Max Scherzer might be in the last years of his career, but what a career it has been. Without a doubt, he will be headed to the Hall of Fame, but now he’s gunning to make it to the top 10 strikeout leaders of all time, and he doesn’t have far to go. This week, Scherzer notched his 3,500th career strikeout, and he only needs seven more to take the tenth overall spot away from Walter Johnson. There is only one active MLB pitcher on the board ahead of Scherzer, and that is Justin Verlander, who currently sits at 3,554 strikeouts. Verlander has been on the IL this year for the Tigers, but is poised to return to the majors soon, so he and Scherzer can continue to deck it out to see who can get the most Ks before they wrap up their respective Hall of Fame careers.
We’ve got that and more in today’s links roundup, so let’s just dive in and get to the news.
The @SFGiants are the first team in MLB history with a walkoff grand slam to cap off a comeback from 8+ runs down in the 8th inning or later. pic.twitter.com/bm10N5hUKk
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 23: General view during a game between Bay FC and Washington Spirit square off before a record-setting crowd at Oracle Park on August 23, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Karen Hickey/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images) | ISI Photos via Getty Images
Good morning, baseball fans!
The San Francisco Giants are home this weekend, so let’s take a look at what Oracle Park has on deck for fans who are thinking about taking in a game.
First up, tonight is Pride Night at Oracle Park. The special event tickets are sold out, but if you happened to get your hands on those there’s a pretty great jersey giveaway. Everyone else can look forward to some Pride Night fireworks after the game!
As with all Saturday home games this season, Saturday will feature a Fiesta Gigantes celebration throughout the park. Additionally, soccer fans will want to get there early, because the first 20,000 fans in attendance will receive a Giants themed soccer jersey, just in time for the World Cup!
Sunday is Hello Kitty Day! The special event tickets for this are sold out as well, but fans who got them will be getting a pretty cool jacket. Everyone else can still get their hands on a Giants themed Hello Kitty plush keychain, if they’re one of the first 25,000 fans in attendance that is. So get there early!
If you’re headed to the park this weekend, have fun and make sure to share pictures in the comments!
What time do the Giants play today?
The Giants welcome the Chicago Cubs to Oracle Park tonight to begin a three-game series starting at 7:15 p.m. PT.
SEATTLE, WA - MAY 02: Kyle Isbel #28 of the Kansas City Royals looks on prior to the game between the Kansas City Royals and the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park on Saturday, May 2, 2026 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Rod Mar/MLB Photos via Getty Images) | MLB Photos via Getty Images
The big news yesterday was the Kyle Isbel injury. Anne Rogers reported it:
On Thursday, he was diagnosed with a Grade 3 tear of a portion of his left plantar fascia, which is a severe tear and will take some time to heal before he gets back to baseball activity. The Royals are hoping to have a better understanding of a timeline for his return after Isbel is further evaluated in the coming days.
Isbel began limping as he got aboard with a single. He knelt on the base before walking slowly toward the Royals’ dugout.
“I think it was like my first step past the base,” Isbel said. “Kind of tried to turn it on and get a double and felt it in my foot.”
The Royals placed Isbel on the 10-day injured list Wednesday. Now, he will begin the long road to recovery.
It sounds like this recovery is going to be measured in weeks or months, not days.
The team got better news about Seth Lugo and his scary injury. Again, per Anne:
Lugo went through the necessary testing and protocol Wednesday night, and his CT scan came back clear, which is an even better sign. With the welt that has formed on his head, Lugo said he feels the throbbing when he bends over but hasn’t had any headaches. His left elbow is cut up and actually hurts the most from falling on it.
Lugo received a lot of support from his teammates. Multiple players came up to check on him as he got ready for Thursday’s game.
“It’s family in here,” Lugo said. “When something like that happens, it’s scary. You know, it’s one of the dangers of baseball. And as a pitcher, you know, you can’t think of that before it happens. You would never throw a strike. We all feel for each other when something bad happens out there, but you know, it’s part of the game.”
The Royals haven’t determined Lugo’s next steps. It’s still too early to tell how his symptoms will progress in coming days. He had a large bump on his forehead and a few scratches on his arm.
How about three stories from The Athletic ($) about the Royals?
On June 18, Under Armour will drop a player-exclusive cleat and turf shoe for Bobby Witt Jr., a move that, on the surface, reads as a standard brand decision for one of baseball’s best young players. But for Witt, it’s the ultimate “Dream Pull.”
…“Dream Pull” is inspired by the thrill of ripping a pack of baseball cards and chasing a big hit. It’s that collector’s high that has driven recent growth in the hobby and prompted pro players like Witt to collect.
…Collectors and fans have multiple ways to get the new footwear. Starting on June 18, limited quantities of the Dream Pull will be available in both cleat and turf versions on Under Armour’s website and mobile app, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Academy.com. Anyone who purchases through Dick’s Sporting Goods or Under Armour receives an exclusive Panini card in the box. But on June 20, the Under Armour Factory House in Kansas City will stock pairs with some boxes containing randomly placed autographed Witt Jr. cards. (The Dream Pull PE will be playable in MLB The Show 2026’s “Road to the Show” game mode.)
This is my second or third shoe story in the last couple of months. I’m currently working on a shoe-related OT, but it’s not ready yet. Can you do a little better on your timing, guys?
When the Kansas City Royals traded catcher Freddy Fermin to the San Diego Padres at last year’s deadline, they were happy to acquire right-handers Stephen Kolek and Ryan Bergert. They also knew Carter Jensen was nearly ready for the majors, making them deep enough at catcher to pull off such a move.
The Royals lack the pitching equivalents of what Jensen was, potential candidates for next year’s rotation in the upper minors. So, even if they fall out of contention, they likely will not be as comfortable moving starters such as right-handers Seth Lugo (under club control through 2027) and Michael Wacha (through 2027).
Left-hander Kris Bubic, a potential free agent, would be more likely to go, along with others on expiring contracts — outfielder Lane Thomas, lefty reliever Matt Strahm and righty reliever John Schreiber, among them.
The Royals, like all teams, are open to anything. If they could trade Wacha and/or Lugo for quality pitchers under longer club control, they would need to consider it. Any form of teardown, though, is likely not an option. The Royals want to win with shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. and third baseman Maikel Garcia, both of whom are under contract through at least 2030.
Keith Law released his Mock Draft 2.0 yesterday and had the Royals taking “Jacob Lombard”.
Over the past few weeks, the manager Matt Quatraro has been shuffling around his lineup. Maikel Garcia has not led off for the Royals since May 27, partially to place him in the heart of the batting order, and partially due to a hamstring injury. Since May 27, Quatraro has favored Carter Jensen to lead off against right-handed pitchers and Lane Thomas against left-handed pitchers. However, Jensen has been slumping lately, and it could be time to shake up the order yet again.
…Massey is far from the perfect leadoff hitter. His current on-base percentage of .283 is less ideal. His baserunning does not stand out in particular. His sprint speed is below average in the 37th percentile. He has only one stolen base attempt this season and has been thrown out more often than he advances when trying to take the extra base on the basepaths. If Massey can‘t improve his baserunning, he could be a frustrating fixture on the bases with stars like Bobby Witt Jr. at the plate.
Also at Royals Keep, Matt Crossland writes about one of my… do I say “favorite” topics(?)… in “The Tragic Tale of Gil Meche”:
In a memorable game against the Diamondbacks, Meche pitched a complete game shutout, only giving up four hits and striking out six. At the time, it was seen as Meche’s masterpiece, but there was only one stat that stuck out like a sore thumb: his pitch count. Meche threw 132 pitches, which is too many pitches to throw for a shutout, and it would eventually take a toll on him. Manager Trey Hillman again gave Meche too long a leash in his next two starts as he threw 121 and 114 pitches in back-to-back starts. He would finish 2009 with a record of 6–10 and an ERA of 5.09 while giving up almost 8 earned runs per game over his last nine starts. He would not be the same pitcher after that.
And this is the perfect time to link to Poz’s article from the time. The “how would you wash a unicorn” analogy has stuck with me to this day:
I don’t know. Maybe at some point, when you’re SO FAR down the wrong road, you just go: “What the hell, might as well keep going and hope we run into something good.” Maybe it would have been more damaging to have Meche throw 117 pitches and then pull him before the inning was done. I don’t know. I really don’t know. We are in such la-la land here, there can be no logical questions … these are like “How would you wash a unicorn?” questions. I do know that Meche threw four more pitches and did get Morneau to fly out to right.
We have a couple of blogs that don’t post very often.
Actually, that’s unfair to Jeff Wayman at The Diamond Chronicles. He posts mostly on Mondays. But I never get to link to his stuff because, well, it wouldn’t be very timely for “Friday Rumblings”. Still, I’ll do it this week to remind you to check him out on Mondays.
Patrick Glancy is mostly posting to his new blog, Powder Blue Pulp. But he did some baseball writing this week, too: “Back to Baseball”. He wrote about what has happened with the team this season so far.
I’m writing this on my birthday, the day before I actually publish it on Substack, and it feels a little strange to be back in baseball mode again. As most of you know, I’ve been hard at work on my debut crime novel, Shivering in Hell, which I announced in my most recent post. I’ve also been publishing short fiction through my other newsletter, Powder Blue Pulp, and I haven’t actually written about baseball since I made my preseason predictions back in March.*
A few weeks ago, over on another blog, we were talking about dinosaurs and the idea of paleontology came up. I was also in Chicago over the past weekend and we were at the Field Museum.
We joke all the time about civilizations from the future that dig up our current time and make bad assumptions. You know, the jokes about how future archeologists will dig up Memphis and assume large swaths of the population worshipped a god-king named Elvis. Better authors than I have come up with great angles on this idea.
But I was having fun noodling around with the (literally) mind-boggling concept of time and had a little fun.
I’m not a great student of history so we’re going to fall down a wiki rabbit hole. I know Wikipedia is imperfect, but it’s good for general knowledge like this.
* * * * *
We’re going to start with this concept: Events from 50 years ago seem old to an individual human. We only get, at best, maybe 100 years on this earth. 300 years ago is another civilization entirely. It seems like a good “block” to measure time in this exercise.
300 years ago (1726), the world was a very different place. Humans hadn’t achieved space flight, automobiles, or flight. But there were crude trains and civilization had sailed the seas for much longer. There was no United States, but there were a lot of other modern countries you could name. How many people could you name that were alive in 1726? Benjamin Franklin? Isaac Newton? Johan Sebastian Bach? Voltaire? Maybe you couldn’t have told me with certainty they were alive then, but you know who they were and that we were in the ballpark. It’s history, but it’s nowhere near ancient history. And this is where our journey starts.
We’re going to use a quick little “o” to represent each 300-year block. A graphic designer, I am not.
Another 300 years before that (1426) is the late Middle Ages and the start of the Renaissance. I could probably give you a few bits off the top of my head. I’d be wrong about some of it, but I’d be right about quite a bit. Joan of Arc, Vlad the Impaler, Johannes Gutenberg? We know those names. Gotta be honest, I only know of Donatello because of TMNT. But anyone with a real appreciation of art would know him. FYI: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael don’t come along until later in the century.
Suffice to say, I feel like we have a “decent” grasp of these first two sets of “300-year” blocks. There are many major events logged in many parts of the world. There’s just a lot of written history from these times. Modern history is aware of so much happening at these times that Wiki’s editors have to spend a significant amount of energy to limit pages to “important” things.
I think this is our first major jump. Could you even tell me anything about 1126? Maybe a couple of things, but it wouldn’t be many. Dark Ages, Indeed. How much do people even know about that time? I asked Gemini who are the most famous people alive at that time and didn’t recognize any names. Anyone here a big fan of Peter Abelard, Henry I, Imad al-Din Zengi, or Emperor Huizong of Song? I’m not saying they aren’t famous – Gemini assures me that Huizong is one of China’s most famous rulers – I just don’t know who they are. Looking at the map, there’s a few countries that have their modern name, even if they’re in different shapes (England, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, France, Poland, Hungary, Ethiopia, Oman, Yemen, Japan, etc). But there’s no Spain, no Germany, no Turkey, no Greece, no China, no India, no Russia.
Our information is becoming sparse very quickly. Know anything about 826? 526? Each of those years barely has a page worth of stuff on Wikipedia. We just don’t know much. How about that 500 AD map above? I don’t think there’s a single country there that has the same name. Maybe Nepal? Ghana and Albania exist, but not where they are today. 226 has an artifact in modernity: Saint Valentine! He was born in 226 and died in 269.
Now we’ve crossed over into BC. 74 BC and 374 BC have a couple of entries of known events. 674 BC only has one. Just think about that for a second. This is less than 3000 years ago. It’s in a time when there was paper and civilization. Various estimates have the world population between 50M and 150M, so let’s split the difference. There were 100M people wandering around and we know of exactly one thing that happened in the entire world. 100,000,000 people! That’s more than France, the UK, Germany, Turkey, or Iran. That’s Italy plus Canada put together. That’s California, Texas, New York, and Illinois combined (using 2022 estimates).
And we know next to nothing. If you’re curious:
Esarhaddon puts down a revolt in Ascalon supported by Taharqa, king of Kush and Egypt. In response, the Assyrians invade Egypt, but Taharqa is able to hold them off.
Here’s our next big gap. When I search Wikipedia for 974 BC, it redirects me to the page for 970s BC. We can’t even tell you anything that happened in 974. But we know that Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I was born and King Zhao of the Chinese Zhou dynasty ascended to the throne during that decade. In Israel, King Solomon may have had his coronation and King David might have been born – but it’s listed as “possible”.
.oooooooooo <- You are here (974 BC)
The 1270s BC were surprisingly busy. While 1274 doesn’t get its own page, there are a number of events on the 1270 page listed as happening in 1274. For instance, the Battle of Kadesh is noted as being “the largest (5,000–6,000) chariot vs. chariot battle in antiquity”. The 1570s BC page is starting to look like the pages for 826 and 526 AD. Only instead of knowing of only a couple of events those years, it’s only a couple of events from that decade.
Did you know that the Bronze Age isn’t a specific set of years for the world? It’s different for different parts of the world? I guess that makes sense, but I didn’t know that until I started looking this up.
.oooooooooooo <- You are here (1574 BC)
* * * * *
So, after 12 hops of 300 years, we get another major jump in Wikipedia chronology. Our 13th jump gets us to 1874 BC. It doesn’t even redirect me to a decade. Now it’s just a century. None of the dates are exact, and there are only about 20 major events. Kansas City gets a mention(!): “1836 BC-1818 BC: Head of Senusret III is made. Twelfth dynasty of Egypt. It is now kept at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.”
.ooooooooooooo <- You are here (1874 BC)
This is both fascinating and boring at the same time. For each entry I run across, the picture gets fuzzier and fuzzier. I’m not going to keep stretching this out one by one.
We’re going to skip a few to 20 jumps of 300 years. A nice, round 6000 years. This is the last page Wikipedia has for a single century: 40th century BC. There are no entries on the page that can point to a single year. There are things like “approximate time of the construction of the Merheleva Ridge complex”, “the Linear Pottery culture gives way to the Funnelbeaker culture in the north”, and “plough in use”. That’s it. That’s all we’ve got.
Also, here’s a sobering thought for anyone trying to make a name for themselves across history. Population estimates have the world at anywhere between 7M and 50M people. And you know what? There isn’t a single name of a single person known from that century. Or for the next century. Or even a few more. Seriously.
Writing doesn’t come about until about 3300BC and do you know our best bet at who is the oldest name in history? A guy named “Kushim the Accountant” who signed his name to a number of stone tablets counting barley shipments. Eat your heart out, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. The first person in recorded history? Kushim, a late Stone Age Excel guy.
I’m hesitant to add this because of the sensitive nature of the topic. But we’re all adults here, so we can talk about it. Biblically, this is about how old the Earth is. That is, if you add up your begats, take your ages literally, and claim the Earth was created in six literal 24-hour days. It assumes fastidious record-keeping with very limited corroborating evidence, documents people who are hundreds of years old (969-year-old Methuselah, 950-year-old Noah, and 930-year-old Adam come to mind), and even whistles past some minor genealogical conflicts in different books of the Bible. Personally, I could also argue that it misses the main message, claiming it as literal and perfect records rather than trying to point towards the idea of God keeping his covenant.
.oooooooooooooooooooo <- You are here (3974 BC)
* * * * *
After that, Wiki skips to millennia. Not just our individual years, but our whole 300-year blocks aren’t good enough to have their own page – we have to lump them in with a couple of others. But I don’t even see the point anymore. We don’t know years, we don’t know people, we’re making best guesses at places, and we’re often heavily speculating on events. We’re well past “they worshipped Elvis” territory if you’re trying to study history.
As I was writing, I needed a pause here. That’s a lot to take in. We’ve gone back 6000 years and the picture is very fuzzy. This is more-or-less what is considered “recorded history”.
On the one hand, that’s after “only” 20 of these 300-year blocks. Or 60 of 100-year lifespans. If you want to call 20 years a generation, that means 300 generations. That sounds a lot longer. It really depends on how you want to chop this up. In short, for an individual human, it’s a long time. For humanity, it’s the blink of an eye. For the history of the Earth, it’s imperceptible.
* * * * *
Humans, as in homo sapiens, have been around for 300K years, give or take.
We barely know anything after 6K years or 20 blocks.
“Modern” humans have been around for 1000 blocks.
At this point, my simple visualization starts to break down. This probably will look pretty bad, but we’ll see how it goes.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo <- You are here
We were just at 20 blocks and that seemed an almost unfathomable time ago. And this is 50x that. Humans, as we understand them, have been around that long. But we’re really in the “making best guesses” territory now. So little is around from 6000 years ago, much less 300K years ago.
If you want to take the whole “Homo” genus, that’s roughly 3M years. It was probably closer to 4M years that we evolved from Australopithecus. But let’s just roll with the 3M number to keep it an even 10,000 blocks.
Before you start thinking “well, 10K blocks, that’s not very many”. I mean, we just jumped from “we know very little about the world from 20 blocks ago” to “10K is pretty similar”? I mean, it’s just 3 more 0’s 20 -> 10000. Yeah, the logarithmic scale is rough. No, I’m not going to take that block of 1000 o’s above and draw 10 of them here. Use your imagination.
I considered taking that 6K span of time, that time we have gone from knowing nothing about it to modernity and making a block to represent that. But, really, when we’re getting into these numbers, does it even help? I think we’re just too abstracted at this point.
Besides, how different could Australopithecus be?
The brains of most species of Australopithecus were roughly 35% of the size of a modern human brain with an endocranial volume average of 466 cc (28.4 cu in). Although this is more than the average endocranial volume of chimpanzee brains at 360 cc (22 cu in) the earliest australopiths (A. anamensis) appear to have been within the chimpanzee range, whereas some later australopith specimens have a larger endocranial volume than that of some early Homo fossils.
Jokes about your friend who uses only a third of his brain aside, it kind of feels like we’re talking more monkey than man at this point. So in the time it takes to get from monkey to modern man, it’s 3M years.
…
At this point, I think our exercise has broken down and we’re just having funsies.
Want to walk back to the age of dinosaurs? That’s the Mesozoic Era. I think most of us know about the 65M years ago number. So, if we use 3M year blocks to go from monkey to man. You have to jump through 20 of those just to get to the end of dinosaurs. And dinosaurs were around for 60 of those. So, in short: the time after dinosaurs is one giant honking block. Dinosaurs lived for three of those.
Do you know how hard it is to find a timeline to scale using search? I just can’t find a good one to link here. We’re so egocentric that everyone wants to make the Paleozoic (252-539 Ma, Mesozoic (66-252 Ma), and Cenozoic (now-66 Ma) the same sized blocks. Since we lived in that later period, we want to make it as big as other periods that are much longer. Never mind that humans are only a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the Cenozoic.
How tiny (using round-ish numbers)?
The genus Homo is around 1/20th of the Cenozoic
Homo sapiens only 1/200th
Recorded history is only about 1/10000th
And, your entire life, if you’re lucky and get to 100, are only 1/660,000th
One more? There are about 70 of those periods (from now to 65M years ago) between the start of the Earth and now.
Homo has been around for 1/1500th of that
Homo sapiens for 1/15,0000th
Recorded history for 1/750,000th
And, you, maybe 1/45,000,000th
How’s your little corner of existence feel right now?
* * * * *
This whole conversation came up because of Tyrannosaurus Rex. T-Rex was around 69-66 Ma, though it could have been around as early as maybe 80 Ma. So it was around at least as long as the Homo genus. Want a rough estimate of how many ever existed: “Over the span of the genus’ existence, it is estimated that there were about 127,000 generations and that this added up to a total of roughly 2.5 billion animals until their extinction”. Add this up with “Lastly, the study suggests that in most cases, only one in 80 million Tyrannosaurus would become fossilized, while the chances were likely as high as one in every 16,000 of an individual becoming fossilized in areas that had more dense populations.”
Obviously, there are huge error bars for something like thi- wait, what did that say? Roughly 2.5 billion (with a “B”) T-Rexes existed in history. No kidding? Wow!
Sadly, we’ve only found about 60 specimens. It’s hard for things to survive 100 years, much less millions
FYI: The estimated number of humans who have ever lived is a little over 100 billion. There’s a cool graphic at the top of the wiki page about that.
* * * * *
Finally, as I went back further, I ran across the name Rodinia. Most people have heard of Pangaea, but there are other supercontinents (theoretically) before that. It was from roughly 1130-750 Mya.
How was it?
Unlike later supercontinents, Rodinia was entirely barren. It existed before complex life colonized on dry land. Based on sedimentary rock analysis, Rodinia’s formation happened when the ozone layer was not as extensive as it is now. Ultraviolet light discouraged organisms from inhabiting its interior. Nevertheless, its existence significantly influenced the marine life of its time.
Yikes.
That page also had a link to something called the Snowball Earth hypothesis.
Then again, supercontinent theory gets really theoretical really fast.
Growing up, I loved the book “An Incomplete Education” (which is probably a bit outdated now). An entertaining reference book? Catnip for adolescent me.
In the science chapter, there’s a section on different types of numbers: integers, rationals, reals, etc. Then it starts getting a little out of control, with things like transfinite numbers and ending with quaternions. This is its explanation of them:
The feeling that, once having learned to walk, one can run. Also fly. The lesson here is that when you extend numbers beyond the complex stage, you do so at the expense of something called permanence; one by one, properties you took for granted fall away. For instance, with quaternions, you have to give up either the role 0 plays or multiplicative commutativity (i.e., x times y no longer equals y times x). Say good night, Gracie.
Yup, I think it’s bedtime.
* * * * *
This seems like the perfect opportunity to revisit Chrono Trigger.
Today’s song plays with the idea in the previously linked to Canticle for Leibowitz.
“Corridors of Time” is the overworld theme for the Kingdom of Zeal. The game starts in the present (modern-ish) times. Shortly after, you’re thrown into a dystopian future and the assumption is that civilization had peaked before the Lavos cataclysm. It’s not until late in the game that you come to find out that a much more advanced civilization existed long before, in 12000 BC. However, their hubris set in motion the events that doomed Zeal and would doom the future. But no one in the present even knew, because nothing of their civilization remained.
Tobias Myers started this game and went two-and-two-thirds innings before reliever Matt Turner finished the third inning. And then Jack Wenninger pitched the remainder of the game, giving up all three of Buffalo’s runs in his five innings of work. The Syracuse lineup didn’t get much going.
Kodai Senga’s rehab start was his best one thus far during this rehab assignment, as he went six innings, gave up just one run on one hit, struck out five, and walked one. Unfortunately, Binghamton’s bats didn’t do much, and the two runs that the bullpen allowed were all Somerset needed to beat them.
The Cyclones led 1-0 and 2-1 in this one, but a pair of late runs allowed by the bullpen turned the game in Frederick’s favor. Cyclones starter Nicolas Carreno struck out nine and walked two, allowing just one run in six innings of work.
GOODYEAR, ARIZONA - FEBRUARY 12: Daniel Espino #66 of the Cleveland Guardians poses for a portrait at Cleveland Guardians Photo Day during 2026 Spring Training at Goodyear Ballpark on February 12, 2026 in Goodyear, Arizona. (Photo by Russell Lee Verlinger/Cleveland Guardians/Getty Images) | Getty Images
The Guardians have demoted Codi Heuer and promoted Daniel Espino. They also traded Nolan Jones to the White Sox for $250K in international free agency.
It’s quite exciting to think of Espino finally making the big leagues. Zack Meisel has a story out about his arduous journey.
Nolan Jones is not good, but if he is somehow miraculously good with the White Sox, it’ll be time o fire the hitting coaches here.
Meisel has an article on the hitting issues for the Guardians.
The Tigers will start Jack Flaherty vs. Tanner Bibee tonight at 7:10PM, Tarik Skubal vs. Joey Cantillo on Saturday at 4:10PM and probably Casey Mize vs. Gavin Williams on Sunday at 1:40PM. Feels like a very important series right now. The Guardians are on a four-game losing streak.
AROUND MLB:
The Tigers destroyed the Twins and the Royals lost to the Rangers.
The Atlanta Braves were unable to seek a win on Thursday evening, as the series finale against the Chicago White Sox was a washout. The game will be made up on August 20th at 2:10 ET.
The road trip has continued to New York, where the Braves face the Mets in a three-game series. First pitch is set for Friday night at 7:15 ET.
More Braves News:
MLB Pipeline’s latest mock draft has new names connected to the Braves.
Isaiah Drake logged two homers and a double in Rome’s win on Wednesday. More in the minor league recap.
MLB News:
The Philadelphia Phillies have acquired outfielder Derek Hill and international bonus pool finds from the Chicago White Sox. In exchange, the Sox received two prospects.
Sep 10, 2024; San Francisco, California, USA; General view of the helmet used by the Milwaukee Brewers before the start of the first inning against the San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Stan Szeto-Imagn Images | Stan Szeto-Imagn Images
Greetings, Brew Crew Ball community. The Brewers had another slightly underwhelming week, as they swept the Rockies in Colorado and won an extra-innings slugfest on Monday night in Las Vegas but ultimately dropped their series with the A’s. Elsewhere in the division, the bottom three teams (Pirates, Cubs, and Reds) struggled, but the Cardinals continue to surprise, as they’ve closed the gap in the division. The Brewers are now back home as they’ll welcome the Phillies and Guardians over the next week.
Feel free to use this thread to chat about (almost) anything you want: video games, food, movies, non-baseball sports, the Brewers, you name it. As long as it’s appropriate and is allowed by our moderators, it’s fair game here.
Since most of the conversation lately seem to have zigged towards the Nolan Gorman question and somewhat the Riley O’Brien question, I decided to zag in another direction. My curiosity? Of the minor leagues prospects we’ve been watching, who has the most interesting pitch shape metrics (ie. the under the hood stuff)? We seem to be far enough into the season to have built up some stats that can stand up to Small Sample Size (SSS) scrutiny. Since I do the daily down on the Farm Reports, I see the various pitcher usage and line score results every day. That has made me curious about some things that might be going on beyond the line score.
That real-time curiosity met up with a longer-term, nagging deficiency in my knowledge set. It goes like this: Every so often as prospect watcher like @KareemSSN will post an interesting tidbit on a pitcher with stuff I find really cool. He is pretty good at explaining things, but one of things that has frustrated me is I can look at a chart like this and lack the context of what is good, what is bad and what is irrelevant and I have to re-remember all that and I can’t find a reliable source for reference. So I set out to build my own reference, so when something like this pops up, I can open my reference card and interpolate if an SI spin of 2038 with an HB of 13.7 is good, bad or irrelevant. In this case, it’s not great, but very relevant to gauging a Slider’s potential effectiveness.
I’m going to start with a set of numbers similar to what is above, although I can’t help myself and add a few and delete some others. I’m going to pull all the pitch data for our Low-A and AAA pitching prospects and see who has elite level metrics in any of the categories. I will be dropping VREL, Ext and Chase and add in some expected performance measures like xwOBA, xBA, along with actual measures like K and BB rate.
My first crack at this will be to discover which Low-A pitchers have top 10th percentile metrics. This is a “who has a tool that sticks out” kind of question. For those pitchers with a notable metric, I will show a comparison not only to their league, but AAA and MLB standards for the same metric. For fun, I will also include a notable non-Cardinal prospect in the analysis (Seth Hernandez) to give some context to some of the numbers you will see.
A couple of quick notes on the data:
The data comes from Baseball Savant (probably not surprising). The minor league side only has data for Low-A and AAA pitchers, so my research will unfortunately exclude High-A and AA pitchers. We have to wait for Liam Doyle to get to Memphis before we get to look under the hood.
I’d love to use Chase%, but I can not find it in the exported set that comes from Savant. If anyone has any pointers, let me know.
I arbitrarily set a cut off at 50 pitches … any pitcher with less than 50 pitches in that league is excluded. It helped make the data manageable, and also smoothed out most major league rehab pitchers. I’m not comparing prospects to veteran MLB pitchers, I’m comparing them to their peers.
The vertical and horizontal movement ranks are non-intuitive. Whereas a low xBA is good (top 10th percentile) and a high xBA is bad (bottom 10th percentile), when it comes to direction, either extreme can be good, depending on the pitch type. For example, a high positive on the horizontal axis on a Sinker (SI) can produce a top 10th percentile, whereas a high negative on the same axis coupled with a Slider (SL) can produce a bottom 10th percentile result, which is equally good, given the pitch type.
Low-A Metric Leader Board
player_name
total_pitches
pitch_type
pitch_percent
spin_rate
Velocity
spin_rate P10
Velocity P10
K rate P10
whiff rate
whiff.rate P10
Walk Rate P10
Vertical Break (in)
Vertical Break P10
Horiz break (in)
Horiz break P10
Hernandez, Seth
371
FF
48.2
2405
98.4
4
1
6
28%
3
2
17.44
3
13.88
1
Hernandez, Seth
371
SL
18.1
2543
89.0
3
1
1
71%
1
5
3.04
4
-0.19
1
Hernandez, Seth
371
CH
18.1
2289
85.0
1
5
1
71%
1
7
9.59
2
14.55
5
Hernandez, Seth
371
CU
15.6
2574
81.4
6
2
1
73%
1
5
-9.68
6
-8.62
5
Breckheimer, Alex
510
CU
11.8
2176
76.9
10
9
10
22%
9
7
-14.71
10
-7.34
3
Breckheimer, Alex
510
FF
55.9
2334
93.3
5
5
3
22%
6
1
17.71
3
10.62
3
Crossland, Cade
784
CH
31.6
2254
82.7
1
8
3
55%
2
9
7.58
3
18.81
1
Crossland, Cade
784
CU
11.1
2383
78.1
8
8
1
57%
1
1
-13.18
9
-9.99
7
Crossland, Cade
784
SL
7.4
2163
84.4
9
3
10
24%
9
7
3.07
4
0.66
1
Cuello, Antoni
359
FF
49.3
2461
95.2
3
3
10
12%
10
7
14.98
8
14.5
1
Cuello, Antoni
359
SL
24.5
2224
83.1
8
7
1
45%
3
9
2.56
5
0.18
1
Driessen, Dylan
315
FF
54.6
2231
94.5
9
4
1
26%
4
7
20.31
1
5.51
10
Driessen, Dylan
315
CU
23.5
2768
80.2
3
4
5
29%
5
1
-11.82
8
-8.5
4
Echeman, Kaden
557
CU
23.5
2594
81.4
5
2
2
45%
2
5
-15.9
10
-4.77
2
Jovi Galvez
297
SI
30
2169
94.4
8
3
3
28%
2
9
14.24
4
15.14
3
Martinez, Jack
783
SL
36.9
2462
81.3
5
9
10
28%
8
10
8.86
1
-6.65
7
Odle, Jacob
584
FF
28.6
2432
97.1
3
1
4
24%
5
8
17.58
3
8.87
5
Odle, Jacob
584
CU
18.8
2593
83.0
5
1
4
34%
4
4
-11.51
8
-8.6
5
Shelagowski, Jake
601
FF
55.9
2235
95.8
8
2
5
20%
8
4
15.68
7
14.2
1
Shelagowski, Jake
601
SL
23.5
2162
86.1
9
1
5
28%
8
1
1.18
7
-2
2
Van Dyke, Ty
431
FF
44.5
2290
92.4
7
8
2
24%
5
1
15.67
7
13.61
1
Van Dyke, Ty
431
SL
16.7
2796
81.5
1
9
1
36%
5
2
2.2
6
-12.57
10
Ynfante, Nelfy
358
SI
38.8
2167
94.3
8
3
4
23%
4
4
14.71
3
13.96
6
Young, Ethan
514
SI
30.2
2353
93.8
3
4
5
26%
3
6
16.57
1
15.47
2
Young, Ethan
514
CH
20.4
2081
84.9
2
6
4
56%
1
9
5.83
6
17.4
2
Young, Ethan
514
FF
19.1
2328
93.2
6
6
9
17%
8
1
18.49
2
12.31
2
The above table depicts 12 Palm Beach (Low-A) pitches who have at least one pitch metric in the top 10th percentile of their league. These represent the tools the Cardinals have to work with and develop.
The thirteen pitcher is a proxy – Seth Hernandez. If you’ve never heard of him, you will. He is what scouts dream of when it comes to pitch metrics:
(FF) Four seam fastball that has top 10th percentile in velo AND horizontal movement
(SL) Slider with top tenth percentile in whiff rate and horizontal movement
(CH) with top tenth spin rate and whiff rate
With that primer, let’s look at Cardinal Low-A prospects:
Alex Breckheimer has elite command with his four seamer w/ a top 10th percentile walk rate.
Cade Crossland’s spin rate and horizontal break on his change-up (CH) are top 10th. His curve (CU) has elite whiff rate and elite horizontal break (90th percentile). This is one of those counter-intuitive ones where the large negative number is a great number. In an odd one, his slider (SL) has a really odd outlier horizontal break – it breaks into RH hitters. That will need fixing.
Antoni Cuello has top 10th horizontal break on his FF and SL, and has a superior K rate with that slider. It is a put away pitch.
Dylan Driessen has top 10th percentile induced vertical break on this 4-seam fastball (FF). I always get this backwards but I think this means it has “ride” or “hop” to it. He also has exceptional command over his slider (SL).
Kaden Echemann has an even better curve (CU) that Crossland with 16” of downward break. Memories of Uncle Charlie with this one.
Jack Martinez has unusual break on his slider. It doesn’t miss bats, and walks lots of guys, so I don’t see this 10th percentile rating as all that helpful.
Jacob Odle carries top tenth percentile on both his FF. He had one of the hardest curves in the league, too, before he advanced to High-A.
John Shelagowski has elite horizontal break on his FF and has elite and near-elite characteristics on his slider (SL).
Tyler Van Dyke’s FF really rides in on RH batter, with a high K and low walk rate (the velo itself is pedestrian). He also carries very good command characteristics on his SL.
Ethan Young carries top tenth percentile characteristics on his SI, CH and FF. Looks a little like Seth Hernandez, huh?
Performance Matters
Stuff (and the underlying metrics which show it) are one thing. Performance is another. Which pitchers (in Low-A Palm Beach) are getting the most out of their stuff? Let’s look more at performance outcomes as see how they rate.
player_name
pitch_type
pitch_percent
xwoba
K Rate
BB Rate
HardHit%
xwOBA P10
Hard Hit Rate P10
K rate P10
Walk Rate P10
Breckheimer, Alex
FF
55.9
0.23
28
5.3
39.58
2
5
3
1
Breckheimer, Alex
CU
11.8
0.27
10
10
14.29
7
2
10
7
Crossland, Cade
CH
31.6
0.24
42.4
18.2
19.23
5
4
3
9
Crossland, Cade
CU
11.1
0.08
77.8
0
25
1
5
1
1
Crossland, Cade
SL
7.4
0.57
8.3
8.3
37.5
10
7
10
7
Cuello, Antoni
FF
49.3
0.35
7.9
18.4
44.44
7
8
10
7
Cuello, Antoni
SL
24.5
0.2
54.5
13.6
0
3
1
1
9
Driessen, Dylan
FF
54.6
0.26
40
20
28.57
2
2
1
7
Driessen, Dylan
CU
23.5
0.3
41.2
0
60
7
10
5
1
Echeman, Kaden
FF
53.1
0.34
19.8
23.5
37.78
6
4
6
8
Echeman, Kaden
CU
23.5
0.25
58.1
6.5
30
6
5
2
5
Martinez, Jack
SL
36.9
0.26
14.6
16.7
21.21
6
2
10
10
Martinez, Jack
FF
30.8
0.27
34.9
14.3
27.59
2
1
2
5
Odle, Jacob
FF
28.6
0.32
25.6
23.3
40.91
5
6
4
8
Odle, Jacob
CU
18.8
0.15
48.3
3.4
61.54
3
10
4
4
Shelagowski, Jake
SL
23.5
0.16
34.6
0
35.29
2
6
5
1
Shelagowski, Jake
CU
12.5
0.36
23.8
14.3
18.18
9
3
8
9
Van Dyke, Ty
FF
44.5
0.2
31
5.2
33.33
1
2
2
1
Van Dyke, Ty
SL
16.7
0.08
54.5
0
0
1
1
1
2
Ynfante, Nelfy
SI
38.8
0.22
18.8
9.4
26.09
1
2
4
4
Young, Ethan
SI
30.2
0.34
18.2
13.6
43.33
7
8
5
6
Young, Ethan
CH
20.4
0.15
41.7
16.7
0
1
1
4
9
Young, Ethan
FF
19.1
0.31
8.7
4.3
57.89
4
10
9
1
Young, Ethan
CU
11.9
0.15
60
10
0
2
1
2
7
In the above table, you will see many of the same names and pitches, this time with how those pitches are performing in real games. There are few new names, as some guys without top 10th percentile stuff are still getting top tenth percentile results, such as Nelfy Ynfante, who really limits hard contact without any top tier stuff.
Some notes:
Crossland’s change and curve perform well. Sure enough, that odd slider does not.
Odle’s FF seems to perform a bit worse that the metrics suggest it should.
Van Dyke’s command sets him apart.
Jack Martinez seems to get more out of his FF that the metrics suggest he should.
Ethan Young, with 4 pitches on this chart, should become a name to remember. How many low-A pitchers do you remember that already have 4 average or better offerings?
Summary
So I’m ending this just with Low-A pitchers. Round 2 will include AAA pitchers, in similar format, depending on how commenters react to this first go. This hopefully provides you with some names to watch for, some reasons to watch for them and some explanation about why these guys keep getting used in priority situations.
Closing
Oh, yeah. Remember that cheat sheet I keep looking for to remember what is a really good pitch metric…like for when someone tell us so-and-so’s sinker (SI) breaks arm side 18”. Is that good? Is it elite? Below is an MLB chart and indeed, anything above 17.9” is top tenth percentile. This is for all pitchers in the MLB in 2026.
pitch_type
OBA
xBA
Hardhit
Top Spin Rate
Bottom Spin Rate
Whiff Rate
K Rate
Walk Rate
Top Vertical
Bottom Vertical
Top Horiz
Bottom Horiz
Velo
FF
0.253
0.166
31.3
2485
2135
13%
34.5
5.6
18.5
12.9
11.9
3.6
91.8
SI
0.261
0.211
26.5
2382
2018
6%
20.0
2.4
13.0
2.2
17.9
13.2
90.8
SL
0.187
0.147
19.3
2699
2174
20%
43.3
0.0
5.7
-3.5
-1.0
-8.0
83.2
CH
0.196
0.161
17.2
2123
1313
20%
36.0
0.0
9.1
-0.9
17.5
11.1
81.8
ST
0.176
0.132
18.0
2873
2268
21%
43.6
0.0
5.6
-3.7
-10.0
-17.4
78.9
FC
0.263
0.190
22.5
2623
2155
14%
24.3
0.0
12.0
4.5
0.6
-4.8
86.8
CU
0.187
0.134
17.6
2879
2266
19%
48.2
0.0
-5.2
-15.8
-3.6
-14.2
75.0
FS
0.195
0.149
16.7
1709
971
18%
46.4
0.0
6.8
-0.7
15.1
8.0
82.7
KC
0.200
0.151
26.3
2794
2278
19%
41.3
0.4
-4.2
-14.7
-2.0
-13.2
78.3
SV
0.245
0.207
22.8
2856
2215
23%
33.0
0.0
-2.2
-7.6
-5.6
-17.2
80.1
FO
0.241
0.174
27.7
1073
649
33%
34.9
3.6
0.2
-2.5
10.5
4.1
82.9
KN
0.264
0.232
40.9
299
299
21%
29.4
5.9
-1.9
-1.9
1.6
1.6
80.5
Contains both pitch shape and performance metrics
One interesting thing I think I see in this data. There really doesn’t seem to be a lot a difference in top tenth pitch metrics (spin rate, horizontal break, etc.) between Low-A and MLB. Is that a reasonable look? That tells me that location, command and sequencing is what they learn coming up the ladder, but the raw materials are pretty much in place in Low-A. Valid observation?
Long-term, I might spiff this up by blanking out more irrelevant columns. For example, percentile rank is not crucial for velocity on a Knuckle Curve. For most breaking/off speed pitches, the offset from the FF/SI is more crucial, as well as the spin direction (which isn’t in the data set, as far as I can tell).
BALTIMORE, MD - JUNE 11: Andrew Kittredge #39 and Samuel Basallo #29 of the Baltimore Orioles celebrate after the Orioles defeated the Seattle Mariners at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on Thursday, June 11, 2026 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images) | MLB Photos via Getty Images
Good morning, Camden Chatters.
The path to getting there might not have been ideal, but the Orioles salvaged a split with the Mariners in the opening series of their seven-game homestand. The O’s have snapped a four-game losing streak by winning their last two, taking last night’s finale by a 7-5 score. A six-run third inning did the heavy lifting for the Birds, who held on despite Kyle Bradish’s second straight lousy start thanks to a great effort by the bullpen. Check out Alex Church’s recap of all the action.
The O’s are right back where they started the homestand, at four games under .500. It’s not exactly where they want to be. Things could be better. But they could also be worse! #analysis
The Orioles arguably could have won all four games of the series. Both of their losses were by one or two runs, and if just one or two things had gone differently in each game, the O’s could’ve made a huge statement with a sweep of the first-place Mariners. But baseball doesn’t work that way, especially not 2026 Orioles baseball. Even in their almost-wins, they keep making some dumb mistakes, like Blaze Alexander getting thrown out to erase a potential sac fly on Monday, or Gunnar Henderson first-pitch hacking into a groundout with the bases loaded in a tie game in the ninth on Tuesday.
We’ve seen what the Orioles can look like when they’re firing on all cylinders. They’ve got the talent to go on an extended run, but most of the time the biggest obstacle they need to overcome is themselves. The fundamental mistakes — sloppy defense, sloppy baserunning, failures with RISP — are holding them back. If they clean up some of that stuff more consistently, they can certainly make a postseason push in an American League that has very few dominant teams.
For now, the O’s will try to extend their modest winning streak as they welcome the Padres to Camden Yards for the first time since 2024, when San Diego took two of three. The Pads have a winning record overall but have been struggling for a couple of weeks now, just 4-12 in their last 16 games. Their offense in particular has struggled badly, nobody more so than former Oriole Manny Machado, who’s hitting .172 with a .597 OPS.
This series is the Orioles’ for the taking, and a good opportunity for the Birds to inch closer to that elusive .500 mark. Will it happen? It’s hard to predict anything with this team.
It does seem like Albernaz isn’t particularly expressive with umps when arguing calls. Then again, he is still recovering from taking a baseball off the face a couple months ago. I’d probably be trying to avoid any unnecessary facial movement, too.
Every year it seems there’s some journeyman veteran who makes the O’s roster as an afterthought and ends up being a much bigger contributor than expected. Leody Taveras is that guy.
A great story from Ken Rosenthal about the beloved former Oriole, who just made it back to the majors for the first time since 2023 after nearly retiring earlier this season. I’ll be rooting hard for Trey, and I don’t think I’m the only one.
Orioles birthdays and history
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! You share your day with two former Orioles: Baltimore-born outfielder Damon Buford (56) and catcher Dave Skaggs (75).
On this date in 1986, Orioles DH Juan Beníquez hit three home runs in one game, an especially unlikely feat considering that he hit only six in his entire O’s career. The O’s lost the game anyway, 7-5, to the Yankees.
On this date in 2004, in the first game of a doubleheader at Camden Yards, the Orioles’ Rafael Palmeiro hit his 536th and 537th career homers while the Giants’ Barry Bonds hit his 675th. It marked only the third time in MLB history that two members of the 500-homer club went deep in the same game. Once again, the O’s lost, 9-6, in 11 innings.
Random Orioles game of the day
On June 12, 2006, the Orioles beat the Blue Jays in Toronto, 6-4. Starter Kris Benson delivered a quality start, working six innings and giving up three runs, all of them coming on a pair of Alex Ríos homers. His battery mate, Ramón Hernández, went 3-for-5 and was a triple shy of the cycle to lead a well-balanced O’s offense. Chris Ray got the save in the ninth despite giving up a homer to former and future Oriole Gregg Zaun. The win improved the O’s to 30-35, but they never got even within five games of .500 again for the rest of the season.
The Detroit Tigers wrapped up their homestand on Thursday afternoon with an 11-0 shellacking of the Minnesota Twins to give the team its seventh win in nine tries so far in June. Already, AJ Hinch and Co. have exceeded their win total for May with just under 2/3 of the month remaining.
Not too shabby.
Now, the Motor City Kitties hit the road for another big series against a fellow American League Central rival — the Cleveland Guardians — starting on Friday night at Progressive Field. The Guards have experienced an opposite level of success in June, winning just three of their nine games so far while bringing a four-game losing streak into the weekend that includes a three-game sweep at home against the New York Yankees.
The Tigers will open up with right-hander Jack Flaherty, who was cruising through five innings against the Seattle Mariners last time out before getting knocked out in the sixth. The 30-year-old’s final line saw him surrender three runs on six hits and a walk while striking out seven over five frames in what eventually turned out to be a 5-4 victory for Detroit.
Flaherty last faced Cleveland in the 2025 AL Wildcard series, in which he gave his team 4 2/3 innings of one-run ball on three hits and two walks while striking out four in a 6-3 team win.
Up against him for the Guardians will be fellow righty Tanner Bibee, who is coming off his best start of the year on the road against the Texas Rangers. The 27-year-old gave his team eight frames of shutout ball on three hits and two walks while striking out just three to earn his first and only win of the 2026 campaign.
That effort just barely outdid his previous performance against Detroit this season back on May 20, when he also went eight innings, surrendering just one run on four hits and a walk while striking out three. However, the Olde English D ultimately prevailed that day in 10 innings, 3-2.
Take a look below at how the two match up on Friday night.
Detroit Tigers (29-40) vs. Cleveland Guardians (37-33)
Time (ET): 7:10 p.m. Place: Progressive Field, Cleveland, Ohio SB Nation Site:Covering the Corner Media: Detroit SportsNet, MLB.TV, Tigers Radio Network
Game 70: RHP Jack Flaherty (1-7, 5.31 ERA) vs. RHP Tanner Bibee (1-7, 4.09 ERA)
Jun 10, 2026; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; A detailed view of the All-Star Game logo on the hat of Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper (3) during an MLB game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Sousa-Imagn Images | Kevin Sousa-Imagn Images
The Phillies now head to Wisco for a set against the Brewers. I’ve heard that actual Wisconsinites never say “Wisco”. Is that true? As you can tell (or maybe not?) from my use of the term, I am not from Wisconsin.
Onto the links.
Phillies news
The Phillies are going to have some All-Stars for the hometown All-Star Game. But how many?
Happy birthday to Damon Buford, and a mighty host of others.
Today in baseball history, in 1939 – In front of a record crowd of 23,864 fans at Ruppert Stadium in Newark, NJ, Lou Gehrig plays his last game in a Yankee uniform when he participates in an exhibition contest against the Kansas City Blues, the team’s American Association farm club. The “Iron Horse”, playing only three innings and batting eighth, grounds out weakly to second base in his only at-bat, and other stories as well.
Today in baseball history:
1880 Worcester Ruby Legs pitcher Lee Richmond throws the first perfect game in MLB history in a 1-0 win over the Cleveland Blues at the Agricultural County Fair Grounds in Worcester
1970 – Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellisno-hits the San Diego Padres, 2-0. Ellis receives all his support on two home runs by Willie Stargell. Ellis will later claim that he was suffering from the after-effects of his previous night’s LSD trip while pitching this gem.
1923 – Harry Houdini frees himself from a straight jacket while suspended upside down, 40 feet (12 m) above ground in NYC.
1930 – German boxer Max Schmeling beats Jack Sharkey by disqualification in 4 rounds in NYC for vacant NBA, NYSAC, The Ring and lineal heavyweight titles; first time title won on a foul.
1931 – Al Capone is indicted on 5,000 counts of prohibition violations and perjury.
1979 – Kevin St Onge throws a playing card a record 185 ft-1 inch; record broken in 1992.
1987 – US President Ronald Reagan challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin wall.
2008 – Patrick Kane receives the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year.
Today in music history:
1909 – “Shine On, Harvest Moon” by Ada Jones & Billy Murray hits #1.
1965 – Queen Elizabeth’s Birthday Honours List names The Beatles as MBEs (Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire); dozens of past winners return medals in protest.
1966 – Dave Clark Five sets record as they appear for 12th time on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
1970 – Rocker and blues singer Janis Joplin debuts in Kentucky.
1990 – Mariah Carey‘s self-titled debut album is released.
1993 – “Three Little Pigs” by Green Jelly hits #17.
2008 – Coldplay release their 4th studio album ” Viva la Vida or Death” (winner of 3 Grammys).
Mar 1, 2026; Jupiter, Florida, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates relief pitcher Antwone Kelly (89) delivers a pitch against the St. Louis Cardinals during the fourth inning at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images | Sam Navarro-Imagn Images
The Pittsburgh Pirates are addressing some season-long problems in the bullpen by calling up number seven prospect Antwone Kelly ahead of this weekend’s series against the Miami Marlins.
The 22-year-old right-hander had a 4.50 ERA and a 1.481 WHIP at Triple-A Indianapolis this season, which are hardly sparkling numbers, but as the team continues to middle along with a 4.45 ERA as a bullpen, some reinforcement arms were needed. He did pitch over 100 innings last year with a 3.02 ERA, which helped his cause.
Kelly has a fastball that reaches triple digits and averages 97.6 mph in the Minors, and he also employs a change-up and a cutter. He began the year in the starting rotation for Indianapolis, but was then moved to the bullpen.
The 20th-ranked Pirates bullpen needs all the help they can get, having two major blowups within the past week, giving up a 10-run inning to the Los Angeles Dodgers and blowing 9-5 eighth inning lead to the Houston Astros. The bullpen seems to be getting worse, not better, which is why some fresh bullpen arms were needed. Whether Aruban native Kelly is part of the answer or not remains to be seen, but we’ll be set to find out this weekend against the Marlins.
The Bucs have three home games against Miami this weekend, playing Friday at 6:40pm, Saturday at 4:05pm and Sunday at 12:15pm. We’ll see Braxton Ashcraft, Bubba Chandler and Paul Skenes taking the mound this weekend as starters. Once we get to the bullpen, there’s a good chance Kelly makes his debut. Stay tuned.
Pitching was sharp on both sides in this one as Sawyer Gipson-Long posted his best start of the season while the Hens were held to four hits.
The right-hander fired five scoreless innings of one-hit ball of his own in this one. Gipson-Long allowed two walks, but he struck out five on the evening. As usual, his slider-changeup combo was very good, but his fastball metrics remain well below average. Ricky Vanasco succeeded him with a scoreless inning of work, and Troy Watson took it the rest of the way. He too pitched a solid three innings, but allowed a solo shot in the top of the ninth for the only run in this one.
Max Clark went 0-for-5 but didn’t strike out, and he was the only Hen who could say that. Corey Julks had two hits to lead the offense, such as it was as Saints veteran Austin Voth struck out eight in his start.
Julks: 2-4, 2B, 2 K
Gipson-Long: 5.0 IP, 0 R, H, 2 BB, 5 K
Coming Up Next: It’s a 7:05 p.m. ET start on Friday in Toledo.
John Peck came through with a walkoff double after the RubberDucks tied this one up late.
Starter Sean Hunley struggled for Erie in this one, but the offense seized control pretty early after Hunley gave up four runs in four innings.
Brett Callahan is really pressing his case for a move to Toledo now. The left-handed outfielder crushed a solo shot in the bottom of the first for his 12th home run of the season, and his fifth in the last six games. Callahan is holding his own against left-handed pitching and destroying right-handers. The Tigers do things at a glacial pace but Callahan should be moving up after the All-Star break if he can avoid a slump in the meantime.
In the second, singles from Chris Meyers and Izaac Pacheco led to their second run. In the third, they really poured on the offense. Peyton Graham singled with one out and John Peck drew a walk. A two-out single from Andrew Jenkins plated Graham, and then Meyers walked to load the bases. Pacheco ripped a two-run single to right field and then stole second base. E.J. Exposito came through with a two-run single of his own, and it was 7-3 Erie through three innings.
The Detroit area’s own Alex Mooney hit a solo shot off of Hunley in the fourth to make it a 7-4 game, and the RubberDucks chipped away at the lead with a two-run sixth against Johan Simon.
Moises Rodriguez took over in the ninth with a 7-6 lead looking for the save. He got a quick pair of ground outs and his sinker is popping triple digits now that the weather has heated up. That didn’t stop Jaison Chourio, who got a hanging slider and launched it to right for just the second homer against Rodriguez this year.
Tie ballgame.
The reversal came quickly in the bottom half. Graham walked, and Peck smoked a double off the right field wall. Graham raced first to home ahead of the relay, and the SeaWolves had a walkoff winner.
🚨SeaWolves Walk-Off Win🚨
John Peck hits a hard line-drive double off the wall in right and Peyton Graham comes all the way home from 1st to give Erie an 8-7 win. Unfortunately, it looks like Alfonsin Rosario was hurt on the play. @ZachSurdenik calls it. pic.twitter.com/cAxBVYJpEu
Coming Up Next: The SeaWolves will morph into the Flagship City Kitties on Friday, as they hunt for their fifth straight victory at 6:35 p.m. ET.
Lake County Captains 6, West Michigan Whitecaps 5 (box)
The Whitecaps beat up on Captains starter Melkis Hernandez, only to watch their bullpen blow the lead late on Thursday.
Right out of the gate, a one-out single from Andrew Sojka and a double from a still hot Ricardo Hurtado got the Whitecaps in scoring position, and Sojka scored on a ground out for a 1-0 lead.
Starter Lucas Elissalt leaked two runs in the bottom half on a single-double-single combination, but in the second, Samuel Gil and Junior Tilien led off with singles. Caleb Shpur’s automatic double scored Gil, and a Sojka single scored Tilien. Shpur was thrown out at the plate, but it was 3-2 ‘Caps.
The third opened with back-to-back doubles from Clayton Campbell and Luke Shliger for a 4-2 lead. Unfortunately Gil lined into a double play to snuff that threat from developing further.
Elissalt allowed a Dean Curley solo shot off a high fastball in the bottom of the third that got the Captains back within one. The right-hander has struggled early on this year, but we keep seeing hints of more velocity, and he was really just bit by sequencing. Other than the solo shot he wasn’t hit hard at all and was in pretty good command of his stuff.
Again the Whitecaps pushed across a run in the bottom half on a Campbell sac fly that scored Sojka.
Unfortunately, that 5-3 lead wouldn’t hold up as Preston Howey surrendered three runs in the sixth, and the offense went quiet.
Sojka: 3-5, 2 R, RBI, 2 K
Hurtado: 2-5, 2B, K
Gil: 2-4, R
Elissalt: 5.0 IP, 3 ER, 4 H, BB, 4 K
Coming Up Next: It’s a 7:00 p.m. ET start on Friday with the Captains up 2-1 in the series.
Malachi Witherspoon’s control was pretty shaky again in this one, and the bullpen kept leaking runs while the offense was pretty quiet.
Witherspoon did settle in eventually, but he coughed up two runs in a pretty laborious first inning. He shut the Threshers down from there and found his command to a degree, but was still pretty efficient. He departed in the fourth and Yendry Gomez cleaned up that inning and spun a scoreless fifth as well.
In the fifth, the Flying Tigers finally capitalized on an opportunity when a passed ball got Nick Dumesnil to second base, and a Beau Ankeney single scored him. In the sixth, Anibal Salas singled with two outs, and Hunter Dobbins doubled him in.
At that point it was a 2-2 game and things were looking up.
In the bottom of the sixth, Luke Hoskins came on for Lakeland and an error on Jude Warwick allowed the leadoff hitter to reach and then steal second base. A double that Javier Osorio couldnt’ snare at third gave the Threshers the lead. Hoskins leaked another run before getting out of the inning, and gave up one more in the seventh as the Flying Tigers’ offense went silent.
Dobbins: 2-4, RBI, 2B, K
Warwick: 2-5, 2 K, SB
Witherspoon: 3.1 IP, 2 ER, 6 H, 2 BB, 4 K
Coming Up Next: The Flying Tigers lead the series 2-1 heading into a 6:30 p.m. ET matchup on Friday.
20-year-old Jack Bushell, another of the Tigers’ Australian pitching contingent alongside Ali Tanner, went through the Phillies like an angry weedeater in this one, striking out 10 and allowing just a solo shot in five innings of work.
Angel de los Santos, a fast-rising 19-year-old shortstop prospect, mashed a three-run shot in the fifth that was the decisive blow in this one.
Just as nice to see was the return of SS/2B Franyerber Montilla. The 21-year-old slick fielding switch hitter blew out his ACL last July, and this was the first we heard about his status. He went 0-1 with two walks and scored a run. He’ll need some time to build up, but my guess would be West Michigan is his final destination, playing second base alongside Bryce Rainer.
CLEVELAND, OHIO - JUNE 09: Spencer Jones #78 of the New York Yankees celebrates with teammates after hitting a two-run home run for his first Major League home run during the second inning against the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field on June 09, 2026 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images) | Getty Images
The Yankees are going to have to pass the “Playing without Aaron Judge Test” repeatedly over the next several weeks, but they’ve passed the initial run. They’ve won five of six since the Captain’s injury was officially announced, with the offense particularly stepping up in a series sweep in Cleveland. The road trip continues with the team’s first visit to Canada this year, where they’ll look to repay the Blue Jays for Toronto’s domination of New York last year.
On the site today, we turn our sights to the Jays, with Matt previewing the three-game set. Later, Sam recaps Thursday’s American League action, and Nick praises the great Hideki Matsui on the occasion of his 52nd birthday. Also, Peter’s sequence of the week highlights Fernando Cruz, and Jeff discusses how Trent Grisham’s resurgence couldn’t have come at a better time.
Today’s Matchup:
New York Yankees at Toronto Blue Jays
Time: 3:07 p.m. EST
TV: YES, Sportsnet, TVA Sports
Venue: Rogers Centre, Toronto, ON
Questions/Prompts:
1. On the occasion of the Yankees visiting Toronto, do you think the Jays are still a major threat to come back in the division? Or do you think they’ve fallen far back enough?
2. Can you think of a baseball analogue to what happened in Game 4 of the NBA Finals?
