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

Jesse Winker appears to be on the mend. 

The Mets' outfielder/designated hitter is set to kick off a rehab assignment on Wednesday afternoon, batting second and serving as the DH for the Low-A St. Lucie squad. 

Jose Siri is also in the lineup as he starts a rehab assignment of his own, leading off and playing center.

Carlos Mendoza revealed that Siri would be joining the minor league squad earlier this week, but he said that the team was playing things slow with Winker. 

The 32-year-old's presence in the lineup just a few days later is certainly a pleasant surprise. 

Winker originally missed time in early May due to an oblique injury. 

His return lasted just three at-bats before his back became an issue, ultimately landing him back on the IL.

He has now been sidelined for over a month and a half, so he could potentially require a lengthy rehab assignment before making his way back to the big league club. 

When he is ready to return, Winker will slide back into the mix at DH and provide a lefty bat off the bench. 

Prior to his injuries, he had eight extra base-hits and a .709 OPS across 26 at-bats.

The Mets conclude a three-game series against the Phillies at Citi Field on Wednesday at 7:10 p.m. on SNY.

Here's what to know about the game and how to watch...

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Mets Notes

• Mark Vientosis slashing .382/.436/.941 with five homers, four doubles, and 14 RBI in 39 plate appearances over his last nine games
• Starling Marte is hitting .339/.403/.613 with four homers and five doubles in 72 plate appearances over his last 19 games
• Cedric Mullinshas picked things up in a big way after struggling at the plate during his first week as a Met. In 14 games since Aug. 9, Mullins is slashing .306/.375/.490 with a homer, triple, and four doubles

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What channel is SNY?

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For more information on how to stream Mets games on SNY, please click here.

Here's what happened in Mets Land on Tuesday, in case you missed it...

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• The Mets rebounded from an early 2-0 deficit and saw a late 5-3 lead slip away before walking off the Phillies and closer Jhoan Duran at Citi Field
• Edwin Diaz's dominant five-out performance gave the Mets exactly what they needed to pull Tuesday's game out
• Jonah Tongis being promoted from Triple-A Syracuse and will make his major league debut on Friday against the Marlins
• David Stearnssaid Tong conquered everything the Mets put in front of him
• Stearns also discussed Kodai Senga's recent struggles and mores
• Francisco Alvarezwill start a rehab assignment on Wednesday with Triple-A Syracuse
• Carlos Mendoza suggested Ryan Helsley -- who allowed a game-tying homer in the eighth inning on Tuesday -- could be tipping his pitches
• The Mets' show of grit against the Phillies is what's needed for them to achieve their NL East and October goals
• Brandon Nimmosaid the Mets know what they're capable of
• The Mets' farm system was ranked No. 1 in baseball by ESPN
• Here is the Mets' full 2026 schedule, including Opening Day against the Pirates
• On The Mets Pod, Keith Hernandez joined the show live from Citi Field to celebrate 20 years of SNY and talk Mets-Phillies
• WATCH: How high is Tong's ceiling?
• WATCH: Gary, Keith, and Ron sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame

On the latest episode of The Mets Pod presented by Tri-State Cadillac recorded live outside the Rotunda at Citi Field, Connor Rogers and Joe DeMayo welcome Keith Hernandez to the show to talk 20 years of baseball on SNY and all things Mets.

Keith chats with the guys about his favorite years calling Mets games, as well as the performances of Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, Mark Vientos, and the call ups of pitching prospects Jonah Tong and Nolan McLean.

Keith also reveals what he really thinks about Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, Steve Gelbs -- and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Later, Connor and Joe go Down on the Farm to check in on Brandon Sproat, and answer live questions from the crowd outside of Citi Field.

Be sure to subscribe to The Mets Pod at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

 

In a city where craft beer is everywhere, a golden brew holds a special place in the hearts of San Diegans. Within the name of the beer is a tribute to a beloved local hero.

It’s called .394 Pale Ale.

In 1994, Tony Gwynn batted .394, a career high good for one of his eight National League batting titles. It’s the highest batting average in the NL during the past 95 years. If you know, you know.

“In San Diego, people know what .394 is,” said Kristen Ballinger, marketing director for AleSmith, the brewer. “If it wasn’t a strike-shortened season, it would have been .400.”

Read more:Shaikin: Will Smith could win a batting title. Could the Dodgers stop him?

Three decades later, the magic of a batting title or a .400 season has virtually disappeared from the major leagues.

And a traditional standard of excellence now is an endangered species: the .300 batting average, a popular and easily understood statistic that has been devalued and rendered borderline worthless by baseball’s analytical revolution.

In a previous generation, this development would be almost scandalous: With one month left in the regular season, the NL has one .300 hitter.

One.

He is the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman, who has nine .300 seasons to his credit. He batted .200 in June and .253 in July, and here he is leading the league at .302.

“You hit .330, you hit .325 and you never win,” Freeman said. “To be grinding this year and leading is kind of a weird thing.

“For you to be talking to me about a batting title at the end of August, it means I’ve had a pretty good year. I think I’m OK with that.”

Freeman thought back to Monday night, when the visiting Cincinnati Reds went to the bullpen in the seventh inning of a game they trailed by six runs. The new pitcher: not a mopup man with a mid-80s fastball, but a second-year reliever with a 100 mph fastball.

“I don’t think you can really talk about the art of hitting .300. The pitching is just too good. It’s hard to combat,” Freeman said.

“My whole goal every year is to hit .300. It’s getting harder and harder. I’m just trying to adjust with the league.”

Read more:With a little help from a Coldplay meme, Freddie Freeman stays hot in Dodgers’ win

Only one player has won a batting championship with a lower average than Freeman’s .302: Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox, who won the American League by hitting .301 in 1968.

That was the Year of the Pitcher. Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals put up a 1.12 earned-run average, one of seven pitchers to finish with an ERA under 2.00. Offense was in such short supply that, after the season, baseball lowered the pitcher’s mound from 15 inches to 10.

The major league batting average was .237 that season, with teams scoring 3.4 runs per game. This season: .246, with 4.4 runs per game.

But batting average is nonetheless depressed by the emphasis on home runs and on getting on base, and by the deluge of strikeouts triggered by pitchers throwing harder than ever.

“And how many times do you see balls hit up the middle and they’re outs, even [with baseball] regulating the shift?” Reds manager Terry Francona said. “Guys hit a nice one-hopper up the middle, and they’re out.

“Hitters don’t know — a lot of them — how to go the other way to combat that. So that takes away a lot of hits.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts conceded that so many pitchers throwing so hard challenges batters, especially as they hear that on-base percentage is widely considered more important than batting average.

Read more:Clayton Kershaw is masterful again in Dodgers' win over Reds

“I honestly think hitting is as hard as it’s ever been,” Roberts said. “You don’t see the same guys as much.

“But also, yeah, batting average isn’t valued as much — until you get to the postseason. Then you want guys that can get hits and drive in runs, right?”

So much of baseball’s charm is statistics that can be passed down among generations, in the only major sport popular in the United States for more than a century. Babe Ruth, meet Shohei Ohtani.

No one writes an ode to a high OPS. The .300 hitter is going the way of the complete game. The Dodgers have no complete games this season.

Roberts lives in the San Diego area. He has not tried a .394 Pale Ale.

“I’m more of a lager guy,” he said.

But baseball should listen up to what he says about .394.

“Right now,” he said, “I would say less than 5% of active players know what that means.”

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

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Giants pitcher Landen Roupp gets great news after scary-looking injury originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — There was so much concern about Landen Roupp’s knee when he went down last week in San Diego that he didn’t even really notice at first that he had taken a line drive off his right hamstring. There’s no avoiding it now for the Giants right-hander.

Roupp has a huge bruise on the back of his leg that’s several different colors, but he’s not sweating it. The bigger long-term concern is the injury in his left knee, but he got good news there on Monday.

A second examination confirmed that Roupp only has a bone bruise in his left knee and that all of the ligaments are intact. That was a huge relief for Roupp, who sat on the field at Petco Park last Wednesday and feared that his ACL was torn. 

“Basically every (doctor) I’ve talked to has said I’m pretty lucky with how it looked to not tear a single thing in my knee,” he said Tuesday. “I’m pretty happy about that.”

Any sort of tear or surgery could have put much of 2026 in doubt, but Roupp was instead told that he’ll need about four weeks to recover from the bone bruise. While that effectively ends his 2025 season, it’s great news overall and should leave him with a normal offseason. 

If Roupp is done after 22 starts, his sophomore season will go down as one of the biggest positives for the 2025 Giants. Roupp posted a 3.80 ERA and 3.90 FIP, but a lot of the damage came in his final two starts, when he was trying to knock the rust off after missing three weeks with elbow discomfort. When he went on the IL for the first time in late July, he ranked among the league leaders with a 3.11 ERA. 

During a six-start stretch in June and July, he allowed just four earned runs over 30 1/3 innings. Roupp said he feels like he proved a lot.

“I can be a starter in the big leagues and hopefully at least have a spot next year in the rotation,” he said. “But obviously I have a lot of learning to do.”

Roupp had to fight for a bullpen spot in the spring of 2023 and then win a fifth starter competition against Hayden Birdsong and Kyle Harrison this spring. Manager Bob Melvin smiled when told about Roupp’s comments on Tuesday. There’s no need to be “hopeful” about having a rotation spot.

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast

Ryan Helsley's time in Flushing has been anything but successful for the All-Star closer.

Since the Mets acquired him from the Cardinals at the trade deadline, Helsley has pitched to a 0-3 record and a 10.38 ERA -- thanks to 14 runs (10 earned) in 8.2 innings pitched. In four save opportunities, Helsley has blown each one, including Tuesday's eventual 6-5 win over the Philadelphia Phillies.

With a 5-3 lead, manager Carlos Mendoza called on Helsley to hold the lead for closer Edwin Diaz. It's the first save opportunity Helsley has had since Aug. 15 against the Mariners. In three appearances (3 IP) between outings, Helsley has allowed three runs -- all coming from one appearance. The veteran right-hander had pitched in a low-leverage situation in Monday's series opener against the Phillies, striking out one in a 1-2-3 frame. 

Helsley would have the opposite outing, giving up a two-run shot with one out to Harrison Bader to give up the lead. After a walk, Mendoza had no choice but to remove Helsley for Diaz, who got five outs to pick up the win thanks to Brandon Nimmo's walk-off single in the ninth. 

Diaz was asked about his cohort in the bullpen and if he could relate to his struggles. The Mets closer knows struggles all too well, as he had a rollercoaster season in 2024 before rounding into his 2022 dominant form by the end of the year. And because of that, he trusts Helsley to figure it out.

"I've been through that. My advice to him is just, stay with your head up. We trust him," Diaz said after Tuesday's game. "We know what pitcher he is. He's one of the best closers in the game. He's going through some bad moments right now but we trust in him and we support him. Just stay with your head up and we keep going."

Just last year, Helsley led MLB with 49 saves in 53 opportunities with a 2.04 ERA. So that dominance is in there and the Mets know it, they are still trying to navigate these struggles.

Helsley intimated in the past that he's still adjusting to his new role with the Mets, but Mendoza hinted that it could be something else. Is Helsley tipping his pitches? Some games, it feels like it and the Mets are trying to get to the bottom of it.

"Too good of a stuff for them to be taking some really good swings on fastballs, get really good takes on sliders. We got to look back and see what we’re missing," Mendoza said of Helsley. "For teams to have comfortable at-bats like that, something is going on here. We have to figure it out."

After appearing in back-to-back games, Helsley is likely unavailable in Wednesday's series finale with the Phillies, so the right-hander will have to wait until the Marlins series to show that he can be the bridge to Diaz that the Mets traded for.

The Dodgers might be sprinting toward the finish line this year, trying to edge out the San Diego Padres in a tight National League West race.

But on Tuesday night, in a win that kept them one game up in the standings with 29 to play, they made a 6-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds feel more like a nice, leisurely stroll.

Clayton Kershaw continued his renaissance season, pitching five innings of one-run ball to earn a fifth-consecutive victory (his longest such streak since the end of the 2022 season). The offense steadily wore the Reds' pitching staff down, answering a first-inning Cincinnati run with one of their own before taking the lead for good in the fourth.

It all added up to a third-straight win for the Dodgers (76-57), and helped them hold serve on a night the Padres beat the Mariners in Seattle (despite blowing an early five-run lead).

“It's been really fun to watch our guys play at the level that they're capable of,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I like how we're playing. I like where we're at right now."

Kershaw provided the bedrock for Tuesday’s victory.

The left-hander was pitching on four days’ rest for the third time this season (more than anyone else on the team), so that Shohei Ohtani could be lined up to start ahead of an off day on Wednesday. His already diminished fastball was playing down, averaging only 88 mph. And early on, the Reds (68-65) tagged him with a quick run, after Spencer Steer led off with a double and later scored on Miguel Andújar’s groundout.

“It wasn't a great night, stuff-wise,” Kershaw said. “Didn't have a lot of life on the fastball, or really anything.”

And yet, starting with that Andújar grounder, Kershaw proceeded to retire the last 14 batters he faced. Six came via strikeout, marking his second-highest strikeout total this season. And of balls put in play, only four were “hard hit” (with an exit velocity greater than 95 mph). Not one left the bat at more than 100 mph.

Read more:10 things to note about the Dodgers' 2026 schedule. When do they play the Padres?

It was the latest example of the 37-year-old left-hander’s newfound recipe for success: Hitting both sides of the plate with his fastball, leaning heavily on a slider that generated five whiffs and four outs, and mixing in his trademark curveball and newfangled splitter to keep an entirely right-handed Reds lineup off-balance in a 72-pitch outing.

“We kind of flipped the script and just started throwing kind of a lot of different stuff, trying to be creative, keep them off balance,” Kershaw said, while giving credit to catcher Will Smith’s pitch-calling behind the plate. 

“I've seen growth in that sense,” Roberts added. “Just in the last couple years, he's been more open to doing different things. And I commend him for that. I think in that fourth inning [when Kershaw retired the side with two strikeouts], you could see — it didn't matter what Will was putting down, he felt like he could throw anything. And that's something that was really rare and really cool to see."

Given the low pitch count, Kershaw might have been able to go past the fifth. He and Roberts appeared to have a brief conversation in the dugout before shaking hands, a sign his night was over. But between his quick (by modern-day standards, at least) four-day turnaround, and the team’s careful management of his workload overall this season, Kershaw’s five innings were plenty.

“I think that he's smart enough to understand how many bullets he has,” Roberts said.

On the season, Kershaw is 9-2 with a 3.06 ERA, third-best among Dodgers starters this year. He also finishes August with a 1.88 ERA in five starts, third-best among National League starters for the month.

"It was a good August,” Kershaw said. “Fun to be a part of it this time of year."

While Kershaw cruised, the Dodgers’ offense also found a groove.

They erased the early 1-0 deficit in the bottom of the first, when Mookie Betts walked, Freddie Freeman doubled and Betts scored on a throwing error by Reds left fielder Austin Hays.

They took a 2-1 lead in the fourth, after a leadoff double from Teoscar Hernández, an infield single from Michael Conforto on a scorching comebacker that ripped the glove right off the hand of Reds pitcher Nick Martinez, and a sacrifice fly from Kiké Hernández (who returned to the lineup for the first time since early July after being out with an elbow injury).

Then, in the sixth, they broke the game open with a four-run rally.

Read more:Dodgers Dugout: The 10 best center fielders in Dodger history

Smith turned around a center-cut fastball for an opposite-field, leadoff home run, a positive sign for the slumping catcher who entered the night with a .150 batting average in August and only one long ball in his previous 25 games.

Miguel Rojas came off the bench for a two-run double later in the inning, smoking a flyball to deep center that got Noelvi Marte (who was making his first career MLB start in the middle of the outfield) turned around at the warning track.

Ohtani followed that with an RBI single to right, helping him break a one-for-16 skid.

The only bad news for the Dodgers on Tuesday came pregame, when left-handed reliever Alex Vesia was placed on the injured list with a right oblique strain. Vesia described the injury as mild and was hopeful of returning once his 15-day IL stint was complete.

But even without him, the Dodgers’ bullpen largely coasted in relief of Kershaw. Blake Treinen and Tanner Scott, both having recently returned from the IL, pitched scoreless innings in the eighth and ninth (giving Scott his first save since returning). And though Hays hit a two-run home run in the seventh off Ben Casparius, it did little to make Tuesday feel like anything more than a late-season cakewalk — even amid a mad dash down the season’s closing stretch.

Sasaki’s latest rehab start

In triple-A Oklahoma City, rookie pitcher Roki Sasaki made the third start of his minor-league rehab stint, giving up three runs in 3 ⅔ innings on five hits, two walks and four strikeouts. The most encouraging takeaway from the outing was Sasaki’s fastball velocity, which averaged 96 mph for a second-straight outing and topped out at 98.8 mph — the hardest he has thrown in his recovery from a shoulder injury. Sasaki is expected to make at least one more rehab start before being ready to be activated.

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

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

If March goes in like a lion and out like a lamb, what will they say to describe the August the Mets have just experienced?

After starting the month with 11 defeats in 13 games (compounded by losing the final three of July), the Mets fell from 18 games over .500 to just a half dozen games. In the fortnight since, the offense that was once scuffling has produced 68 runs and seven wins out of their last 10, including a 6-5 walk-off win over the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday night at Citi Field

They once were lost, but now they’re found?

“This team knows what it’s capable of,” Brandon Nimmo, who collected the fourth straight hit in the ninth inning to end the game, said. “We’ve got a lot of veteran guys on here that know. For me, personally, this is the most talented team I've ever played on… It's just going out there and executing it every night.”

For Nimmo, that means “keeping it small” and not trying to look too far past the series finale against Philadelphia on Wednesday.

“Let’s take it one game at a time,” he said after his second RBI pulled the Mets to 5.0 games behind the Phillies in the NL East race. “[Wednesday] we have another game against a team that is in front of us. If we can win that game and just control what we can control, then we like our chances.”

The turn of fortune has been on the back of an offense finding its form. Entering Tuesday night's games, the Mets were the best hitting team in all of baseball over the past 15 days with a .319 average and a .951 OPS (both highest in MLB), pounding out 29 home runs (second most) and 99 RBI (most).

“Baseball’s a funny game. Sometimes things start to click together, and we’ve been having that happen lately,” Nimmo said about the turnaround. “We’ve been doing great on the road, and then we come home and continue it. 

“I think it’s just a testament to the guys paying attention to the little things and making each at-bat and where we are at the present moment the most important thing, and not trying to look back to the past or the future. Just, ‘What can I do to help the team win right now?’ And I think that attitude has been able to lead to some success for us recently.”

Ahead of the game, David Stearns said they’ve always seen themselves as a “good offensive team” that dealt with pressing and some bad luck.

“We’ve talked a lot about the challenges earlier in the season in leverage spots and runners in scoring position, men on base. And some of that was maybe at times we were pressing a little bit, getting a little bit too aggressive,” Stearns said earlier Tuesday. “But a lot of that was misfortune. And some really unfortunate batted ball luck, and that’s tough to stomach for all of us. 

“That’s not a satisfactory answer for any of us. But we did try to focus on what we can actually control: Are we swinging at the pitches we should swing at? When we do, are we putting them in play in ways that we want to put them in play?

What’s changed? “Continue to have good approaches, but we’re having good results, too,” manager Carlos Mendoza said after the win. “Now, we’re getting those balls to find holes, we’re using the whole field, we see it time after time going the other way, with two outs, not trying to do too much, just staying short, and trying to hit line drives as opposed to hit the ball out of the ballpark.

“There’s times where the game will dictate what to do in situations and I feel like we’ve been able to do that.” 

The situation dictated that in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth inning, after Starling Marte and Pete Alonso ripped bullet singles, Brett Baty battled to flare a single to left before Nimmo took a 2-0 fastball on the outer half and smacked it the other way to score the winning run.

“If I had to point to one thing, I would say… they just made my job a whole lot easier,” Nimmo said of his teammates' at-bats to load the bases. “A lotta things get the job done, I just need to find the barrel, so just keeping things real simple from my end.”

What Nimmo would really like next is to keep things going now and continue that in the playoffs.

“I’ve always said ‘hottest team wins in playoffs,’” Nimmo said. “It doesn’t matter who's the best team; it’s the hottest team. This would be a good time to keep things going, and we’re very happy with the way the offense is playing right now.”