Author: MLB Baseball News, Scores, Standings, Rumors, Fantasy Games

What’s ailing Mookie Betts remains a mystery — his inexplicable stomach illness has left him at a loss for words.

Down from 175 to 157 pounds, the usually joyful and cheerful Betts had a sullen look on his sunken face as he talked about his illness, which led to the Dodgers scratching him from the lineup ahead of Sunday's 7-1 Freeway Series exhibition win over the Angels.

"I just want to play," Betts said softly by his locker. "I'm tired of sitting, tired of just throwing up, tired of doing all this. I just really want to play."

Betts was penciled in to start at shortstop, arriving at the ballpark with his symptoms subsiding. But just a few hours before first pitch, he was scratched after unexpectedly throwing up again.

"My body's just kind of eating itself," he said. "It's hard to not fuel it. And so every time — literally, every time — I fuel my body, I throw up. ... I don't know what to do."

Read more:Plaschke: If Dodgers want to be a dynasty, they must win the World Series again

He says his body feels great — he can work out and do almost everything as usual except eat. Betts has struggled to keep down solid food, the ordeal leaving him "scared to eat."

"This is so touchy, man," Betts said. "You think you feel good, and then you don’t really know. ... Every time I eat something, it just comes right out."

Betts said he never had a previous history of stomach issues. His vitals and blood tests have come back clean, but his stomach remains aggravated. Team doctors have put him on a new medication to calm his stomach, though he didn’t disclose what he's taking.

His symptoms began two days before the Tokyo Series. He thought he would feel better after he arrived in Japan, but his symptoms worsened.

Betts will not be in the lineup Monday, manager Dave Roberts said. Whether Betts will be in the lineup for Thursday’s home opener against the Detroit Tigers is uncertain. Over the next few days, he will undergo more tests.

Although he’s eager to overcome his stomach troubles and take the field, Betts doesn’t want to put the Dodgers at a disadvantage. He believes that returning too soon could hinder the team’s performance and potentially put his health at greater risk.

"You're already playing uphill," Betts said. "I weigh 157 pounds, and that’s way underweight. ... I'm not saying I don't want to do it. Sure, if that's what it takes, but does it logically make sense? And that's the question we really need to answer."

Blake Snell will start home opener

Blake Snell, who signed a five-year, $182-million deal with the Dodgers in the offseason, will make his Dodgers regular-season debut against the Detroit Tigers on Thursday.

“He was certainly honored, excited,” Roberts said. “Blake chose to be a Dodger for various reasons. And for him to start the home opener here at Dodger Stadium, I think it’s just something else he can add to his already great career.”

It will be a matchup of Cy Young winners, as Snell — who won the award in 2018 and 2023 — starts opposite of last year’s American League Cy Young winner, Tarik Skubal. Roberts said they are “two of the top-five pitchers in all of baseball."

The next turn in the rotation will feature Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who started the Dodgers' season opener in Japan. Roki Sasaki, who also pitched in the opening series, will take the mound Saturday.

Tyler Glasnow's first start will be next week against Atlanta since he's slated to start Tuesday against the Angels.

Dodgers 'A-Okey' in Freeway Series opener

Reserve catcher Chris Okey broke a 1-1 game with a pinch-hit, two-run double in the seventh inning of the Dodgers' 7-1 win at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers trailed until Max Muncy hit a solo home run to right field in the fifth. The Dodgers tacked on four more runs in the eighth.

First baseman Freddie Freeman returned after being sidelined in the second game of the Tokyo Series because of rib discomfort. In his two at-bats, he grounded into a double play in the first and grounded out in the fourth.

Roberts thought Freeman played without much trouble, and the plan is for him to take three at-bats and play five or six innings Monday.

Angel Stadium will host the next two games of the series.

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

There wasn't any expectation of Will Warren securing a major-league rotation spot when the Yankees opened camp just over a month ago, but opportunity unexpectedly knocked, and the young right-hander answered.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone revealed on Sunday that Warren, the club's fifth-overall prospect, made the Opening Day roster and is scheduled to start on April 1 when the Arizona Diamondbacks arrive in the Bronx for a three-game set.

While the 25-year-old largely earned his new role during Grapefruit League action, the Yankees weren't exactly in a position to look elsewhere for internal options. They're entering the 2025 season with long-term injuries to Gerrit Cole (Tommy John surgery) and Luis Gil (lat strain), plus Clarke Schmidt (shoulder fatigue) is beginning the campaign on the injured list.

Warren spent the offseason reincorporating a curveball to his arsenal and adjusting his changeup grip, and the hard work clearly paid off. In his first five spring appearances (four starts), he posted a laudable 2.87 ERA across 15.2 innings, limiting opponents to five earned runs and nine hits. He also struck out 16 batters.

There wasn't much to praise in his sixth spring performance, however. He was roughed up against the Baltimore Orioles on March 23, as he allowed four runs on seven hits and two walks across 3.2 innings (74 pitches). In spite of heavy winds in Sarasota that night, he fell behind some hitters and gave up plenty of hard contact.

Despite the Yankees' slew of injuries, Warren still needs to prove his worth as a long-term rotation fixture. After making 23 starts in Triple-A last season, he made his MLB debut on July 30 and logged a bloated 10.32 ERA with 29 strikeouts across 22.2 major-league innings (six games). Suffice to say there's a chip on his shoulder.

The first time Jeff Banister stepped into a big-league clubhouse, it was 9 o’clock.

In the morning.

That night’s game wouldn’t start for another 10 hours, but when you’ve waited your whole life for that moment, there’s no point in putting it off even a second longer.

The first thing Banister saw when he entered the darkened room was a No. 28 Pittsburgh Pirates’ jersey hanging in a locker with his name, in black letters and gold trim, running from shoulder to shoulder. In the lockers on either side hung the jerseys of Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla.

“There was a security light. It was like a beacon on my jersey,” Banister said last month, his voice catching at a memory that is now 34 years old. “It kind of got real at that moment. Like, ‘Hey, I’m in the big leagues.’”

Read more:Tokyo takeaways: Dodgers relish experience, expect Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts back soon

In the seventh inning of that night’s game, an otherwise uneventful 12-3 win over the Atlanta Braves at Three Rivers Stadium, Banister came to the plate as a pinch-hitter and grounded a 1-1 pitch into the hole at short, beating the throw to first for an infield single. Four days later he was gone, optioned back to the minor leagues. Banister would never appear in a major league game again.

But he’s never forgotten the one he did play in.

“It was a surreal moment to walk out on that field,” he said. “I’d seen it so many times on TV, but just the feeling of all the first moments — the first time in the stadium, the clubhouse — they become a little overwhelming.”

Since the first big-league game in 1876, 20,790 men have played in the majors, according to the Baseball Almanac. More will join that list as spring training gives way to the regular season. Yet it remains a small number; more than twice as many people finished the Chicago Marathon last fall.

And Banister’s name will always be among them.

His name is also among the 1,519 players whose big-league career lasted just one game, according to the Baseball Reference website, a list that runs from Frank Norton, who struck out in his only plate appearance for the Washington Olympians on May 5, 1871, to Giants pitcher Trevor McDonald, who threw three hitless innings on the final day of the 2024 season.

In between, Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston, made an error in two chances at first base and struck out in one at-bat in his only big-league game in 1936. Eighteen years earlier, Brooklyn Robins’ pitcher Harry Heitman faced four batters, giving up four hits and four runs, then fled the stadium before the final pitch to join the Navy.

Larry Yount, brother of Hall of Famer Robin Yount, came out of the bullpen to pitch for the Astros in 1971, but hurt his arm warming up; his career ended before he threw a pitch. Then there’s Archibald Wright “Moonlight” Graham, who twice hit better than .325 in eight minor league seasons but didn’t get an at-bat in the majors, playing two innings in right field for the New York Giants in 1905 without touching the ball. Three years later he gave up for baseball to practice medicine in the small mining town of Chisholm, Minn.

The pathos of Graham’s brief big-league career is romanticized in W.P. Kinsella’s novel “Shoeless Joe” and later in the Kevin Costner movie “Field of Dreams.” Graham made it to the majors, but never got to bat. Others, like Banister, got one at-bat, but never played in the field.

Yet there’s a story behind every one of these brief big-league appearances.

For some of those 1,519 one-game wonders, the journey was more frustration than fruition. After expending so much blood, sweat and tears to reach the majors, their reward was a single yellowed newspaper box score with their name in it.

“I’m proud of what I accomplished. And I think that I accomplished something unique,” said catcher Jack Kruger, who played one inning for the Angels in 2021. “But I think I was capable of more.”

For others like Banister, one of 53 players to retire with a 1.000 batting average, there are no regrets.

“Absolutely zero,” he said. “I loved every minute of it.”

“A cup of coffee” is the idiom baseball has created to describe a short stay in the majors. Here are the stories of four men who got to realize the dream of playing in the big leagues, but only stayed long enough to have a cup of Joe.

---

It’s been 12 years since Brandon Bantz played in his only big-league game. But he hasn’t forgotten how exciting it felt the first time he stepped onto a major league field in a uniform.

“I just remember looking at the third deck being like ‘it’s a lot bigger than I had remembered,’” he said. “That was that first kind of ‘a-ha’ moment. That was the first time I was thinking ‘that’s pretty cool.’”

Bantz was called up from Triple A Tacoma by the Seattle Mariners on June 5, 2013; three days later he would catch eight innings against Andy Pettitte and the New York Yankees, grounding to short and striking out in two at-bats in a 3-1 loss.

Less than a week later he was outrighted back to Tacoma. He would never play in the majors again.

“A lot of times, you get only one chance,” Bantz, 38, says now. “There’s disappointment there, right? Any athlete that goes in has a dream, since you’re a little kid, of playing in the major leagues. Being able to achieve that goal, obviously that’s a big achievement.

“But I think the competitor in me definitely feels like I wasn’t able to really show the ability that I had.”

Yet Bantz overcame long odds just to get those two at-bats. More than four of every five players selected in the Major League Baseball draft never make it to the big leagues.

Bantz, a catcher, wasn’t selected until the 30^th round of the 2009 draft; 892 others were taken ahead of him. But he caught a break on the first step of the minor league ladder when John Boles, a special assistant with the Mariners, saw Bantz play for Seattle’s rookie-level team in Pulaski, Va.

“He actually came up to me after the game and said, ‘You’ve got a chance,’” Bantz remembered. “That kind of set the trajectory of changing how people viewed me in the organization."

When an injury opened a spot in Single-A Everett, Wash., a week later, Bantz was promoted. Although Bantz struggled at the plate — he hit just .234 and never had more than four homers in seven minor league seasons — he threw out nearly half the runners who tried to steal on him, so he continued to climb a level each year, reaching Double A in his first full minor league summer and Triple A a season later.

From there it was a short trip — just 33 miles up Interstate 5 — from Triple A Tacoma to Seattle’s Safeco Field and its intimidating third deck.

Bantz’s only big-league game got off to inauspicious start when he went out to center field to warm up pitcher Joe Saunders and threw the ball over his head, plunking a fan in the leg. But when the game started, the butterflies went away.

“Once the game gets going, it’s just a regular game. It’s the same thing you’ve been doing your whole life,” Bantz said. “If you’re just kind of like, ‘Oh, man this is crazy! That’s Andy Pettitte,’ you’re not in a position to compete.”

Five days later, Bantz was sent back down the freeway to Tacoma and over the next 2 ½ seasons he would be signed and released by the Washington Nationals and Miami Marlins, with a 49-game stint in the independent Atlantic League sandwiched in between.

His baseball career was over before his 29^th birthday.

“A lot of people around the game are two things,” said Bantz, the founder and CEO of Catchers Central, which develops baseball and softball players. “They’re either bitter or they can’t close the yearbook. My career was what it was. Sure, every one of us wants to reach the big leagues, play for 20 years, go to the Hall of Fame, win the World Series. However, that’s not going to be the case for everybody.

“The reality is, it’s a game and the journey across that game is what should be celebrated. How my playing journey concluded, that’s what it was supposed to be.”

---

Jeff Banister’s baseball career nearly ended before it had really started. When he was 15, an examination of a painfully swollen ankle ended in a diagnoses of bone cancer. A bacterial infection in the same leg was eating away at the bone marrow. If the leg wasn’t amputated, a doctor told him, he could die.

The night before the operation, Banister hugged his father and said he’d rather die than lose his leg so his doctor tried another approach and after seven surgeries, Banister walked out of the hospital a year later, cancer free.

A couple of years later he was back in the hospital after a baserunner, trying to hurdle Banister on a play at the plate, instead kneed the catcher in the head, breaking three vertebrae.

“I thought I was dead,” he said.

And he would have been had any sudden movement interfered with his breathing. He was temporarily paralyzed, a condition that required three operations and another year of rehab to cure. By the time he left the hospital with the help of a walker, he had lost nearly 100 pounds. So when the Pirates selected him in the 25^th round of the 1986 June draft — a round so deep it no longer exists — it was as much a reward for his tenacity as it was for his talent.

That, at least, was the point Pirates scout Buzzy Keller made when he signed Banister for a $1,000 bonus over lunch at a Wendy’s in Baytown, Texas.

“He told me, ‘I’m not going to make you rich. But you’ve earned an opportunity,’” said Banister, who at 61 has the tan, chiseled good looks and plain-spoken manner of a Western movie sheriff. “And so I got to thinking about that and he was right. What I did with the opportunity was make the most out of that.”

He struggled to hit at his first three minor league stops but put together a solid fourth season, hitting .272 in a year split between Double A and Triple A. So four months into the 1991 season, he was called up by the Pirates after backup catcher Don Slaught pulled a muscle in his rib cage.

Banister, then 27, still remembers the date.

“July 23, 1991,” he says without prompting.

The call came so fast, no one in his family could make it to Pittsburgh for his big-league debut. “I didn’t leave a ticket for anybody,” he said.

Manager Jim Leyland, aware the Banister’s family lived in Houston, mapped out a plan to have him start that weekend in the Astrodome, only to see pitcher Bob Walk scramble those plans when he strained a hamstring running the bases. The Pirates sent Banister back down and called up Tom Prince, who went on to spend 17 seasons in the majors. Banister never played a big-league game again.

That winter he blew out his elbow playing winter ball, necessitating more surgery. He would appear in just eight more games in pro ball before becoming a minor league manager, eventually working his way back to the majors as a coach and manager with the Pirates, Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks.

But he’s never forgotten what it means to walk into a big-league clubhouse for the first — and maybe only — time.

“We’re not guaranteed 3,000 at-bats," Banister, beginning his fourth season as the Diamondbacks bench coach, says. "We’re not guaranteed one.”

---

Jack Kruger’s big-league career was so short if you blinked, you might have missed it. Yet the climb to get there was so challenging, it’s a wonder Kruger made it at all.

On May 6, 2021, Angels manager Joe Maddon sent Kruger on to catch the ninth inning of an otherwise forgettable 8-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, a game that ended with Kruger standing in the on-deck circle. Yet Kruger’s father Tim said he still gets chills thinking about that night.

“It was surreal,” he said. “It was like being in a dream. I’m sitting there with my wife, holding hands and just thinking, ‘My gosh, our son is playing in a major-league game.’”

No players’ path to the majors is easy, but few have had to overcome as many obstacles as Kruger. When he was 5, Kruger was diagnosed with Perthes disease, a rare condition in which the blood supply to the thigh is temporarily disrupted, leading to bone damage and stunting growth.

But there was a silver lining to that black cloud because after spending 18 months on crutches, Kruger was cleared by doctors for just one physical activity: hitting a baseball.

So Tim began pitching to his son and as Jack’s bones healed and he began to grow, that practice began to pay off. As a senior year at Oaks Christian, Kruger hit .343 with seven homers and 37 RBIs. His dream, however, had never been to play in the majors, it was to serve his country. So he enrolled at West Point.

Then came the next setback. On the day he was to put on his cadet uniform for the first time, the school declared him medically ineligible because of his childhood disease. His dream was gone.

“It was devastating,” Tim Kruger said. “He had his life planned.”

So Kruger made new plans, playing one season at Oregon, one at Orange Coast College and one at Mississippi State, where he made the all-conference team and drew the attention of the Angels, who took him in the 20^th round of 2016 MLB draft.

Kruger methodically climbed the minor league ladder and was in Salt Lake City for his first season in Triple A when manager Lou Marson called him at the hotel. Angels catcher Max Stassi was going on the injured list with a concussion; Kruger was to get on the next plane to Anaheim.

He was going to The Show — and Albert Pujols, a future Hall of Famer, was one of the players designated for assignment to make room for him on the roster.

The next 30 hours are still a blur, he said. He got to Angel Stadium just an hour before the first pitch, too late for batting practice and with just enough time to pull on a jersey with his name in red block letters and black trim above a dark red number No. 59. For the first eight innings he sat on the bench alongside Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout before Maddon sent him on in the ninth to catch 20 pitches from right-hander Steve Cishek.

When he returned to the ballpark the next day a front-office staffer met him at his locker and told him he had been designated for assignment.

“It came out of nowhere,” Kruger said. “And he didn’t know my name.”

Asked about Kruger four years later Maddon, a catcher who spent four years in the low minors, remembered the ninth inning of that one-sided game. And he remembered why he sent Kruger in for the final inning, making him a major leaguer forever.

“I wanted to get him in that game,” he said. “One more hitter gets on base and he gets to hit. Never happened [but] we did our best to make it a complete experience for him. I know it’s something he’ll never forget and he absolutely deserved it.”

Kruger, 30, went on to play two more seasons with the Texas Rangers’ Triple A affiliate in Round Rock, Texas, hitting .243 in 66 games. But he never entered a big-league clubhouse again. After baseball, Kruger co-founded a company called D1 Scholarship to help athletes in multiple sports negotiate the college recruiting process.

“I did everything I could with the opportunities I was given. So I don’t necessarily have any regrets or think or wish I would have done something differently,” he said. “It was great for what it was. And then I moved on to the next thing.”

---

For one brief, shining September afternoon, 18-year-old John Paciorek was the best player in major league baseball.

On the final day of the 1963 season, Paciorek, went three for three with two walks, three RBIs, four runs scored and two splendid running catches in right field for Houston’s Colt .45s in a 13-4 win over the New York Mets. In his last at-bat, he got a standing ovation — if the applause from a crowd of 3,899 can be called an ovation.

“It was like a dream,” he said.

It was the only time Paciorek appeared on a big-league field.

The eldest of five brothers who grew up just outside Detroit, playing every sport that involved a ball — and some that didn’t — Paciorek accepted a $45,000 bonus to sign with the Colt .45s, the forerunners of the Astros, in 1962, while he was still in high school.

He was invited to big-league spring training the following year but hit just .219 at Modesto in the Single A California League in his first pro season. He played with verve, hustling to first after walks and sprinting on and off the field every half-inning, but he also injured his back and shoulder and developed a chronically sore throwing arm late in the year.

He was summoned to Houston that September anyway, partly to have his back checked. With the Colt .45s languishing near the bottom of the 10-team National League standings, Houston manager Harry Craft decided to start a lineup of rookies, among them Joe Morgan, Jimmy Wynn and Rusty Staub, on that final Sunday. Paciorek was soon added to that lineup.

“One of the guys asked if I would like to play,” he said. “I jumped at the opportunity. I wasn’t even thinking of my back. So I went to church and communion and everything else and got to the ballpark early.

“I knew I had to be stretched out and ready to go.”

Batting seventh, he drew a walk in the second and scored on John Bateman’s triple; drove in two runs with a single to left in the fourth; drove in another run with a single to left in the sixth; walked and scored in the sixth; then singled again in the seventh.

“The hits I got were kind of like hits on the handle,” he said. “I was physically strong enough to force the ball over the shortstop’s head.”

But it was that strength and what Paciorek did to built it that contributed to the injuries that ended his career.

“I was such a fanatic about exercise and building myself up,” he said. “I was always doing exercises and doing drills. I had no idea about what I was doing."

Whether that contributed to a chronic back condition is hard to say; one doctor called it an abnormality from birth. What’s certain is the pain was to blame for his poor performance in Modesto, especially after he tore muscles in his upper back.

Still, his perfect game on the final day of the 1963 season got him invited back to spring training the following year to compete for the starting job in center field.

Instead, he struggled to do the most basic things.

“I’d be charging a ground ball and bend over, oh my God it’s like a knife going through my back,” he said. A couple of months later, after batting .135 over 49 games at Single A, he underwent surgery to fuse two lumbar vertebrae, then spent 10 months in a back brace.

“If I would have been more intelligently inclined and I would have known something about chiropractic application or practice, I probably would never had had the operation,” he said. “I developed all kinds of injuries because the fusion limited my movement.”

While recovering from the operation, Paciorek enrolled in the University of Houston, eventually earning a degree in physical education he would soon put to good use. After two more seasons in Houston’s minor league system, hitting .172 and striking out in more than a quarter of his at-bats, he was released and signed with Cleveland. He hit a career-best .268 with 20 homers and 73 RBIs in Single A in 1968, but a year later he was released again and retired to become a teacher at the private Clairbourn School in San Gabriel, where he worked for 41 years before he retired again in 2017, months after the school built a batting cage and named it in his honor.

A year after Paciorek quit playing, younger brother Tom made his big-league debut for the Dodgers, beginning an 18-year career that would see him play in an All-Star Game and a World Series. Another brother would play 48 games for the Milwaukee Brewers and two of John’s four sons played minor league baseball. But none of them matched the perfection of Paciorek, who remains the only major league player to retire with a 1.000 batting average in more than two at-bats.

“My record will probably never be broken,” Paciorek said. “I was just so fortunate. I must have been predestined to demonstrate perfection to a certain extent.

“Maybe that’s why I’m carrying this on for 60 years, this whole idea of perfection.”

What, after all, could be more perfect than playing in the big leagues, where the memories of one game can last a lifetime?

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The Mets defeated the Miami Marlins, 10-2, on Sunday in their penultimate Grapefruit League game of 2025.

Here are the key takeaways...

-Griffin Canning will start regular season game No. 3 for the Mets if all goes to plan, and the right-hander had another solid outing on Sunday, going 4.1 innings while allowing two earned runs. Canning allowed five hits while striking out six and walking three. His spring comes to a close with a 1.88 ERA.

-Hitting second in the order and serving as the designated hitter, Starling Marte destroyed a solo home run in the top of the first, jumping on a 3-2 fastball from Connor Gillispie. The home run was the fist of the spring for Marte, who will likely be a right-handed DH option for the Mets this season.

-Brett Baty has all but locked up the starting second base job with Jeff McNeil starting the season on the IL, and the former third baseman continues to look comfortable at second. In the second inning, Baty beautifully charged a Starlyn Caba high-chopper, fielding the ball and flipping it with his glove to first base for the out.

Baty also had a great at-bat in the fourth. With the bases loaded and nobody out in a tie game, Baty battled and saw 10 pitches before finally working a walk to force in the go-ahead run.

-Alexander Canario, acquired in a trade with the Chicago Cubs earlier in camp, continues to look like he could be a major league player for the Mets this season. Following Baty's walk, Canario put his power on full display, crushing a grand slam to left to put the Mets up 6-1. In the bottom of the sixth, Canario was at it again, slamming a solo homer for his second round-tripper of the afternoon.

Canario has three homers this spring and could factor into the bench picture.

-Brandon Nimmo is getting hot at exactly the right time. After a slow start to camp as he ramped up, he followed up a two-hit day on Saturday with three hits -- a single, double, and triple -- on Sunday against the Marlins.

-In all, the Mets hit four home runs on Sunday: Marte, Canario (two), and Tyrone Taylor. The Mets had 15 hits in total, with nine different players registering at least one base knock.

Who was the game MVP?

Nimmo, who was peppering the wall in right field with rockets as he racked up three hits.

Highlights

Griffin Canning with two first inning strikeouts! pic.twitter.com/2CG7KzVtLd

— SNY (@SNYtv) March 23, 2025

STARLING MARTE HOMER 💣 pic.twitter.com/t6rqez7Avw

— SNY (@SNYtv) March 23, 2025

ALEXANDER CANARIO GRAND SLAM!!!! 💣 pic.twitter.com/e5e2bZQ0Y1

— SNY (@SNYtv) March 23, 2025

Brandon Nimmo now has a single, double, and triple in today's matchup with Miami 👏 pic.twitter.com/6PydSxFiSn

— SNY (@SNYtv) March 23, 2025

ANOTHER HOME RUN FOR ALEXANDER CANARIO pic.twitter.com/hjZKOzu86C

— SNY (@SNYtv) March 23, 2025

What's next

The Mets finish their spring training slate by hosting the Yankees on Monday afternoon at 1:10 p.m. on SNY.

The Yankees played to a 3-3 tie with the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday.

Here are the takeaways...

-Max Fried wasn't necessarily at the top of his game, but he had an effective outing nonetheless. The lefty went 5.1 innings, allowing three earned runs on four hits, including a two-run homer by Junior Caminero in the first inning. Fried walked three and struck out four, finishing his spring camp with a 3.38 ERA.

-The Yankees didn't have a hit through the first four innings, but the offense came to life in the fifth when Anthony Volpe lined an opposite-field home run for the Bombers' first hit of the game. Austin Wells followed that up with a two-run shot to put the Yankees ahead. Wells now has six home runs this spring, and he's likely won the leadoff hitter job come Opening Day.

-Aaron Judge's rough go of it this spring continued Sunday, as he went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts, though he did reach base on a walk. The Yankees' captain is hitting just .129 this spring.

-Paul Goldschmidt was back in the lineup for a second straight day after missing some time with a sore back. The veteran went 1-for-3 with a single and a strikeout, and he's now hitting .297 this spring.

Who was the game MVP?

Wells, who now has a 1.263 OPS this spring.

Highlights

Anthony Volpe with an oppo homer for the Yanks first hit of the day! pic.twitter.com/nAfg4qa2Tv

— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) March 23, 2025

AUSTIN WELLS JUST RAKES pic.twitter.com/NtuhcdkpNR

— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) March 23, 2025

What's next

The Yankees finish their 2025 spring training schedule with a trip to Port St. Lucie to play the Mets on Monday afternoon, with first pitch on SNY at 1:10 p.m.

Report: Gelof to begin season on IL, Muncy makes Athletics' roster originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Athletics’ 2025 MLB season was dealt a tough blow before Opening Day.

Breakout star second baseman Zack Gelof will begin the season on the injured list after suffering a hook of the hamate fracture in his right hand, MLB Media’s Martín Gallegos reported Sunday.

A’s second baseman Zack Gelof has a hook of the hamate fracture of his right hand. He will undergo surgery tomorrow in LA and will begin the season on the injured list.

— Martín Gallegos (@MartinJGallegos) March 23, 2025

While the loss of Gelof surely will be tough to overcome, it does open up an opportunity for one of the Athletics’ top prospects to make thier mark in the big leagues.

Infielder Max Muncy, the Athletic’s No. 7 prospect, will make the Opening Day roster, Gallegos reported Sunday.

Muncy, not to be confused with the Los Angeles Dogders slugger of the same name, was drafted No. 25 overall by the Athletics in the 2021 MLB Draft.

Muncy his hitting .289 with one home run and seven RBIs in 38 spring training at-bats for the Athletics.

The 22-year-old slashed .277/.373/.491 in 50 games for the Las Vegas Aviators last season, and now will seek to contribute to the Athletics’ innaugural season in West Sacramento while the ballclub’s Las Vegas relocation progresses.

The Athletics begin the 2025 MLB season on Thursday night against the Seattle Mariners.

Report: Gelof to begin season on IL, Muncy makes Athletics' roster originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Athletics’ 2025 MLB season was dealt a tough blow before Opening Day.

Breakout star second baseman Zack Gelof will begin the season on the injured list after suffering a hook of the hamate fracture in his right hand, MLB Media’s Martín Gallegos reported Sunday.

A’s second baseman Zack Gelof has a hook of the hamate fracture of his right hand. He will undergo surgery tomorrow in LA and will begin the season on the injured list.

— Martín Gallegos (@MartinJGallegos) March 23, 2025

While the loss of Gelof surely will be tough to overcome, it does open up an opportunity for one of the Athletics’ top prospects to make thier mark in the big leagues.

Infielder Max Muncy, the Athletic’s No. 7 prospect, will make the Opening Day roster, Gallegos reported Sunday.

Muncy, not to be confused with the Los Angeles Dogders slugger of the same name, was drafted No. 25 overall by the Athletics in the 2021 MLB Draft.

Muncy his hitting .289 with one home run and seven RBIs in 38 spring training at-bats for the Athletics.

The 22-year-old slashed .277/.373/.491 in 50 games for the Las Vegas Aviators last season, and now will seek to contribute to the Athletics’ innaugural season in West Sacramento while the ballclub’s Las Vegas relocation progresses.

The Athletics begin the 2025 MLB season on Thursday night against the Seattle Mariners.