerves of their MLB debut are over, so Robby Snelling is a decent bet here. Mike Burrows is also starting to turn things around a bit, and the underlying metrics are good. I know Ben Brown has been good in a multi-inning relief role this year, but he still hasn't added anything to his pitch mix, and that was always the problem when he had to pitch deeper into games.

I know there's word about Brandon Woodruff working his way back, but he also had fluid drained from a cyst in his shoulder, so I don't think Logan Henderson has to worry about his spot in the rotation right now. Janson Junk is also pitching well enough to be trusted in any sort of decent matchup.

This is another rough day for streaming with a lot of aces going. Kendry Rojas is intriguing, but his command is all over the place, so I can't recommend him higher than this, and Cade Cavalli is simply too inconsistent as really a one-pitch pitcher with a bunch of average other offerings.

The Reds on the road are usually a good matchup, so that works for Joey Cantillo this week. We also get better second starts for Peter Lambert, Andre Pallante, and Stephen Kolek. We also should get Lucas Giolito's debut here, but I find it hard to start him since it's his first start of the season, and he hasn't looked great in the minors.

Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix Changes

Griffin Jax - Tampa Bay Rays (Sweeper Usage, Cutter Usage, New Curve)

Jax is moving to the rotation, so there will obviously be some pitch mix changes. However, there has also been some overall growth to his pitches coming over to Tampa Bay, especially with his four-seam fastball. We expected a velocity dip moving from the bullpen, but overall, his fastball is down one mph, and he has added 1.2 inches of vertical movement to increase his height-adjusted vertical approach angle to be even steeper. He's also using that four-seamer up in the zone more often, which is the right idea, but that has also led to him missing up in the zone more often, so that's something he'll need to keep addressing.

This season, he also added a curveball, which he’s throwing primarily to left-handed hitters at 11% overall, and at 61% to lefties in two-strike counts. It has a tremendous 36.4% PutAway Rate, so even though the usage isn't high, it's clearly doing its job after getting ahead with the four-seamer and/or changeup. He's also changed how he's attacking lefties with his cutter, throwing it up in the zone 36% more often, but not being so focused on jamming it in on their hands. The pitch isn't missing tons of bats, but it is getting a lot of weak contact. Considering he's using it 77% of the time early in counts to lefties, it's just a solid get-ahead or get an early ground-out pitch.

Another change we've seen, primarily as he has moved to starting, has been a reduction in his sweeper usage. Last year, he used his sweeper 44% of the time, but this year, it's down to 26%. A big component of that is that he's now seeing more lefties. In his first 11 appearances out of the bullpen, he used the sweeper 34% of the time overall and even 26% of the time to lefties. In fact, his pitch mix to lefties as a reliever was 31% changeups, 26% sweepers, 22.5% four-seamers, and 16% curveballs. In his three starts, he's now 42% four-seamer, 25% chanegup, 19% cutter, 7.5% sweeper, and 3% curveball. I think the curveball count is so low because he's only thrown 67 pitches to lefties as a starter, and we know his curve is reserved for two-strike situations.

Yet, we can clearly see some change in his approach after just three starts. I think he has a deep enough pitch mix to attack both lefties and righties and offerings to miss bats to both. It may take a little while for him to fully click as a starter, but I can certainly see this working.

Griffin Canning - San Diego Padres (New Fastball Shape, Changeup Usage, New Sweeper)

Griffin Canning has made two starts with the Padres, and even though the last one was a real disappointment, we can still look at the changes he's made. For starters, after being primarily a four-seam and slider pitcher with the Mets, the Padres have him throwing almost 40% changeups, and his slider usage has decreased from 31% to 18%. I'm not fully sure I understand that since his slider has always been his best pitch, and it was good to both righties and lefties last year when it posted a 20.7% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and 34% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) to lefties alone. This season, the Padres have him throwing it more as an early-count pitch, even though it continues to have lots of success in two-strike counts. This one I don't get.

The increased changeup usage itself is fine. It's been a pretty good pitch for him. This year, it has over three inches more horizontal movement and almost three inches more drop. The zone rate on it has fallen from 50% to 35% as the Padres try to use it as more of a swing-and-miss pitch. It does have a really impressive 22.4% SwStr% to lefties and has been successful in limited usage as a two-strike pitch. However, it has just a 10% SwStr% to righties at 24% usage, and I think he'd be better off using his slider more to righties and dialing back the changeup as more of a weak contact pitch early in the counts.

Canning has also added over one inch of vertical movement to his fastball, but has also added horizontal movement as well. It's technically a flatter fastball, and he's using it up in the zone 17% more often, which has led to far more swinging strikes and far fewer called strikes. It's also still getting hit pretty hard, with a 50% ICR allowed. It is succeeding as a two-strike pitch, so maybe he should be more focused and changeups early to lefties and sinkers early for righties, and use the four-seam for swinging strikes

Lastly, Canning has seemingly turned his cutter into a sweeper. The pitch is now 86 mph with 11 inches of horizontal movement and 1.6 inches of drop. He's used it just three times to righties and has yet to throw a single one in the zone, so this is clearly still a work in progress.

Christian Scott - New York Mets (New Cutter, New Sinker)

I like a lot of what I've seen with Christian Scott this year. Scott has elite extension at 7.0 feet, and not a lot of vertical movement on his four-seam fastball, but he has a low-release height, which still gives him a pretty flat fastball attack angle. The Mets are getting that pitch up in the zone almost 20% more often this year than they did in 2024, which has led to a boost in swinging strike rate, but as is the case with many pitchers adjust to ABS and a new approach, far fewer pitches in the strike zone. However, because of the involvement of the cutter and sinker, he can use his four-seamer more often in two-strike counts, which will work.

The sinker is a little-used pitch, but he does throw it 7% of the time to righties and primarily early in the count. The four-seam is his primary pitch to righties, but he also throws his sweeper nearly 25% of the time and 55% of the time in two-strike counts. Scott's sweeper is unique because it has five inches of vertical break, which is more "rise" than a lot of sweepers due to his lower arm angle. Overall, the pitch has a 25% SwStr% to righties, but he has struggled to find the zone with it right now, and it has a below-average strike rate.

After not throwing a slider and not a cutter in 2024, he is now using a cutter 33.6% of the time to lefties. He uses it primarily early in counts, and it doesn't miss many bats, but he is getting it in the zone often. However, even though he has a .111 batting average against it, it's also given up a 50% ICR, which is well below average. The good news for him is that hitters are struggling to elevate it, so he's not getting tons of damage on it right now. That makes me question the success against lefties a little bit, but I think the sinker-four-seam-sweeper combination will play against righties, so that's half the battle.

Robby Snelling - Miami Marlins (MLB Debut)

I know the stats weren't there for Snelling, but they usually aren't in an MLB debut. What we saw was pretty impressive. He went four-seam, curve, changeup, slider to righties and curve, sinker, four-seam to lefties with some changeups mixed in. His four-seam fastball is about 95 mph with plenty of vertical movement and should do far better than a 7% SwStr% going forward. His command of it was a bit all over the place in this one, which is to be expected in an MLB debut, but he did a better job of elevating it against righties. The sinker is a fine pitch, but its main job is to keep lefties from leaning out over the plate against the curveball.

That curve will be his bread and butter, and it looked like a great pitch. It's 83 mph with almost 11 inches of horizontal movement and over seven inches of drop. He will throw it for strikes and also bury it under the zone for whiffs. He had a 17% SwStr% and 30% CSW in the debut, and I think it's going to be a weapon for both righties and lefties. The changeup is going to mainly be a focus for right-handed hitters, but we love a good changeup to righties from a lefty. It's a harder changeup at 90 mph, and the Marlins are kind of famous for these sinker/changeup types. He does a really good job keeping it low in the zone against righties, and it didn't give up any contact at all in the debut.

The slider also graded out well from a movement standpoint, and is more of a mix-in pitch against righties, but not a bad fourth weapon to have. At the end of the day, there will be volatility, as there is with any rookie, but Snelling has lots of swing-and-miss upside and the pitch mix to handle both righties and lefties. It will just be about command, sequencing, and his mentality on the mound. All things that can take a while to develop at the MLB level.