Worldwide Sports News

The Dodgers are off on Monday before opening a road series against the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park on Tuesday night, and will face off against Paul Skenes in the first game.

Skenes has a 3.09 ERA and 2.29 xERA this season, though has allowed 15 runs (13 earned) in 20 innings over his last four starts, all Pirates losses. Pittsburgh has won only six of Skenes’ 13 starts this season, though he’s left with a lead eight times.

We narrowly missed a Skenes vs. Shohei Ohtani pitching matchup in this series, with Ohtani starting on Wednesday in Pittsburgh. Left-hander Eric Lauer starts for the Dodgers. We’ll still get to see Skenes vs. the Ohtani the hitter, one of the sport’s best individual matchups.

Tuesday game info

• Teams: Dodgers at Pirates
• Ballpark: PNC Park, Pittsburgh
• Time: 3:40 p.m. PT
• TV: SportsNet LA
• Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)

When the National League Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers came to Denver for the weekend, common sense would say the rebuilding Colorado Rockies could—with a little luck—win perhaps one game in the series. They came tantalizingly close on Friday but a disastrous collapse in the ninth and tenth innings sealed their fate. On Saturday the loss was more traditional with a 7-1 blowout. Now as thousands of fans flock to Coors Field to receive a bobble-headed facsimile of our beloved mascot Dinger, the Rockies have one more chance to salvage a win and avoid a sweep.

On the mound for the Rockies is the left-handed Kyle Freeland, who is having a season he’d probably like to forget with an 8.06 ERA through his first ten starts. He has given up at least five earned runs in five of his seven starts since returning from the injured list and has gone five or more innings just three times in that span.

Freeland is having an odd season. He’s getting batters to chase his offerings and his strikeouts per nine innings currently sits at a career high 8.1. However, he’s getting hit and hit hard. He’s already given up 13 home runs this season. His last time out against the Los Angeles Angels he gave up six runs—five earned—on seven hits with a home run over 5.2 innings of work.

On the bump for the Brew Crew is left-handed rookie Shane Drohan. Originally a fifth round pick out of Florida State by the Boston Red Sox, Drohan was obtained via trade by the Brewers this off-season and is off to a strong start following an April Major League debut.

Drohan currently has a 2.87 ERA in 12 appearances with the Brewers, two of which were starts, with a save and 33 strikeouts over 33.1 innings. He made his second career start against the San Francisco Giants his last time out, going 4.0 innings with two earned runs on four hits and two walks with five strikeouts. It was his first start since making his debut on April 8th.

Drohan’s primary pitch is a four-seam fastball with a surprising amount of armside horizontal movement that averages 95.1 MPH. He is able to generate whiffs at 33.8% rate on the pitch. He backs the fastball up with an arsenal of breaking pitches that get batters to chase and whiff, especially his curveball and slider. He also throws a cutter with vertical drop, a sinker, and a changeup.

First Pitch: 1:10 pm MDT

TV: Rockies.TV

Radio: KOA 850 AM/94.1 FM; KNRV 1150 (Spanish)

BrewersSB Nation Site: Brew Crew Ball

Lineups:

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The St. Louis Cardinals will wrap up a long homestand on Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds. Michael McGreevy is scheduled to make the start for the Cardinals while RHP Rhett Lowder will take the mound for the Reds. First pitch is scheduled for 1:15pm central time at Busch Stadium and the broadcast will be available on Cardinals.tv. Note that JJ Wetherholt is back in the lineup leading off.

TODAY’S GAME: The Houston Astros (30-36) will complete their nine-game homestand this afternoon as they play the second game of a three-game series against the Athletics (30-34) at Daikin Park.

RHP Mike Burrow (3-7, 5.66 ERA) will make his 13th start of the year for the Astros this afternoon opposite the A’s and LHP Gage Jump (1-1, 3.75 ERA), who’s making his third start of the year.

VS. THE A’S: The Astros are hosting the A’s in Houston for their first series in the Bayou City since last July. The Astros are 3-2 vs. the A’s in 2026 and are looking to reverse their luck vs. the A’s this season after going 5-8 against them in 2025. That marked the Astros first season series loss to the A’s since the 2020 season (3-7).

ABOUT BURROWS: The 26-year old RHP Mike Burrows has been the only starting pitcher in the Astros Opening Day rotation to make every scheduled start this season, which has given him the team lead in starts (12), innings (68.1) and strikeouts (57)…Burrows is new to the organization in 2026, having been acquired from the Pirates this offseason as part of a three-team, six-player trade in which the Astros sent OF Jacob Melton and minor league RHP Anderson Brito to the Rays, while the Rays sent IF Brandon Lowe, OF Jake Mangum and LHP
Mason Montgomery to the Pirates.

WITH A WIN: The Astros need a win today to secure a winning homestand as they enter today’s game
4-4 on the current ‘stand…a win would also give the Astros their first sweep of the A’s since sweeping a
four-game series in Houston from May 13-16, 2024.

YESTERDAY’S ROSTER MOVES: Announced yesterday, C César Salazar accepted his outright
assignment to Triple A Sugar Land and OF Rhylan Thomas was unconditionally released…both players were designated for assignment on Thursday.

Game Info

Game Date/Time: Sunday, June 7, 1:10 p.m. CT

Location: Daikin Park, Houston, TX

TV: Space City Home Network, SCHN2 (Spanish)

Streaming: SCHN+

Radio: KTRH 740 AM, KBME 790 AM & 94.5 FM HD2; TUDN 102.9 FM HD2 (Spanish)

Astros lineup

SS Jeremy Pena

DH Yordan Alvarez

1B Christian Walker

3B Isaac Paredes

RF Cam Smith

CF Jake Meyers

C Christian Vazquez

LF Brice Matthews

2B Nick Allen

Athletics Lineup

1B Nick Kurtz

RF Carlos Cortes

C Shea Langeliers

LF Tyler Soderstrom

DH Brent Rooker

CF Lawrence Butler

3B Zack Gelof

2B Jeff McNeil

SS alika Williams

First Chuck: 1:10 PM (new anthem each week!)

The Tube: Twins.TV

The Dial: Treasure Island Baseball Network

Spies ‘R Us: Royals Review

Today is Toy Story Day at Target Field. Great timing considering that a slate of blockbuster flicks are scheduled to hit theaters this month and the next (the unofficial kickoff to summer movie season being Memorial Day weekend’s The Mandalorian & Grogu, which I alas found thoroughly mediocre).

Each of these upcoming films has a baseball connection somewhere—even if it takes a little digging to find them. Here’s your shovel…

Disclosure Day (Releases June 12)

• Steven Spielberg clearly has a soft spot for the National Pastime—even including it (and somehow making it an incredibly poignant moment) in his 1991 Peter Pan re-imagining Hook.

Toy Story 5 (Releases June 19)

• While no explicit baseball references exist in the Toy Story cinematic universe, the voice of its starring character has an iconic role/monologue in the 1992 classic A League Of Their Own.

Supergirl (Releases June 26)

• Baseball exists in the Superman canon! In this really good scene from a really bad film (1987’s Superman IV: The Quest For Peace), Christopher Reeve must don the bumbling, aw-shucks Clark Kent disguise to placate an aggressive land man out to buy the Kent farm—after which he takes out his frustration by cracking a cowhide sphere into (literal) orbit.

The Odyssey (Releases July 17)

• One really has to turn over some soil to find a hardball connection to English director Christopher Nolan. But the star of his 2014 mega-hit Interstellar—Matthew McConaughey—once prowled a cinematic diamond outfield in the 1994 Disney cult classic remake Angels in the Outfield.

Let’s see if the Twins can produce some cinema of their own this afternoon by taking the final game from KC!

Click here for Lineups!

Cleveland Guardians @ Texas Rangers

Sunday, June 7, 2026, 1:35 PM CDT (105.3 The Fan / Rangers Sports Network)

The Shed

LHP Joey Cantillo vs. RHP Jacob deGrom

Go Rangers!

Detroit Tigers (26-39) vs. Seattle Mariners (34-31)

Time/Place: 1:40 p.m., Comerica Park
SB Nation Site: Lookout Landing
Media: Detroit SportsNet, MLB.TV, Tigers Radio Network
Pitching Matchup: RHP Jack Flaherty (1-7, 5.31 ERA) vs. RHP Luis Castillo (2-5, 5.53 ERA)

The Milwaukee Brewers and Colorado Rockies wrap up their three-game series today in Denver. The Brewers are hoping for a rare road sweep; my quick-and-dirty research shows that Milwaukee has only swept the Rockies in Colorado once, from June 20-22, 2014. The winning pitchers in those games were Marco Estrada, Wily Peralta, and Kyle Lohse.

It’s been a wild series so far. The Brewers escaped with an extra-innings victory in game one after accruing only one hit through the game’s first seven innings. Last night was a more comfortable win, as Milwaukee hit five solo homers and Jacob Misiorowski did Jacob Misiorowski things. This afternoon, Shane Drohan will start the game for the Brewers, while lefty Kyle Freeland takes the hill for the Rox.

Drohan is making his third start and 13th appearance this season for the Brewers. After a bit of a rough outing in his MLB debut on April 8 (a spot start in which he allowed three runs and walked four in just 2 2/3 innings), Drohan returned to the big leagues in late April as a long man out of the bullpen. Since then, he’s been quite good: from April 24 through May 27, Drohan made 10 appearances out of the bullpen and had a 1.82 ERA, 26 strikeouts, and just four walks in 24 2/3 innings. Necessity moved him back to the rotation on June 1, when Drohan pitched the first four innings of Milwaukee’s 16-2 romp over the Giants. He allowed two runs on four hits and two walks while striking out five. Overall, Drohan has a 2.87 ERA and 2.78 FIP in 31 1/3 innings on the season.

Freeland is a Rockies legend, the owner of what was arguably the best pitching season in team history (he went 17-7 with a 166 ERA+ in 202 innings in 2018). But at age 33, he is having a disaster of a season. In 10 starts, Freeland owns an 8.06 ERA and 6.08 FIP. While his strikeout and walk numbers aren’t terrible, he’s allowing a ton of hits (12.6 per nine) and a ton of homers (2.4 per nine). Only the Cubs’ Jameson Taillon has allowed more homers per nine innings than Freeland among qualified pitchers, and that number of hits would be the most per nine innings in baseball by a lot — Zac Gallen is currently last with 10.9/9.

Expect Drohan’s innings to be somewhat limited today: he hasn’t thrown more than 71 pitches in any appearance this season (he had 68 in his last outing) and hasn’t completed more than 4 1/3 innings. This Rockies roster doesn’t exactly work the count, so he could get deeper into the game, but I wouldn’t expect Drohan to go much beyond 70 pitches even if he’s cruising. The bullpen should be in pretty good shape after Misiorowski went seven last night; the only players used out of the ‘pen on Saturday were Grant Anderson and Milwaukee debutant Drew Rom.

Christian Yelich gets the afternoon off with the lefty on the hill, so Jackson Chourio moves up into the leadoff spot. William Contreras will serve as the DH today, with Gary Sánchez behind the plate, batting fifth. Jake Bauers, who is 4-for-6 with a homer, two doubles, four RBIs, and four walks in the series, isn’t in today’s starting lineup; Chourio, Garrett Mitchell, and Blake Perkins are in the outfield today, while Andrew Vaughn will handle duties at first base. Luis Rengifo and Joey Ortiz make up the left side of the infield, and Brice Turang (who homered twice last night) plays second base and bats second.

First pitch today is at 2:10 p.m. It’s free on Brewers.TV, no matter what market you’re in, and can be found in all the regular places on the radio.

The Mariners evened the three-game series against the Tigers yesterday on the back of a stellar outing from Bryce Miller and just enough offense for a comfortable 4-0 win. With another victory today, they’ll have sealed four straight series wins, and Luis Castillo will look to build on a successful stint with the piggyback in a traditional start.

Lineups:

No changes in Seattle’s lineup today as J.P. Crawford is out for a second straight game after a gnarly hit-by-pitch on the hand on Friday. Ryan Bliss is in the building in case a move needs to be made.

It’s a bit of a different look for the Tigers’ lineup today, with Kerry Carpenter leading off and playing right field while Gleyber Torres moves down to the three-hole and will handle DH duties. Zach McKinstry will play the keystone.

Game Info:

First Pitch: 10:40am PDT

TV: Mariners.TV

Radio: Old Reliable

The Cincinnati Reds have finally brought up a reinforcement on good terms, rather than out of necessity. The last place club has seen their pitching ranks decimated by injuries, and the churn they’ve been going through in that time has seen arms brought up for stints and designated for assignment just to free up roster spots for future churn.

On Sunday, though, they welcome back one of their best and brightest.

The Reds activated righty Rhett Lowder after he was sidelined for weeks with a shoulder problem, and Lowder will be given the ball to start Sunday’s series finale in Busch Stadium against the St. Louis Cardinals. Reliever Luis May was optioned to make way, the team announced.

For now, at least, that means righty Chris Paddack will stick around, albeit in a long-man role and not in the starting rotation.

The Reds have dropped each of the first two games of the series in St. Louis, with Saturday’s coming in yet another late bullpen implosion. They’ve fallen under .500 and, once again, own last place in the National League Central division.

First pitch for Sunday’s finale is set for 2:15 PM ET. Here’s how the Reds will line up for it:

Rounding out the program’s new coaching hires, former Horned Frog star Bryan Holaday is returning to his alma mater as the team’s next bench and catching coach. Holaday, who earned the Johnny Bench Award in 2020 and was a sixth-round draft pick by the Detroit Tigers, was named First-Team All-Mountain West Conference and a Second-Team All-American in his final season with the Horned Frogs. In 187 career games (181 starts) at TCU, Holaday slashed .325/.398/.522 with 228 hits, 46 doubles, 28 home runs, 142 RBIs and 145 runs scored.

Holaday made his MLB debut with the Tigers in 2012. He played four seasons in Detroit before spending time with the Texas Rangers and Boston Red Sox in 2017. His MLB career also included stints with the Miami Marlins (2018-19), Baltimore Orioles (2020) and Arizona Diamondbacks (2021). Holaday concluded his MLB career with 173 hits, 35 doubles, 10 home runs, 79 RBIs and 72 runs scored.

The magic gets a little more real with every victory. Both kinds of magic, that is — the floating feeling of giddiness that gets sprinkled over a fanbase as the beginning of something possibly special unfolds in front of them, and the wanded magic of the Mike Vasil variety. The latter seemed to have a particularly powerful effect on Jacob Gonzalez, much to the embarrassment of the Phillies broadcast booth yesterday. ICYMI:

It’s hard to imagine a more satisfying first big league homer than Gonzalez’s last night, an absolute tank on a middle-middle slider that makes me want to make a “hung” joke that SB Nation probably wouldn’t appreciate. I genuinely can’t think of another example of a player so drastically remaking himself in such a short period of time. It really shouldn’t be possible to go from slugging sub-.350 over three years in the lower-mid minors to blasting 108 mph tanks in the big leagues over the former top pitching prospect in the game. I spent about half an hour stumped as to who exactly I was seeing in Gonzalez’s revamped swing before it dawned on me — maybe the Sox really did get their guy, about two presidential administrations after we wanted him:

Clearly Machado is a righty, a bit heftier, and a bit more open in his stance, but the core mechanics are pretty similar. Both Gonzalez and Machado are listed at 6´2´´, drafted as shortstops with high defensive prowess who bulked up, grew into some power, and found a home in the corner infield. I like the trajectory.

Gonzalez’s reward is getting his sixth start at first base over the team’s first eight games since his call-up as the Sox look to get back on track with another series win and equal their previous high-water mark of five games better than .500. Bold prediction of the day: Rikuu Nishida notches his first career extra-base hit, a line drive double to the opposite field on an Aaron Nola knucklecurve that catches just a little too much of the plate’s outer half.

With a quartet of tough lefties occupying the top of the Philadelphia lineup, Tyler Gilbert serves as the opener for David Sandlin today, who hopes the rubber match of his first three starts will look more like his first than his second. After retiring 18 straight hitters to end his big league debut, Sandlin’s spotty control came back to bite him earlier this week, when four walks and eight hits allowed to Minnesota resulted in an ugly eight earned runs. Still, his fastball is averaging faster than 97 mph, and pitch models are generally liking what they see out of his arsenal.

Sandlin’s arsenal bears some similarities with yesterday’s starter, Sean Burke, and I would expect Sandlin to utilize the same approach as Burke did yesterday: four-seamers above the zone to lefties, arm-side sinkers to jam righties, and curveballs/sweepers below the zone to go for a whiff when ahead in the count.

If Sandlin can find the plate earlier in the count more than Burke did, I expect he’ll see a lot of success today, even though this is the type of lineup that does not typically let mistakes go unpunished.

The Phillies look like they’re experiencing some deja vu, going 25-11 with manager Don Mattingly after a 9-19 start cost Rob Thomson his job. Let’s see if Will Venable can put a stop to that. First pitch at Citizen’s Bank Park is at 12:35 p.m. CT. If you want to join us, broadcasts are available on CHSN (TV) and WMVP AM 1000 (radio), like always!

This morning, the Athletics will try to avoid being swept by the Houston Astros, who have dominated the first two games of this three-game set. After taking two of three from the Chicago Cubs, the A’s have struggled in Houston, allowing plenty of runs while producing little offense of their own.

Looking to snap a three-game losing streak, the A’s will send left-hander Gage Jump to the mound for his third MLB start. Through his first two outings, the 23-year-old top prospect has gone 1-1 with a 3.75 ERA and 10 strikeouts over 12 innings pitched. In his last start, Jump showcased why the team thinks so highly of him, limiting the Cubs to one run on three hits over seven sparkling innings, picking up his first MLB win.

Following back-t0-back disappointing performances from A’s starting pitchers, the team will be counting on Jump to build off his last outing and provide a second straight quality start against an Astros lineup that has consistently scored runs throughout the series.

The A’s lineup for today’s series-finale:

Looking to shake things up and provide a boost to the offense, first baseman Nick Kurtz is back atop the Athletics’ lineup, while right fielder Carlos Cortes has been dropped to second in the order. Catcher Shea Langeliers will be behind the plate for a third straight game.

If the A’s want to leave Houston with a win, the team will need contributions from the bottom half of the starting nine. Henry Bolte is on the bench, while the struggling Lawrence Butler gets the start in center field. Butler has endured a difficult stretch and will be looking to capitalize on another opportunity to get back on track.

The A’s will also need offensive production from second baseman Jeff McNeil and shortstop Alika Williams, who is getting the start in place of Darell Hernáiz. Generating offense from those spots could be a key factor in the team’s chances of securing a victory.

The A’s offense will face Astros’ right-hander Mike Burrows, who looks to secure the sweep for the hosts. The 26-year-old has struggled with inconsistency through his first dozen starts with the Astros. Burrows enters his 13th start with a 3-7 record, a 5.66 ERA, a 1.54 WHIP, and 57 strikeouts in 68 1/3 innings pitched. He took the loss in his last start against his former team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, allowing five runs on eight hits and five walks over five innings.

Burrows has faced the A’s once before, tossing four scoreless innings as a member of the Pirates last September. The Athletics will look to find more success against the right-hander this morning. A’s hitters must work counts, use ABS challenges wisely and punish hittable pitches left over the plate.

And Houston’s starting nine:

The Astros’ lineup is a touch weaker today with second baseman Jose Altuve not in the starting nine. However, Jump must still pitch carefully, especially when facing designated hitter Yordan Alvarez, who hit a grand slam yesterday to move into the American League lead with 22 home runs and 48 RBIs.

Time to get back into the win column. Let’s go A’s!

Follow the Game:
Watch:
Athletics – NBCSCA

Listen:
Athletics – Talk 650 KSTE, A’s Cast