Worldwide Sports News

Still reeling from losing Graham Ashcraft to the 60-day IL with a UCL strain in his right elbow, the Cincinnati Reds lost another veteran arm from their bullpen on Saturday afternoon.

Pierce Johnson was placed on the 15-day IL with inflammation in his right elbow, as MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon relayed, and the ripple effect necessitated deeper roster shuffling to help backfill for his absence. Lyon Richardson – who had been designated for assignment by the Reds during the offseason – had his contract selected and was promoted, and to free up a spot on the 40-man roster fellow reliever Kyle Nicolas was DFA’d himself.

It’s yet another disaster scenario for a unit that was already down closer Emilio Pagan. No relief corps in the game today has walked more batters per 9 innings than Cincinnati’s, and that was with their top arms available; now they’re leaning on a unit that up until a few weeks ago was effectively the back-end of their AAA Louisville unit.

There’s no immediate indication of the severity of Johnson’s elbow problem, but it’s certainly not a great sign when the club placed him on the IL with the problem given how little experience there is down there without him.

The good news, if there is any, is that in Richardson the Reds are at least getting a guy who, for spurts, has held his own as a big league reliever. His overall body of work is rather ugly, but that’s not 100% indicative of his effectiveness on many instances. His AAA numbers so far this year aren’t brilliant – he’s sporting a 4.75 ERA – but he has fanned 34 against 14 walks in 30.1 IP and does have skewed numbers after being shelled for 6 ER in just 1.1 IP in his second to last outing. He’s also been throwing multiple innings for the Bats more often than not, of late, and some of his worst outings came in that role – it’s hard to imagine him being asked to go more than a single IP at the big league level, however.

It’s just about time for the Reds to go find some relief help, since they’re burning through their current stash in a hurry.

The White Sox lacked the inured Munetaka Murakami, but they didn’t lack the long ball late, piling it on to turn close game into rout, 7-1.

They say sinker ball pitchers can struggle in the first inning, and Framber Valdez certainly proved them right, chasing a Chase Meidroth leadoff double with two walks, a wild pitch and an Edgar Quero sac fly to put the Sox up, 2-0. Valdez settled down after that, but ran out of gas in the seventh despite having a relatively low pitch count (74 through six) to keep things close despite the toothless Tiger offense.

Anthony Kay sent Detroit down in order in the first and second despite being hit quite hard, but gave up a leadoff homer to .169 hitter Wenceel Perez to start the third to close the gap to 2-1. Against a good team, Kay probably would have had a short day, but the much-injured and generally awful Tigers went 0-for-6 with RISP, so the southpaw made it through five innings on six hits, one run, one walk, three K’s and 84 pitches.

The Sox bullpen was lights-out, with Grant Taylor coming in with two on and none out in the sixth and proceeding to retire six in a row, four by strikeout. Seranthony Domínguez tossed a clean eighth, but with a little help from Sam Antonacci — feel free to ignore all the drunken shirtless idiots in the first few seconds of the video.

Even Trevor Richards managed to get through the ninth on just one hit.

Meanwhile, the Sox offense decided 2-1 was too close for comfort. Quero led off the the seventh with a high fly struck at only 97.7 mph but landing in the seats, and later Andrew Benintendi doubled and scored when Rikuu Nishida picked up his second career RBI with a single.

That made it 4-1 Sox, more than enough of an edge against the Tigers declawed offense, but Chicago piled it up via long balls in the eighth. The first was an 106.8 mph Colson Montgomery solo shot. After a Quero single, Benintendi blasted a two-run shot.

Heck, Benintendi doesn’t hit the highlight reel often, so let’s give him a break here:

Voila! Up 7-1, which is how it would finish.

That’s five wins in a row, taking the White Sox record to a lofty 31-27. The series and the month wrap up tomorrow afternoon, with Sean Burke throwing for Chicago and Keider Montero for Detroit.

Saturday notes…

• SATURDAY IN THE PARK: The Cubs are 0-3 on Saturday on the road this season. They are 0-4 on the road on Monday and 1-4 on Sunday, for a combined 1-11. On Tuesday-Friday, they are 12-5. (Courtesy BCB’s JohnW53)
• SPLITTING THE DIFFERENCE: They are 9-9 in second games of series, including 4-5 on the road, but are 4-2 in second games on the road after losing first games. (Courtesy BCB’s JohnW53)
• NO ONE LIKES THIS SORT OF LONG BALL: The Cubs have not hit more home runs than their opponent in their last 14 games, since they homered once in a 2-0 win at Atlanta on May 14. They hit the same number of homers in seven games and were outhomered in another seven, by a total of 15 homers. (Courtesy BCB’s JohnW53)
• HAPP-ENINGS: Ian Happ has homered in his last three games and over those three is batting .467/.467/1.133 (7-for-15) with a double in addition to the three homers, and 10 RBI.

The Cubs lineup was not available at posting time. Please check BCB social media for the Cubs lineup.

Cardinals lineup:

Ben Brown, RHP vs. Kyle Leahy, RHP

Ben Brown has done well all year, and his starts have been very good. Especially good have been his numbers away from Wrigley Field — he has a 1.52 ERA and 0.761 WHIP in eight games (three starts) on the road this year, covering 23.2 innings, with no home runs allowed.

You don’t want to hear about his one career appearance (a start) vs. the Cardinals. Here’s the game. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Kyle Leahy was going along pretty well in May, until the Reds hit him pretty hard in his last start, May 23 in Cincinnati (seven hits, five runs, two home runs in five innings).

Leahy has made nine career appearances against the Cubs, eight of which were in relief. And the start was kind of a throwaway gig, three innings in the last game of the 2025 season. No current Cub has more than seven career at-bats vs. Leahy.

Here is the weather forecast for the area around Busch Stadium.

Today’s game is on Fox-TV (regional — coverage map, scroll to the bottom of that link). A reminder that if you subscribe to MLB.TV or MLB Extra Innings, you can watch this game via those services even if it’s not on the Fox affiliate in your market. Fox announcers: Eric Collins, John Smoltz and Ken Rosenthal.

Here is the complete MLB.com live streaming page for today.

MLB.com Gameday

Baseball-reference.com game preview

Please visit our SB Nation Cardinals site Viva el Birdos. If you do go there to interact with Cardinals fans, please be respectful, abide by their individual site rules and serve as a good representation of Cub fans in general and BCB in particular.

The 2026 game discussion procedure has been changed, so please take note.

You’ll find the game preview, like this one, posted separately on the front page two hours before game time (90 minutes for some early day games following night games).

At the same time, a StoryStream containing the preview will also post on the front page, titled “Cubs vs. (Team) (Day of week/date) game threads.” It will contain every post related to that particular game.

The Live! (formerly “First Pitch”) thread will still post at five minutes to game time. It will also post to the front page. That will be the only live game discussion thread. After the game, the recap and Heroes and Goats will also live on the front page as separate posts.

You will also be able to find the preview, Live! thread, recap and Heroes and Goats in this section link. The StoryStream for each game can also be found in that section.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

On Friday night, the Detroit Tigers accomplished the feat of giving up a walkoff loss in seven straigth road series. Per Elias Sports Bureau, they joined the 1992 Chicago White Sox as the only two teams to manage this since expansion began back in 1961. Surely, such weirdness would satisfy the baseball gods and lead to a Tigers’ victory on Saturday? No, they are not satisfied, and the offense continued to sleepwalk on Saturday until the pitching staff finally crumbled late.

You already know how it ended, but this one didn’t start off too auspiciously either. The Tigers went in order in the top of the first against lefty Anthony Kay. Framber Valdez immediately got into trouble in the bottom of the first.

Chase Meidroth led off with a double to left field, and Valdez walked Miguel Vargas and Colson Montgomery to load the bases with no outs. A wild pitch allowed Meidroth to score, and it was 1-0 still with no outs in the inning. Randal Grichuk lined out to Kevin McGonigle for the first out. Edgar Quero lifted a sac fly out to Matt Vierling in center field, scoring Vargas from third. A pair of good slider from Valdez tied up Andrew Benintendi and he struck out to end the inning. It could’ve been much worse, but that was a quick 2-0 lead for the plucky young White Sox club.

Riley Greene struck out on a Kay slider to open the second inning. Spencer Torkelson and Jahmai Jones, the latter of what do you do here exactly, fame, grounded out. Valdez had settled in and he tossed a quick 1-2-3 inning of his own to open the third frame.

Wenceel Pérez’s bat has finally perked up after a disastrous first third of a season. He really looks like he’s just gone into swing mode, and to heck with controlling the zone. Just look for something you can drive. Since he doesn’t strike out much, have at it I suppose. That something was an 0-2 fastball above the strike zone. Pérez launched it to left center field and out for a solo shot that made it 2-1 White Sox. That was Pérez’s fifth homer, and that 2-1 score would hold true for quite a long time.

Hao-Yu Lee followed with a sharp drive to left field, but Sam Antonacci hauled it in. Zack Short struck out, but Kevin McGonigle came up with a single to right field to keep the inning going, but Dillon Dingler grounded out to shortstop Luisangel Acuña.

Valdez was locked into his rhythm by now, and a one-out Miguel Vargas single was followed by a Colson Montgomery double play ball to Short at shortstop. He stepped on second base and fired to Spencer Torkelson in time to turn two.

Matt Vierling grounded out to start the fourth inning, but Greene and Torkelson spanked ground balls through the infield for singles. That brought Jones to the dish, and he promptly grounded into an inning ending double play. Well, we had some good times in 2025, Jahmai, but I can’t really remember them now.

Valdez continued to roll, racking up three more quick outs in order in the bottom of the fourth. Benintendi whiffed on the slider again to strike out again, ending the inning.

Again the Tigers experimented with TTBDNS in the fifth. Lee singled up the middle with one out in the fifth, and Short drew a walk to set the Tigers up with the top of the order coming up. It still didn’t help. McGonigle grounded into a force of Short, and Dingler grounded out to end that minor threat. Brutal.

Acuña tried to surprise Valdez with a bunt attempt to open the bottom half, but McGonigle adroitly handled that, and Valdez punched out Antonacci. Rikuu Nishida grounded out to send us the sixth, and the game was at least proceeding briskly at this point. It was still 2-1 White Sox.

Matt Vierling gave the Tigers an opportunity with a single to open the sixth. Riley Greene lifted a fly ball to right that Grichuk just dropped. He recovered the bounce and fired to second to get Vierling, who had to wait expecting that ball to be caught. The Tigers challenged, and they were correct as Vierling was ruled safe by a hair, putting two on with no outs. Surely this was the time for the Tigers to pounce?

The scoring threat brought a ptiching change, ending Kay’s afternoon. Sox manager Will Venable called on hard-throwing Grant Taylor, and he quickly blew away Torkelson. Colt Keith pinch-hit for Jones against the right-hander and flew out to center field. Pérez grounded out to end the threat, and you could feel Tigers’ fans moving on with their day. Valdez was still up to the task in the bottom of the sixth, retiring the first two hitters before allowing a hard-hit double to Colson Montgomery. Grichuk lined a hard hit ball to right, but Pérez ran it down to end the inning.

Taylor went through the Tigers like a weed eater in the top of the seventh. Needing baserunners, Lee was locked up by a well located fastball. Zach McKinstry pinch-hit for Short, and he too struck out. Kevin McGonigle chased a 99 mph heater up out of the zone to punch out as well. Le sigh.

Valdez’s pitch count was still in pretty good shape, and the Tigers were still behind, so he came back out for the bottom of the seventh. It did not go well. Edgar Quero got a 2-1 curveball down and in and he launched it to left for a solo shot to make it a 3-1 game. Benintendi followed with a double and things looked bleak. Acuña flew out to right field, and Antonacci grounded out, moving Benintendi to third. Would Valdez escape? No, he would not. Nishida singled to right, and it was a 4-1 game.

That ended Valdez’s day. Through six innings it was a pretty nice outing, but it fell apart in the end. AJ Hinch called on Beau Brieske to make an appearance in relief. Just up with the Tigers, Brieske hadn’t found his command during his rehab work in Toledo, so he wasn’t really ready for this. Still, the Tigers had nothing else to offer in terms of relief “help” and Brieske retired Meidroth on a drive to Vierling in center field.

Would the Tigers respond in the eighth?

No, of course not. Seranthony Dominguez got Dingler on a line out. Gage Workman hit for Vierling and grounded out, and Riley Greene struck out. Cool, cool.

Brieske punched out Vargas to start the bottom of the eighth, but Montgomery turned on a 96.6 mph heater on the inner edge and crushed it to right for a solo shot to make it 5-1. Brieske punched out Grichuk, but Quero singled, and Benintendi followed Montgomery’s example, mashing a 1-1 fastball into the right field seats. 7-1 White Sox. It took a Dingler challenge to retire Acuña and mercifully end the inning.

Spencer Torkelson led off the top of the ninth with a single off of Trevor Richards and that was cute, but they went in order from there to end this.

The suffering continues. Hopefully you’re getting a little numb at this point. The Tigers will try again at 2:10 p.m. ET on Sunday. RHP Keider Montero will go up against the White Sox’s RHP Sean Burke.

The Tigers are 22-37, 29th in MLB in win percentage.

The Braves are giving two struggling infielders a break on Saturday, though for Kim this is becoming the new normal, as the $20 million shortstop is sitting for the third straight day with Jorge Mateo simply outplaying him so far this season. It’s only been 12 games for Kim, but he did not look like an even remotely replacement-level player in those 12 games in any aspect of the game. Austin has been better (albeit streaky) in May, so this seems like more of a regular day off in that regard, as we hope for an explosive Summer from the third baseman who has been known for those.

Elsewhere, the Reds have shifted their lineup a decent bit, going from facing the righty Holmes yesterday to the lefty Perez today. The only constants are their franchise cornerstone Elly De La Cruz in the two hole and catcher Tyler Stephenson batting eighth.

Game Info

Game Time: Saturday, May 30th, 7:15 pm EDT

Location: Great American Ball Park, , Cincinnati, OH

Watch: FOX

Radio/Audio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan

Here’s the Red sox lineup:

Here’s the Guardians lineup:

Let’s go, Guardians!

Mets Lineup

1. Carson Benge – RF
2. Bo Bichette – 3B
3. Juan Soto – LF
4. Jared Young – DH
5. Mark Vientos – 1B
6. A.J. Ewing – CF
7. Marcus Semien – 2B
8. Vidal Brujan – SS
9. Hayden Senger – C

SP: Christian Scott -RHP

Marlins Lineup

1. Xavier Edwards – 2B
2. Liam Hicks – 1B
3. Otto Lopez – SS
4. Kyle Stowers – LF
5. Jakob Marsee – CF
6. Leo Jimenez – DH
7. Owen Caissie – RF
8. Christopher Morel – 3B
9. Joe Mack – C

SP: Tyler Phillips – RHP

Broadcast Info

First pitch: 4:10 PM ET
TV: SNY
Radio: Audacy Mets Radio WHSQ 880AM, Audacy App, 92.3 HD2

The Jays are .500, coming into today’s game, and they hold the final Wild Card spot, which seems hard to believe. It would be nice to be a game above .500 after today’s game.

The Jays have a new member of the constantly evolving bullpen. Hayden Juenger is the latest contestant.

Today’s lineup. No Lips today. He’s in a bit of a slump, with 2 hits in his last 16 at bats and his average has dropped from .313 to .277 in his last six games. Slumps happen. I’m sure he’ll pull out of it soon.

Go Jays Go.

Go Rays!

Don’t look now, but the Orioles might be bad again. Or maybe they never stopped. After starting the series with a chance to build upon the momentum of their three-game sweep of the Rays, the O’s instead have sputtered, dropping two straight one-run losses to the Blue Jays. Both were eminently winnable games that the Orioles let slip away, and now they’ll have to win two in a row just to earn a split of the series.

Brandon Young will look to sustain the recent stretch of success of the Orioles’ starting rotation, Trevor Rogers’ seventh-inning collapse last night notwithstanding. Young has allowed three or fewer runs in each of his last four starts, with the O’s winning all four. The only other time he’s faced the Blue Jays, last July 29, he delivered six strong innings and two runs, one of just two quality starts for him in all of 2025.

But the O’s offense will have to contend with Jays rookie Trey Yesavage, who last year had a meteoric rise all the way from Low-A to the majors and ended up making five postseason starts in the Jays’ run to a near-championship. Yesavage started this year on the IL but has made six starts and hit the ground running, posting a 2.25 ERA and 1.063 WHIP. No current O’s batter has ever faced him, which could put them at a disadvantage.

The Orioles are mostly using their regular starters today, with the exception of right field, where Jeremiah Jackson is making his first outfield appearance of the season. So if you thought the whole infielders-in-the-outfield experiment was over, think again.

Orioles lineup:

LF Taylor Ward
SS Gunnar Henderson
C Adley Rutschman
1B Pete Alonso
DH Samuel Basallo
3B Coby Mayo
CF Leody Taveras
2B Jackson Holliday
RF Jeremiah Jackson

RHP Brandon Young

Blue Jays lineup:

DH George Springer
LF Nathan Lukes
1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
CF Daulton Varsho
3B Kazuma Okamoto
RF Jesús Sánchez
2B Ernie Clement
SS Andrés Giménez
C Tyler Heineman

RHP Trey Yesavage

The Nats had chances to win last night, but they came up short. Some of the weaknesses at the back end of their roster showed up, and they lost 7-5 in a bullpen battle. Now they will look to bounce back at home against a tough Padres team.

Blake Butera has made some peculiar changes to the lineup. Clearly, he wants to go lefty heavy. The struggling Jorbit Vivas will start over Curtis Mead. Jose Tena will also be starting at DH. That means James Wood will go to right field and Dylan Crews will slide to center. Drew Millas will also be back behind the plate. Foster Griffin will be on the bump.

The Padres have a very similar lineup to last night. Rodolfo Duran will replace Freddy Fermin behind the plate. Otherwise, it is the same personnel. We saw Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis start to wake up, so hopefully that does not continue. Blake Butera’s college teammate, Michael King, will be on the mound.

Game Info:

Stadium: Nationals Park

Time: 4:05 PM EST

TV: Nationals.TV

Radio: 106.7 The Fan

The Nats will look to avoid going under .500 in this one. Michael King will be a good test, but this lineup has been resilient. Hopefully Foster Griffin can build on his strong outing against the Braves. If they don’t win today, those narratives about the poor home record will re-appear. Follow along in the comments down below and let’s go Nats!

I don’t really know what to put here anymore. I mean, sure, I can preview the pitching matchup and offer some thoughts about the lineup. And I will. But I also like to contextualize the play of the team and the importance of the game. And… there’s just no context worth offering, and there is no importance to the game. The Royals are now 11 games back of first place after they were a mere half game back just three weeks ago. I guess we’ll spend a lot of the next few weeks wondering where it all went wrong for a team that even PECOTA thought could win the AL Central. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t seem reasonable to blame injuries.

So about that pitching matchup. Seth Lugo will pitch for KC. He’s had kind of an up-and-down year that has resulted in a perfectly cromulent 3.74 ERA. Remarkably, that ties him for 11th most valuable SP in MLB by fWAR and 58th most valuable by bWAR. Both are pretty good! He had a rough patch of three pretty bad starts out of four, but he’s now on a stretch of two straight quality starts. It could have been two straight starts of 6 innings and 2 runs or less, but he tried to push into the seventh of his last start against the Mariners and ended up giving up two more runs, though the Royals did go on to win that game.

He faced the Rangers in both series last year. In the first, while he was still looking like the Lugo the Royals had had for most of his tenure, he pitched 6 innings and allowed 1 run on 9 strikeouts. In the second, in the middle of his injury-aided collapse down the stretch, he still went 6.1 innings and allowed only 2 runs. Both were Royals victories. They could use more of that tonight. Against an offense that, in the past week, had been struck out 18 times in 8 innings by Reid Detmers, and suffered a combined no-hitter by the Astros before exploding against Stephen Kolek and the Royals bullpen.

The Rangers will counter with Kumar Rocker. Rocker was once a first-round draft pick by the Mets before a physical revealed a potential injury concern. He was drafted in the first round again the following year by the Rangers, and made most top-100 prospect lists before his debut. But he has yet to live up to the hype. He has struggled to fully command his pitches or generate whiffs. The slider was once graded as an 80 by FanGraphs on the 20-80 scouting scale, but has been rated and performed just around average at the big league level. None of his other pitches has risen to the level necessary to give him a true put-away pitch, either.

Lineups

OK! Now we’re finally serious about mixing up the lineup! It only took us about a month after it had become whatever the level above obvious is that it needed to happen! Listen, I don’t know if this is going to work, but I appreciate seeing the team actually try something.

There are 122 pitchers who have thrown at least 40 innings so far in 2026, and only five of them have a higher ERA than Cincinnati Reds starter Brady Singer. Two of those are members of the Colorado Rockies, though, so we’re going to go with just three.

Singer sports a 6.52 FIP throgh his 46.0 IP, and only Jameson Taillon and Jacob Lopez have higher marks. Only Taillon (2.83) owns a higher HR/9 than Singer’s 2.74. Singer has served up a trio of dingers in each of his most recent two starts.

Singer sports just a 15.7% K%, a mark that ranks 11th worst in the game among those 122 pitchers. Interestingly enough, each of Chris Paddack (13th) and Andrew Abbott (9th) rank down there, too, as does former Reds pitching stalwart Nick Martinez (now of Tampa). Is that a pattern, or a fluke?

Hitters own a .328 average off Singer’s offerings so far this year. Only Michael Lorenzen (again, of Colorado) and Simeon Woods Richardson of Minnesota have yielded higher averages.

This is not an exercise to bash. This is an exercise in identifying what we’ve seen so far this season from the guy in the heart of the rotation that was supposed to provide steady, boring, average ball once every fifth day as a stabilizer amid a rotation that had lots and lots of questions (and injuries) around him. The Reds need the Singer they knew last year, and they’ve gotten nothing close to that so far in 2026.

Singer will start for the Reds on Saturday night in GABP as they try to stave off an Atlanta Braves club that’s rolling at the moment. They ripped through Cincinnati’s patchwork staff on Friday to take the series opener, and they can claim the series victory if Singer can’t put a stop to them tonight.

First pitch is set for 7:15 PM ET as it’s going to be carried nationally on FOX. Here’s how the Reds will line up to begin this one against veteran southpaw Martin Perez, with a righty-heavy lineup on the docket:

Here’s to Singer miraculously finding it before this one crumbles quickly.

TODAY’S GAME: The Houston Astros (26-33), who are 7-3 in their last 10 games, will play the second game of their 10-day, nine-game homestand today against the NL Central division leading Milwaukee Brewers (34-20).

RHP Peter Lambert (3-4, 3.79 ERA), a free agent signing this offseason, will start for the Astros opposite the Brewers and RHP Brandon Sproat (1-3, 5.84 ERA).

DRIVING THE LAMBO: Today’s Astros starter RHP Peter Lambert has been solid in his seven starts for the Astros, going 3-4 with a 3.79 ERA (17ER/40.1IP) with 40 strikeouts and a .200 opponent average.

Lambert pitched last year for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in the NPB, posting a 3.98 ERA (55ER/124.1IP) with 111 strikeouts in 23 appearances in Japan.

He began this season at Triple A Sugar Land (1.84 ERA in three appearances) before being called up to join the rotation on April 17.

FOR STARTERS: Astros starters have a combined ERA of 3.33 (30ER/81IP) over the last 14 games (since May 15) with a 1.04 WHIP. In that span, they have allowed just 47 hits in 81.0 innings for a Major League-best .168 opponent average, while also ranking second in the AL in WHIP and fourth in ERA. Astros starters have allowed one-or-fewer runs seven times in the last 14 games.

HOMER HAPPY: The Astros have slugged 17 homers in their last eight games. Houston now ranks second in the AL in homers with 77, trailing only the Yankees (86) in that category.

THE LINEUP: The Astros have yet to repeat a lineup this season, using 59 different lineups in their first 59 games. DH Yordan Alvarez has the most starts at any spot in the lineup among Astros, as he’s hit second 47 times this season.

EVERYDAY OKERT:LHP Steven Okert worked 2.0 scoreless innings last night and has now pitched in each of the last two games, giving him 28 appearances this season, which ranks tied for fourth in the Majors. The lefty has had a strong month of May, posting a 2.25 ERA (3ER/12IP) in 12 games.

ON THE MEND: RHP Hunter Brown, who’s recovering from a right shoulder sprain, made his second rehab start last night, working 3.0 innings of one run ball for Triple A Sugar Land. Brown tossed 44 pitches in the outing (33 strikes), recording five strikeouts, while allowing just one hit, a solo homer, among the 10 batters he faced.

PITCHER OF THE MONTH?: RHP Spencer Arrighetti has made a strong case for the AL Pitcher of the Month award, going 4-1 with a 0.93 ERA (3ER/29IP) and a .165 opponent average (16×97) in five starts in May. During the month, he has the lowest ERA among AL starters, while ranking tied for first in wins and second in opponent average.

ON THE LEADER BOARD: DH Yordan Alvarez currently leads the Majors in OPS (1.056) and total bases (134).

In the AL, he ranks tied for first in extra-base hits (31), tied for first in HR (20), second in SLG (.641), second in OBP (.415), tied for fourth in hits (63), tied for fourth in RBI (39), fifth in batting avg. (.301), tied for sixth in walks (38), and tied for seventh in runs (38).

HISTORIC HOMERS:DH Yordan Alvarez is off to one of the most prolific starts in franchise history. His 20 homers through the club’s first 59 games of the season match the franchise record, also reached by 1B Jeff Bagwell in the 1999 season.

WALKER, TEXAS HAMMER: 1B Christian Walker has four homers and nine RBI in his last six games.

For the season, he ranks third in the AL in RBI (40), tied for fifth in extra-base hits (25), sixth in HR (15), seventh in total bases (109), and ninth in SLG (.512).

Walker also has not committed an error in his 58 games played.

HEATING UP:RF Cam Smith has recorded a hit in eight of his last nine games, batting .333 (11×33) with two doubles, two HR, four RBI, three walks and a 1.010 OPS in that span.

OF Taylor Trammell is riding a career-high, eight-game hitting streak, batting .407 (11×27) with two doubles, one triple, two RBI and a .984 OPS within the streak.

HIT PAREDES:3B Isaac Paredes has 498 career hits and is looking to become just the 10th Mexican-born player in MLB history to reach 500 career hits. Two of those eight played portions of their careers with the Astros in 3B Vinny Castilla (1,884 hits) and C Alex Treviño (604 hits).

TODAY IN ASTROS HISTORY: 1976 – In the second game of a doubleheader at Fulton County Stadium vs. the Braves, the Astros set a franchise record with 23 singles and set the then-club record with 25 hits in a 16-5 win. Cliff Johnson leads the attack with four hits and five RBI. Enos Cabell adds three hits and three runs scored. The win completes a doubleheader sweep for Houston. Since this date, the Astros have reached 25 hits on four other occasions, but have not posted 23 singles in a game.

Game Info

Game Date/Time: Saturday, May 30, 3:10 p.m. CT

Location: Daikin Park, Houston, TX

TV: Space City Home Network

Streaming: SCHN+

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