The Anaheim Angels fired general manager Perry Minasian yesterday afternoon. John Mozeliak, former long-time general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, has been brought in as a consultant and, per the Angels press release, will be overseeing the baseball operations side of things while the team looks for a new general manager.

The timing of this move is odd, given that the MLB Draft is just two weeks away, though oddness and unusual decisions has been the hallmark of the Angels under owner Arte Moreno. Minasian was hired to replace Billy Eppler, who was the general manager for the Angels from 2015-20. Eppler replaced Jerry DiPoto, who is currently the president of baseball operations with the Seattle Mariners, having taken over for the infamous Jack Z in Seattle after the 2015 season.

Minasian was in the final year of his contract, and there’s already speculation that the Angels will, in a cost saving move, wait until after a new collective bargaining agreement is reached to hire a permanent replacement. The expectation is that there will be another lockout, and given Moreno’s proclivities, the thinking is that he will not want to have to pay a top baseball executive to be executiving while the lockout is going on. First year manager Kurt Suzuki only received a one year deal, with speculation being that this was motivated by a similar desire. Mozeliak reportedly being expected to stay with the organization “through the end of this calendar year” would seem to support the notion that a permanent replacement won’t come until there’s a new CBA.

Minasian got his start with the Rangers, as his father, Zack Minasian the Elder, was the team’s longtime clubhouse manager. Perry and his brothers, Rudy, Zack the Younger, and Calvin were bat boys and clubhouse assistants for the Rangers growing up. Perry was a scout for the Rangers for a number of years before working for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Atlanta Braves. Zack is the general manager of the San Francisco Giants under president of baseball operations Buster Posey. Calvin is the Braves’ clubhouse manager. Rudy is the black sheep of the family, as he’s a lawyer, something all of us here feel is an unsavory and embarrassing profession.

Mozeliak was the general manager and then president of baseball operations of the St. Louis Cardinals from 2007 through 2025, although his departure was under odd circumstances, as Chaim Bloom was hired as an advisor prior to the 2025 season, with it being announced at the time he would take over for Mozeliak after the 2025 season. The Cardinals had won 71 and 83 games the previous two seasons, missing the playoffs both years, and there was some sense at the time that the team needed to move on from the Mozeliak era. Bloom was, per ESPN at the time the hiring was announced, “tasked with reenergizing the team” in the player development department.

The Angels’ last winning season was in 2015, they’ve not won more than 77 games since 2018, and they’ve made the playoffs just once since getting coming two wins away from advancing to the World Series in 2009. After an offseason where the team’s strategy seemed to be to acquire players that were either good a few years ago, or were seen as good prospects a few years ago, but were neither when the Angels scooped them up, Anaheim is currently tied with the Kansas City Royals for the worst record in the American League.

In his first 7 games of the season, Slade Cecconi got off to one of the worst starts to a season a starting pitcher could possibly have. He had a 6.56 ERA, a 5.79 FIP, and was giving up 2.02 HRs per 9 innings pitched. In the 9 starts since, his ERA has gone down to 2.96, his FIP to 3.47, and the HR/9 rate is down to 0.74. So, has Slade turned things around? Let’s break it down.

Before getting into some of the changes he’s made, it’s important to look at the information we already have a bit more closely. There’s a natural ebb and flow in a baseball season, as both hitters and pitchers will experience changing conditions in the field. Batted ball distribution, luck, and defensive performance behind a pitcher can fluctuate, and because of that, surface level results can often be cloudy. For example, on the surface, a pitcher putting up an ERA 3.50 runs lower than they had been and a FIP drop of almost 2.50 sound amazing, but if we look at his xERA and xFIP numbers, they tell a slightly different story. For example, look at the following table:

We can see that in those first starts, Slade was actually getting significantly higher than expected results, and in the more recent set of starts we see the opposite. (Granted, the more recent difference is not as extreme.) This leads us to conclude that baseball variance has amplified both ends of this equation. The good news is that even though the degree of the new performance is a little bit overexaggerated by the under and then overperformance relative to expected metrics, we can see there still appears to be a definite improvement that’s happened, even if it’s less of one than we originally might have thought. In order to get to an answer, we’re going to take a look deeper at his more specific quality of contact numbers and see if we can find any differences that would explain this extreme change in results. Let’s start with the following data:

Looking at this, I think we may have a bit of conundrum. Hard-Hit % has stayed the same, but the Average Exit Velocity has gone up, and the Barrel % has plummeted. We also have a modest, but important, uptick in Ground Ball %, and here we can draw a few conclusions. Even though Slade appears to be getting hit slightly harder on average than before, we can see from the Barrel % and the Ground Ball %  that the hard-hit contact is not translating into barrel-level damage nearly as much as before. The Barrel % drop is so significant it’s the clearest signal of improved damaging contact prevention. Another consideration with increases in ground ball outs comes the chance for increases in double plays turned. When we look at that data, we can see there were 3 GIDPs in Slade’s first 7 starts, and 6 in the most recent 9 starts. This could be normal variance, but it is worth mentioning to see if the pattern holds. This modest rise in Ground Ball % may have contributed to reducing the severity of the contact outcomes on Slade’s pitches, but the largest driver of improvement appears to be the overall suppression in  barrel conversion of the hard contact and not a broad reduction in overall hard contact. These factors combined do show some real meaningful improvements beyond potentially noisy surface level results. Next, let’s break down Slade’s pitch mix and see if we can learn anything from that. Here’s some data to take a look at:

There’s a lot to unpack here, but the general trend we can see has been increased usage of the fastball and fastball variant pitches (the 4SFB, the cutter, and the sinker), the addition of the slider and changeup, and the near total removal of the sweeper. We see that the mix before was very 4SFB heavy, with moderate cutter and low sinker usage. Now, we can see the pitches are thrown in a much more balanced distribution.

We can also see the curveball is being used at about the same rate, but the contact quality on it is significantly better. Having multiple different fastball movement profiles may be making his pitches less predictable, and combining that with slider and changeup usage may be what’s opening up the curveball to be weaponized more. We can also see the velocity differences of the pitches give him a few different speed options to potentially help keep hitters off balance, and the slider and the changeup coming in at similar speeds but moving in different ways can make the pitch location harder to discern for the hitter.

The increase in options in the different velocities may be improving deception and timing disruption and ultimately contributing to the ability to miss barrels and get less damaging contact. The increased sinker usage also helps explain the increase in the Ground Ball % we spoke of earlier.

Now that we’ve identified some changes to the pitch mix and how they may have affected Slade’s results, let’s take a look at his command and see if there’s been any changes there.

Initially there’s a lot of good here. Lower walk rate, more first pitch strikes, and more pitches in the ABS strike zone as well (Zone %). The final number in the table (CSW%) stands for “Called Strikes plus Whiffs”, and the idea behind this stat is to show how often the pitcher “wins” the pitch outright either by throwing something in the strike zone that the hitter does not swing at, or by getting the hitter to swing and miss. We can see this number has improved as well. This is a very modest improvement, but still worth mentioning because of the nature of the statistic.

We’ve seen evidence of the pitches getting more favorable contact quality before, and now we can also see Slade is throwing more strikes, and the higher CSW % shows that the increase isn’t just in easy to hit pitches either. 

So we put that all together and what do we see? Honestly, these improvements appear to be very real and tangible. Although the magnitude of the improvements does appear to be magnified by normal baseball variance. We saw that his initial bad start looked worse than it was, and this good stretch looks a bit better than what the surface numbers suggest it is, but it’s still significantly better.

We should probably expect some regression from the recent starts, but overall it seems like Slade has made legitimate adjustments and gotten back on track, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for the Guards.

Want to get more Covers content? Add us as a preferred source on your Google account here.

Toronto Blue Jays starter Dylan Cease is a strikeout merchant and draws a favorable matchup against this Texas Rangers lineup today, making Over 7.5 strikeouts my favorite play of the day.

Read on for my Blue Jays vs. Rangers predictions and MLB picks for this Saturday, June 27 matchup.

Rangers vs Blue Jays predictions

Rangers vs Blue Jays best bet: Dylan Cease Over 7.5 strikeouts (-120)

Dylan Cease leads all American League pitchers with 118 K’s, while eclipsing this strikeout total in six of his last seven starts.

The Toronto Blue Jays starter owns a 32.4% strikeout rate against this Texas Rangers lineup, while primarily throwing a healthy amount of four-seamers and sliders.

This Rangers squad struggles with the fastball-slider combination, with the third-lowest batting average against that pitch mix and the seventh-worst whiff rate in the majors.

That plays into Cease’s strengths as one of baseball’s premier swing-and-miss pitchers, ranging in the 97th percentile in whiff rate, while suppressing contact with just a 4.8% barrel rate against his pitches.

So the combination of Cease's elite swing-and-miss stuff, coupled with the Rangers’ inability to make contact with his primary pitch mix, makes me confident betting this to -130.

COVERS INTEL: Cease leads the majors with a 13.5 K/9 in 2026, averaging 8.8 strikeouts per game over his last seven starts.

Rangers vs Blue Jays same-game parlay (SGP)

The Rangers have lost in each of the last six outings for Cal Quantrill, who owns a 1.010 OPS against this Blue Jays lineup. With Toronto starting All-Star candidate Cease and a plus matchup against this Rangers lineup, I’ll add the Blue Jays moneyline to the SGP.

Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho profiles well against Quantrill, and has hit the ball well since returning from the IL with a .333 average and a 202 WRC+ over his last five games. He’s also 3-for-4 against Quantrill in his career.

Rangers vs Blue Jays SGP

• Dylan Cease Over 7.5 strikeouts 
• Jays moneyline
• Daulton Varsho Over 0.5 hits

Rangers vs Blue Jays home run pick: Kazuma Okamoto (+255)

Kazuma Okamoto hits the ball harder than any other Blue Jays in the lineup with a 50% hard hit rate, .479 slug-rate, and a team-high 19 home runs this season

He’s been swinging the bat extremely well over his last eight games, too, with four home runs in that stretch, a 57% hard-hit rate, and a 259 WRC+.

However, it’s a bullpen day for the Rangers. Without knowing Okamoto’s exact pitching matchup throughout the game, I’ll make this just a half-unit wager.

Rangers vs Blue Jays odds

• Moneyline: Rangers +136 | Blue Jays -150
• Run line: Rangers +1.5 (-135) | Blue Jays -1.5 (+115)
• Over/Under: Over 8 (+110) | Under 8 (-130)

Rangers vs Blue Jays trend

The Toronto Blue Jays have hit the Game Total Over in 10 of their last 16 games at home (+3.50 Units / 20% ROI). Find more MLB betting trends for Rangers vs. Blue Jays.

How to watch Rangers vs Blue Jays and game info

Rangers vs Blue Jays latest injuries

Rangers vs Blue Jays weather

This article originally appeared on Covers.com, read the full article here and view our best betting sites or check out our top sportsbook promos.

David Peterson was driving home following Wednesday's doubleheader when he received word from David Stearns that he'd been traded to the Chicago Cubs. 

Peterson, the longest-tenured Met, was surprised at first but then looked forward to the new opportunity. 

“Obviously some shock in the moment,” he told reporters Friday. “Drafted by the Mets, spent 10 years there, a lot of great memories, great people, but you kind of move on to the next step -- it’s the business, so I’m excited.”

That next step presents an intriguing change of scenery for Peterson. 

The 30-year-old lefty hasn’t pitched the same since cracking his first All-Star team last year, carrying over his brutal second-half into spring training and the first three months of this season. 

He's been a bit more effective working behind an opener in a bulk relief role, but otherwise has been knocked around, pitching to an ugly 7.71 ERA and 1.95 WHIP as a starter on the year.  

Still, Peterson feels good and is confident he can help Chicago's shorthanded rotation.  

"I went through some things early in the year that we needed to clean up," he said. "I feel a lot better about where we're at now, I feel like myself back in '24, '25 -- I'm excited for the opportunity to start and get the routine back."

One aspect Peterson figures to benefit from is the defensive upgrade behind him. 

The Mets' defense as a whole has been shaky throughout this disappointing season, while the Cubs are among the best in the game in Outs Above Average and runs prevented. 

For a groundball pitcher like Peterson, "it's huge."

“You look at the guys around the infield and the defense as a whole, it’s hard not to be excited," he said. "You see them statistically at the top of every list, so I’m excited to have those guys behind me on the field.”

Peterson's Cubs debut will take place Saturday night in Milwaukee.

You can’t say you didn’t see this one coming. It would have been great to get one of those “because baseball” games. But it’s always important to remember that sometimes Goliath just squashes David, the Globetrotters virtually always win and The Miz and the Brewers are going to beat the Cubs in Milwaukee.

It’s a rare game in the modern era when I think that things get even worse as the game gets later. It’s no secret that as starts, on average, get shorter and shorter over time, the number of wins and losses recorded by starting pitchers also decreases. I’ve not studied it, but surely it’s not a 1 to 1 ratio. But there’s going to be some correlation there.

I can remember back more than 20 years ago and the not so subtle strategy of running up pitch counts against pitchers like Kerry Wood and Carlos Zambrano. If you can’t hit them, work up the pitch count and get in the pen. As pitch counts have gone down, that strategy is definitely a thing. And it is essentially a no-lose scenario. The pitcher gets deep and gets into the third time through the order with an escalating pitch count, he’s vulnerable. They get him out and you are going to see some depth relievers. Does any of that guarantee victory? Of course not. But it sure helps.

The counterpunch, of course, is building a strong bullpen. Hard to do, but we have slowly seen the rise of stealing the game with your bullpen. Now we see scores of hard throwing, talented relievers at the end of games. A seemingly unending line of guys throwing in the upper 90s. The Cubs do not have a strong bullpen. The Brewers do. Ergo, this was a rare game where I didn’t feel more comfortable as the Cubs held the Brewers scoreless longer. Even after Seiya Suzuki’s solo homer, I assumed the Brewers would eventually outlast the Cub bullpen.

I was not wrong. Ho hum. An entirely expected result with a few innings of false hope sprinkled on top.

Three Positives:

• Colin Rea. The one thing you absolutely could not have was a very short start. Rea matched Miz for five innings. He was charged with a run in the sixth.
• Seiya Suzuki provided a brief ray of hope with his solo homer. Added a walk and a sacrifice fly.
• Alex Bregman with a single and walk.

Game 82, June 26: Brewers 6, Cubs 2 (44-38)

Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.

THREE HEROES:

• Superhero: Colin Rea (.137). 5 IP, 23 BF, 5 H, 3 BB, ER, 4 K
• Hero: Seiya Suzuki (.100). 1-2, HR, 2 RBI, R, BB, SF
• Sidekick: Alex Bregman (.042). 1-3, BB

THREE GOATS:

• Billy Goat: Ethan Roberts (-.260). IP, 5 BF, 2 H, BB, 2 R (0-2)
• Goat: Dansby Swanson (-.122). 0-4, DP
• Kid: Nico Hoerner (-.091). 0-4

WPA Play of the Game: Garrett Mitchell’s two-out, two-run homer in the sixth off of Ethan Roberts. (362)

Mets Play of the Game: Immediately before that, Roberts got a line drive double play with runners on first and second and no outs. (.204)

Cubs Player of the Game:

Game 81 Winner: Pete Crow-Armstrong received 74 of 168 votes.

Rizzo Award Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)

The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.

• Pete Crow-Armstrong +20
• Michael Busch +18
• Ben Brown +13.5
• Carson Kelly +12.5
• Trent Thornton +11.5
• Jacob Webb/Jameson Taillon -8
• Edward Cabrera -9.5
• Phil Maton -10
• Caleb Thielbar -13
• Seiya Suzuki -20.5

Up Next: Game two of the weekend three-game set in Milwaukee. David Peterson (3-6, 6.09) makes his Cub debut. I suspect he is too much of a pro to have actual tears in his eyes the first time the Cubs turn a double play behind him. The Mets defense has been exceptionally bad and the Cub defense has been quite good. The Brewers start Kyle Harrison, the promising young lefty. Harrison is 8-1 with a 2.50 in 14 starts. If you ask me, this is a second complete mismatch and the Cubs will struggle for any offense for a second straight day.

It’ll be interesting to get a look at Peterson as a Cub, at least.

One of the joys of this here daily birthday series is that we get to see nearly every corner of the Yankees’ history. Yesterday’s entry featured the incomparable Derek Jeter, an inner-circle Hall of Famer, 14-time All-Star, and five-time World Series winner, while today’s will see a 2022 fifth-round draft pick, who has yet to surface in the Major Leagues, and has only recently spent time in Triple-A.

Although it is a professional baseball career that has hardly begun, Eric Reyzelman’s will be under the microscope today. With nary a single Yankee player being born on June 27th, it is the 25-year-old’s day in the light. And hey: If he advances just one more level, Reyzelman be the first!

Eric Michael Reyzelman
Born: June 27, 2001 (San Ramon, CA)
Yankees Tenure: 2022-Present (minors)

Born in 2001 in San Ramon, California, on the eastern outskirts of the Bay Area, Reyzelman grew up a Giants fan, and did not go without adversity early in his playing days. Despite being drafted by the Yankees, and seeing minor league success to this point, Reyzelman was actually cut from his high school baseball team. Forced to take a non-traditional route to professional baseball, the right-hander did not let a little adversity stop him from succeeding.

Reyzelman actually committed to playing baseball at the Division-I level in college, before he played on his JV or Varsity squad. With travel ball being his avenue, his talents drew plenty of interest despite not playing for his school. The interest was strong enough, evidently, for the Yankees to draft Reyzelman in the fifth round out of LSU.

In the same year he was drafted, the right-handed hurler began his professional career in the Yankees organization. It was a brief stint, as he tossed just four combined innings between A-ball and Rookie ball, and he barely pitched in 2023 as well, as a cyst on his back the required multiple operations kept him off the mound.

Reyzelman finally got a more substantial opportunity in 2024, and did not waste his time on the mound. In 38.2 total innings between Rookie ball, High-A, and Double-A, the righty broke out with a sparkling 1.16 ERA. It was no fluke either, as he struck out a whopping 63 batters in that span, good for a 40.9 percent clip.

The success earned him a full season with Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes Barre in 2025 as he pitched exclusively at that level, tossing 42 mostly effective innings that season. He didn’t quite reach the same level of effectiveness that he did in 2024, as he managed an ERA well above 4 and his strikeout rate was nearly cut in half.

In 2026, Reyzelman has once again split time between Double-A and Triple-A, as he’s pitched 24.1 innings to this point, and has likely ran into some tough luck with a 5.55 ERA and a mismatched 3.07 FIP on the year. His pitch-mix has evolved significantly since he left college with a profile very heavy on the fastball, adding in a slider and a changeup which have varying returns in the command department.

Now in his age-25 season, Reyzelman has shown flashes of highly effective relief pitching, though his overall production, not to mention his health, have been inconsistent over the course of his professional career. In fact, our own Scott Walsh recently spoke with Reyzelman about getting to the brink of The Show and the challenges of injuries getting in his way (among other things). He has ascended to the highest reaches of the minor leagues, and his arrival in the big league bullpen may be a matter of time. Despite any concerns, he clearly has some talent that could do damage in the right hands, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him racking up Ks out of the ‘pen in the future. If you’re in business, call this a futures investment, perhaps.

In the meantime, we wish him a happy 25th birthday!

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.