Category: Sports News

Yesterday, I cobbled together five of what a San Francisco Giants fan might consider to be some of the team’s best moments from the first part of their 2026 season, so let’s look at five of the worst moments.

5. Swept by the Yankees (March 25th-28th)

It’s less the sweep and more the way that it happened. Outscored 13-1 in one of the rare times the team has opened a season at Oracle Park and simply outmatched in every facet of the game. It was the worst case scenario imagined by all the skeptics and considered by all the reasonable people out there after Buster Posey installed an inexperienced coaching staff to run a veteran roster with expectations.

The Giants had a nice spring and that plus their offseason had certainly built up this Opening Night on Netflix as something that would be worthwhile. Instead, the Giants revealed to their fans and the world that they’re a big steaming pile of losers who stink. Bad start to a season, worst start to a managerial career. Given the way the rest of this season has gone, the Giants might never live it down.

4. Doubleheader sweep via walk-off in Philadelphia (April 30th)

This is what a lot of the Giants media points to as the low point of the season. After clawing back to a not-terrible 13-15 record, the Giants proceeded to pee, poop, and vomit all over themselves before stumbling headfirst into an overflowing garbage can, then going vertical with their clown shoes swishing frantically as they struggled to free themselves, only to cause the garbage can to roll down a hill and onto a manure scow which would soon run aground on Diarrhea Island.

Ryan Walker threw 20 sinkers in 21 pitches to blow game one.

Walker’s nine-pitch battle against Bryson Stott, which ended in Stott hitting a game-tying triple, was especially jarring from a pitch-calling perspective. The cross-firing right-hander exclusively threw sinkers to Stott, and while the first eight were outside, his ninth and final one ended up right over the middle of the plate.

“I don’t really have an answer for you on that one,” Walker said when asked he only threw one slider. “It’s just something that we need to figure out. Obviously, that would’ve been beneficial. The two-seam’s been working a lot. I think we overused them definitely today. But yeah, it’s in the back of my mind. If we utilize the slider in that situation, it’s a different story.”

Did Walker consider shaking?

“I have a tough time shaking,” Walker said. “I’m not a big shaker. I put a lot of trust in my catchers. I still have a ton of trust in Bailey, whatever he calls, especially as a two-pitch guy. I have the confidence to get outs with both pitches in any situation. Obviously, nine two-seams to Stott is not ideal, and we’ll be making some changes in terms of situational pitching.”

Catcher Patrick Bailey didn’t offer much when asked about Walker’s sinker usage in Game 1 or Keaton Winn’s splitter usage in Game 2 (Winn threw 10 straight at one point).

“Good pitches,” Bailey said. “Trying to get them out. … I trust my guys and their pitches.”

Patrick Bailey would be traded 10 days later. It was at this point that everyone suspected that the stink lines coming off the team weren’t the result of some bad luck or small sample size or all the new people getting their sea legs. There was a rot on the surface. We now know that the Giants are rotten to the core, of course, but here’s the moment in the season when it kicked into gear — what a way to end the first month of the season!

3. Third base coach Hector Borg is reassigned (May 29th)

This is a bit of a heartbreaker in that, by all accounts, Hector Borg is well regarded within the San Francisco Giants organization and even by Tony Vitello. As Alex Pavlovic wrote back in February:

Vitello and members of the front office hopped on a Zoom call with Hector Borg in November as the longtime team employee was coaching in the Dominican Republic. Borg tried to convey what he has done in coaching and how passionate he is about helping young players. But mostly, he tried his best to be authentic with Vitello. 

“I can remember getting off the Zoom and I don’t even know if it was five seconds and Tony was like, ‘Can we hire that guy?'” general manager Zack Minasian said recently, laughing. 

If you spend about five seconds talking to or observing Borg, it’s not hard to see what intrigued Vitello. Borg, 40, is overflowing with energy and passion and is known within the organization as a tireless worker. He has been tied to Ron Washington all spring, and the two very much appear to be built the same way.

As for the job of third base coach itself? Well…

“I’m an aggressive third base coach,” he said. “I’ve always been that way.”

Prophetic.

Anyway, was Borg a scapegoat? Possibly. But he also seemed to be the outcome of a flawed process run by relative neophytes. The common person is convinced that Buster Posey’s time as a Hall of Fame-bound catcher means it’s no problem for him to transition into a management position, as though President of Baseball Operations is the same type of manager as the kind the common person loathes or simply distrusts.

But the Giants once again solved their problem by oversteering, replacing the 40-year old Borg with 68-year old Garry Pettis. Has the move worked out? Sure. The Giants were tied with the Angels for the worst Baserunning value (-4.2 runs) while Borg was with the team, according to FanGraphs. Since Pettis has been with the team, the Giants are just -1.5 runs in 32 games… 25th in MLB.

It’s just another example of the team feeling like amateur hour or watching Baby’s First Team.

2. Tony Vitello knifes Keaton Winn & Matt Gage, asks Logan Webb to pitch the 9th then rescinds the request, gets shouted at by Rafael Devers when he sends a pinch runner (four-way tie)

Speaking of amateur hour, here’s a list of on-field incidents that can be chalked up to a dude feeling his way through his first year as a manager at a whole new level of play and without any sort of meaningful guidance, as his overseers are just as inexperienced.

It’s probably not embarrassing that Tony Vitello threw the injury-riddled Keaton Winn three days in a row, but the outcome was predictable. It’s probably not embarrassing that Tony Vitello pushed Matt Gage to throw a career-high 51 pitches because it was an early blowout in Colorado and they needed the innings. But the outcome was predictable. It’s probably not embarrassing for the manager that one of the team’s star players refuses to be pinch ran for and makes an obvious stink about it, but the manager’s stature in the clubhouse can be reasonably called into question no matter the public sentiment towards the player.

Did Tony Vitello want to pinch run for Rafael Devers in that situation because he wanted a faster runner at third base or was Tony Vitello concerned that Devers’ previous comment about soreness would impact his ability to run the bases late in the game? Or is Rafael Devers just a jerk? For some reason, when the smoke cleared, it was Devers speaking to Bay Area media and, effectively, accepting responsibility, but let’s be clear: this isn’t the first time that there’s been murky intent when it comes to the manager’s decisions.

There was this moment from June 8th when Logan Webb saw his teammates blow a 3-1 lead in the 9th…

Webb would go eight innings and throw 99 pitches, striking out seven batters, allowing one run and five hits, as manager Tony Vitello got criticized for taking the pitcher out in the ninth inning. However, Webb revealed the conversation of Vitello asking him if he’s able to go back in the ninth, with the 29-year-old saying “it’s up to you,” leading to the change and the blown win in the ninth inning.

“Tony asked if you’re good, and I said ‘It’s up to you,'” Webb said, according to KNBR. “‘It’s your decision.’ He came back to me (bottom of the 8th), and he was like ‘we’re gonna make a change.'”

“I don’t regret that decision at all,” Webb continued.

That blown save just so happened to be the third consecutive game Keaton Winn pitched and would be his last one until July 10th. So… it’s all connected? But also, did Tony Vitello want to send Logan Webb back out there or did he defer to “It’s up to you” as a sign that he wasn’t good to go?

But then again, if it sounds like I’m pinning all of this on the rookie manager who usually sounds confused and often manages in a way that often reinforces how it sounds, I’ll admit that veterans taking advantage of a new guy with no experience or track record and few relationships is just as plausible. What could Tony Vitello do to them, ultimately? He hasn’t earned their respect or trust. As professionals, they should probably just be professionals on the field. But that doesn’t appear to be what’s happening here… for whatever reason, whether it’s Tony & his staff’s approach or the players’ POV.

And so this season-long discord has to be one of the team’s worst moments from part one.

Though, it’s worth adding: Rafael Devers is hitting .299/.392/.687 in 19 G (79 PA) since the pinch running incident; and, Logan Webb was the Pitcher of the Month in June. And, some of this was also a downstream consequence of Zack & Buster’s questionable bullpen planning during the offseason. That has certainly contributed to many memorably bad moments this season.

1. The Giants come out as bigots (June 12th)

The obvious pick and it’s one of these episodes where it spilled from the filled into off-field matters, where a lot of fans like to live to avoid reality. It’s almost certainly true that there are more bigoted baseball fans than there are non-bigots (or, at least, open-hearted and open-minded fans) and so the Giants have calculated that they can win in the long run despite this affront to the surrounding community. After all, they’re on pace to draw 3 million fans this season. The Giants got what they needed from the City of San Francisco and now that Mission Rock is up and running, they can commune with the people they prefer.

For those fans, the Giants would seem like a revelation. A new ally in the culture war. A firm that has finally seen the light! For the rest of us, it’s heartbreak. And for some of us, a sad final chapterof a relationship.

The notion that the Giants aren’t bigots is disproved by the definition of bigot: “a narrow-minded person who obstinately adheres to their own opinions and prejudices.” People invoke the Holy Bible to justify all sorts of beliefs and practices and at the end of the day, if the only idea that people want to pull from it is hatred, then it it’s definitionally bigotry. You don’t scribble on your hat or proclaim “Read the Bible!” without some emotion behind it. Spite? Hatred? It’s certainly not coming from a place of love. Wanting to be a bigot in everything but name only is on the level of losers. Own it!

The public protest on top of the awful pitching was the real clincher in all this. Some real Boaters for Trump vibes.

But the theme of this season has been the Giants either revealing or realizing that they are not who any of us thought they were or had hoped to be. The preseason projections saw them as an average team. The fans saw an average team with maybe some magic afoot if Bryce Eldridge panned out. Instead, the Giants are losers.

It’s loser level to hate LGBTQ+ people. It’s loser level to deface one’s work uniform as a protest of LGBTQ+ people. It’s loser level to sign with a team as a free agent so you can fire & brimstone their fans after a game. It’s loser level to hold a press conference like the one Buster Posey did, or do what Larry Baer did on KNBR the day after — but, admittedly, those were “off the field,” and shouldn’t be a part of this article. So, I’ll conclude instead with the ultimate loser level: being Ryan Walker. He has a 9.90 ERA in just 10 innings since the protest.

Now, does this mean you can draw a straight line from Pride Night to their 41-55 record? No. The anti-Pride Night protest and the ensuing farts from the front office are symptoms of a larger, perhaps diseased body operating as the San Francisco Giants. This is a team that has kept Larry Baer in a public-facing role despite a very public episode that caused him to lose a position within the organization. A team that dumped their public address announcer because of her political beliefs (hypocrites!</s>) after ownership’s political beliefs and political contributions came out and clearly conflicted with the region, the team’s purported values, and some general human decency, but hired Glen Kuiper… because everyone deserves a third or fourth chance to drop the n-word on a broadcast, I suppose?

To be absolutely fair, though, the team has been consistent in one way: they oppose dudes humping no matter the circumstances.

In the past, it’s been nonsensical to link personal character with win-loss results because there are hundreds — maybe even thousands — of examples of bad people being great athletes and champions; but, then you get a team like the 2026 Giants a team so bad that, beyond the obvious talent gap, makes you wonder just how much character counts… because it surely can’t be zero.

Anyway, don’t let me be the final word on this. What are some other worst moments from the first part of the 2026 season?

In a season full of great stories on the offensive side of the ball, the emergence of Curtis Mead has been one of the best ones. The Nats traded a 6th round senior sign for Mead, who had just been DFA’d by the White Sox. It has proven to be a great deal, as Mead has 17 homers and has been arguably the most clutch hitter on the team.

The Curtis Mead story is a good example of how a second chance and a change of scenery can benefit a player’s career. A few years ago Mead was a top 50 prospect and one of the best hitters in the minor leagues. At the time, people thought the Rays had won the one for one swap that sent Mead to Tampa and Cristopher Sanchez to Philly. 

Obviously that did not turn out to be the case, with Sanchez starting the All-Star game and his home park while Mead is having success, just not in Tampa. Mead just hit and hit in the minor leagues, but the transition to the majors was tough. The Rays had a tough time finding a consistent role for him with Junior Caminero on the rise, Yandy Diaz and Jonathan Aranda at DH and first base, as well as Brandon Lowe playing second at the time.

Mead got looks here and there, but with no true home, the Aussie struggled. Eventually the Rays decided to trade him to the White Sox. Mead got a solid run of playing time there but did not make the most of his chance. With Miguel Vargas at third base and the addition of Munetaka Murakami at first, the writing was on the wall again for Mead.

When Mead reunited with his old minor league manager Blake Butera, he had to know this could be his last shot. To begin the season, Mead was on the short side of a first base platoon with Luis Garcia Jr., but played so well that the Nats had to find more playing time for him. He would get some reps at third base, DH or second base as well.

However, he found a permanent home at third after Brady House got sent down. Since then, Mead plays almost every day, though he will occasionally get an off day against a tough right handed pitcher. For the year, the 25 year old has 17 homers and an .843 OPS. He is on pace to hit over 30 home runs, which is not bad for a guy with 5 career bombs entering the season.

Mead is a very well rounded bat who does a great job combining contact ability, power and swing decisions. His chase rate, barrel rate and whiff rate are all in the 75th percentile or better. He does not hit the ball incredibly hard, but he hits the ball at good angles and pulls the ball in the air a lot. That allows him to have 30 home run power despite average raw power.

Based on his pedigree and minor league track record, it was clear that there was a good hitter in Curtis Mead that just needed to be unlocked. Guys do not hit .298 with an .878 OPS in the minors while almost always being younger than the competition by accident. That is what Mead did, and now after finally getting some stability, he is producing at the big league level.

Sure, Mead has some warts in his profile, most notably his lack of a true defensive home. Mead is sure handed at third base, but his arm is light for the position. He has played some first, but does not look super comfortable over there. I am interested to see what he would look like at second base, but I wonder about the range. It could be fun to experiment with him in the corner outfield spots and make him into a true super utility guy.

Mead came into the season as a post-hype flier who could hopefully be a solid platoon bat. However, he has become so much more than that. Mead is one of the big four pieces of the best offense in baseball. He is one of four players with at least 15 homers on the Nats. Mead, Abrams, Garcia and Wood have provided such immense value at the plate this season.

For Curtis Mead, this is no fluke either. His wOBA and xwOBA are identical at .365, meaning there is no luck right now. This is just who he is as a hitter. His BABIP of .251 is also unusually low. With his fly ball heavy profile, a low BABIP is not unexpected, but I would expect that to go up at least a little bit, which would raise his .247 average.

That .247 average is mediocre, but he makes up for that with his ability to draw walks. One of Mead’s defining attributes is that he consistently grinds out at bats. He does not whiff or chase very much. That makes it no surprise that Mead is walking over 11% of the time this year while striking out at a sub-20% clip. 

Based on how teams drafted the other day, it is clear that Mead’s offensive profile is very desirable. Teams love high contact hitters with power and plate discipline. Curtis Mead has become the very good, well rounded hitter the Rays expected him to be all those years ago. All it took was a fresh start and some time in Matt Borgschulte’s hitting lab.

PHILADELPHIA — Getting an All-Star Game selection is often considered a big-time moment for Major League Baseball players, as it is something often factored into their Hall of Fame conversation.

To get a start in the All-Star Game, especially on the mound, that's an even bigger deal.

The two pitchers getting the honor for Tuesday's Midsummer Classic at Citizens Bank Park are Philadelphia Phillies ace Cristopher Sánchez and Toronto Blue Jays ace Dylan Cease for the National League and American League, respectively.

MLB All-Star game starting lineups: Full batting order for NL and AL squads

Both Sánchez and Cease are the first two pitchers for their respective clubs to start the Midsummer Classic since Roy Halladay started the game for both the Phillies and Blue Jays in 2011 and 2009, respectively.

The 2026 MLB All-Star Game is set for 8 p.m. ET in Philadelphia. The National League is looking for back-to-back wins against the American League after Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber helped the NL win in Atlanta last season in the tiebreaker swing-off.

Here's what to know on the starting pitchers for the 2026 MLB All-Star Game:

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Phillies fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.

The first half of the season is always when the 81st game is played, but many use the All-Star Game as a line of demarcation to divide the season into halves. Since we are there now and the “first half” / complete, now seems a good time to ask this question.

These are just some of the candidates to choose from, so maybe you have someone different. Maybe it’s the manager!

For years, as stars such as Shohei Ohtani and Bryce Harper pleaded for the chance to play in the Los Angeles Olympics, and for Major League Baseball to back up its talk of growing the game internationally by participating in the world’s greatest sporting festival, the league was reluctant: Would the owners truly benefit from shutting down the season for a week and lending their best players to an event beyond their control?

Now that MLB is on board, the league wants the players to make an extraordinary commitment to back up their talk: If you’re selected to play in the Olympics, you must play. Or else.

The “or else” is not rhetorical. If a player is not on the injured list and is selected for the Olympics but declines to participate, the player would be subject to fine and/or suspension. In addition, the players would be ineligible to play for the first 14 days when the season resumes after the Olympics, according to a proposal from the commissioner’s office to the players’ union and obtained by The Times.

Under a tentative MLB plan, the first half of the 2028 season would end on July 9, with the All-Star Game on July 11. The Olympic baseball competition would start on July 13, with the second half of the season starting on July 21.

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So as to discourage placement on the injured list as a way to avoid playing in the Games, a player selected for the Olympics but on the injured list as of July 9 would be excused, but he could not be reinstated to his team’s major league roster until Aug. 4, even if he had recovered from the injury before then.

“We went down the road on LA 2028 because we saw it as a unique opportunity to market the sport with our very, very best players,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday in a meeting with the Baseball Writers Assn. of America.

“It is a disruptive undertaking for us … If we’re disrupting an entire season and we’re going to undertake that effort, we want our very best out there, so that people see how great our game really is.”

The league also does not want to undermine its All-Star Game, and it is reasonably foreseeable that some players might wish to skip the All-Star Game for a two-day summer break if they are going to play the next week at the Olympics.

In that scenario, under its proposal, the league would have the right to declare the player ineligible for the Olympics, and the player would be subject to fine and/or suspension as well as ineligibility for the first 14 days of the second half.

Bruce Meyer, the executive director of the players’ union, said the MLBPA plans a counterproposal.

“They want to make it mandatory for players who are selected to appear at the All-Star Game and the Olympics,” Meyer said Tuesday. “The proposals that they made in terms of what the discipline would be, the ramifications if a player doesn’t want to do that, in our view, are extreme.”

To use a Dodgers example, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was selected for this year’s All-Star Game, but Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said last week that he would not pitch.

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Given that situation in 2028, if Yamamoto wished to pitch for Japan, he would have to be available for the All-Star Game. If not, Japan could lose him for the Olympics, and the Dodgers could lose him for his first two starts of the second half.

Meyer said the union is in “a very early stage of discussions” with the league. It is unclear how much time might be needed to resolve the issue, as well as what Meyer called “travel and accommodation” issues, which involve LA28.

It also is uncertain how long MLB would be willing to wait before committing to an All-Star site and date, although the league moved the 2021 game from Atlanta to Denver three months before the game date. San Francisco is expected to host the 2028 game, in large part because Los Angeles is a short flight away for an Olympic competition that would start two days later.

It is clear, however, that the league is getting tired of not always securing participation from marquee players in marquee events. The “you can’t pitch in the All-Star Game if you pitched on the previous Sunday” rule was intended to protect pitchers.

“It’s clear to me that teams are managing their pitching in a way to take advantage of the Sunday pitcher rule,” Manfred said. “I do think it’s really important that we always re-evaluate our approach to the All-Star Game in order to get the very, very best players that can participate in that game.”

The World Baseball Classic was a smashing success this year, even as the United States started a rookie pitcher in the championship game. Do we really need to mandate player participation in the Olympics, especially since so many great players already have said they want to be there?

“The WBC takes place at a point in time that the players are just beginning to ramp up for the season,” Manfred said. “There’s a whole host of reasons why, at that point in the calendar, players might not be ready to play.

“In contrast, the schedule for the Olympics is going to cover days that players otherwise would be playing in major league games — if they’re not on an injured list, they’d be out there playing. That is a huge difference.”

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In another column, we could argue the merits of moving the final round of the WBC — the semifinals and championship game — to July, when players “otherwise would be playing in major league games.” That would grow the game, too.

But that is for another day. It would be absurd for MLB to miss out on the global marketing platform that is the Olympics. The issues MLB raises are legitimate; the solutions need not be so draconian.

The opening ceremonies in Los Angeles take place two years from Tuesday. The Olympics have taught us this about boycotts: No matter how worthy the cause, no one pays attention once the Games start. The Soviet Union boycotted the L.A. Games in 1984, and we had a grand time without the Russians.

No one cares if you’re not there. In MLB, a star-studded core wants to be there. Seize the moment.

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 Cincinnati Reds, on the whole, are having a pretty miserable season. They sit nine games under .500 and in last place in their division, with even an outside shot at one of the myriad Wild Card spots painfully out of reach.

They’ve dealt with injuries galore. Hunter Greene and Elly De La Cruz, the team’s two stalwarts and usual All Stars, each was shelved. The team’s entire back-end up of the bullpen hit the infirmary, while blisters have dogged starters Brady Singer and Nick Lodolo (2x) repeatedly. Even the indomitable Eugenio Suarez missed a month with an oblique strain, while CF has been a revolving door of hard-luck injury and underperformance, too.

Just about the only two spots on the roster where we’ve been able to know exactly what to expect everyday have been those of Chase Burns and Sal Stewart, a pair of former 1st round picks by the Reds who’ve been forced to immediately graduate from ‘youth movement’ to ‘literally carrying the team’ this season.

Burns and Stewart will rep the Cincinnati Reds in tonight’s MLB All Star Game, which will begin at some point after coverage starts at 8 PM ET in Philadelphia on FOX. They’ll do so as incredibly deserving participants, too.

Burns rolls into the break having posted 4.2 bWAR across 18 brilliant starts. He’s 11-1 with a 2.54 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and 10.3 K/9 across 102.2 IP, his ERA+ a sterling 173. The 4.2 bWAR has him tied for the 4th most valuable pitcher in the sport so far this season with Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski, while FanGraphs (2.9 fWAR) ranks him as the 8th most valuable. Not bad!

Sal, meanwhile, leads all rookies with 65 ribbies, a mark that’s tied with Pete Alonso for 9th most in the sport – and that’s with the Reds having spent most of the season with a blind bat holding a wet noodle in the leadoff spot in front of him. He has socked 19 homers, making him one of just six players in the sport to have hit that many and stolen at least 10 bases – he’s got 11 – alongside Zach Neto, CJ Abrams, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Miguel Vargas, James Wood, and Home Run Derby champ Jordan Walker. Overall, he’s hitting .256/.338/.474 with a 120 OPS+.

Neither will start the game, and Burns – who’s dealing with a minor groin problem he picked up playing defense in his final start of the first half – won’t participate at all. Sal, though, will hopefully get some run at some point late in this one.

Here’s how both the AL and NL will line up to start:

Villa Park, California native Andrew James Krodel attended the eponymously named high school in the district, lettering three years with the Spartans. In total, he hit .288/.356/.352 in 80 games and posted a 3.70 ERA in 98.1 innings, allowing 91 hits, walking 29, and striking out 90. The numbers, nor the fastball that hovered around 90 MPH, got him very little buzz in the baseball hot bed that is California and as such, the right-hander went uncalled in the 2023 MLB Draft, attending the University of California Santa Barbara that fall.

Krodel appeared in 3 games for the Gauchos in his freshman season, allowing 4 earned runs in 3.2 innings- a 9.82 ERA- giving up 2 hits, walking 3, and striking out 4. He pitched for the Cowlitz Black Bears of the West Coast League that summer and had a more impressive showing for himself, posting a 2.25 ERA in 24.0 innings over 7 games, allowing 17 hits, walking 13, and striking out 16. When he returned to Santa Barbara, head coach Checketts gave the sophomore a little more leeway, but his performance was still subpar. Appearing in 11 games, the right-hander posted a 6.18 ERA in 27.2 innings, allowing 23 hits, walking 17, and striking out 37.

That summer, Krodel supplemented his workload by pitching for a summer collegiate league, this time staying local and playing for the Santa Barbara Foresters of the California Collegiate League, playing with fellow 2026 draftee Aidan Keenan and 2025 Mets draft 13th rounder Frank Camarillo. Once again, against the competition there, the right-hander thrived, posting a 1.74 ERA in 31.0 innings over 7 starts, allowing 22 hits, walking 9, and striking out 44. Despite his success as a starter, pitching limited innings against an entire lineup, coach Checketts had the right-hander remain in the Gauchos bullpen for the 2026 season. The right-hander ended up appearing in 25 games and posting a 5.66 ERA in 35.0 innings, allowing 42 hits, walking 17, and striking out 42.

The 6’4”, 200-pound right-hander throws from a high-three-quarters arm slot with a long arm action through the back and above-average extension off the mound. The right-hander throws a four-pitch mix despite primarily pitching out of the bullpen, utilizing a two-seam fastball, slider, curveball, and circle changeup.

His two-seam fastball has below-average velocity, sitting in the low-90s and very rarely topping out much higher. Despite that, the pitch has been an effective offering thanks to its rare combination of below-average spin rates but above-average induced vertical break readings. Thanks to the active spin the baseball does get, the pitch produces seam shifted wake effects that causes it to appear to resist gravity while breaking arm-side, diving late.

Of the pitches he complements his unique fastball with, his circle changeup is likely the best of the bunch. Sitting in the low-to-mid-80s, the pitch has racked up strikeouts against left-handed hitters and right-handed hitters alike thanks to its extreme arm-side fade. His mid-to-high-70s curveball and high-70s-to-low-80s sweeping slider both show some promise, especially his slider, but are both are still very raw as pitches, relying more on overall movement than the sharpness of the break.

Just as batters have had a hard time dealing with the movement on his pitch mix, striking out at a 27.1% over his three years combined with the Gauchos, Krodel generally has trouble commanding his repertoire. The right-hander often misses his spots, leading to a high 12.1% walk rate over the course of his collegiate career, almost 5% higher than the MLB average. Being unable to command his pitches has often caused the right-hander to try to finesse them into the strike zone, often leading to pitches in hittable parts of the strike zone and disastrous results. Batters hit .263/.366/.435 against him with a .351 BABIP, with a poor 36.7% groundball rate, 15.3% line drive rate, 48.0% flyball rate, and 14.9% HR/FB rate.

Inspiration.

On Saturday, I was optimistic about who the Diamondbacks drafted in the first round: Ryder Helfrick and Blake Bryant.

“Helfrick is the best defensive catcher in the class… If they stick, the [batting] improvements [better swing decisions and moved away from the plate] this year give him a chance to be an All-Star.” — Keith Law

“Bryant really looks the part of a future No. 2 starter,…” — Keith Law

I wondered about two questions.

• What are the chances they will reach the Majors? 
• What are the chances they will make a positive impact?

Let’s look at all the first-round picks by the Diamondbacks after Mike Hazen was the GM.

How often do first-round picks reach the Majors?

In recent years, for all the teams, in general about 81% of first-round draftees reached the Majors (for at least one game) per JJ Cooper’s Baseball America article.

Looking at the players drafted in the first round after Mike Hazen became GM, 7 of 10 draftees (70%) made it to the Majors within 3 seasons of being drafted (ignoring the unsigned Matt McLain).  Also, an eighth draftee (Blake Walston) made it in 5 seasons.  70% is a little below average, but seemed like an acceptable result.    

The position player chances were higher than pitcher chances (83% vs 50%).  Given the known problem with pitcher development, which is being addressed, that difference seems to make sense.

In each of the next three seasons, two first-round picks by the Diamondbacks will reach their third season, and they will likely significantly impact the percentages that reached the Majors.

How often do first-round picks make a positive impact?

My view is that accumulating at least one Baseball-Reference Win-Above-Replacement (bWAR) will accomplish a positive impact.  Although that view is possibly a low bar, and although a replacement level player can make a small impact, that is where I drew a demarcation line.

Looking at the players drafted in the first round after Mike Hazen became GM, 3 of 10 draftees made a positive impact.   They were Corbin Carroll, Drey Jameson, and Bryce Jarvis.  I was surprised that 2 of the 3 were pitchers!   Perhaps the story is more complex than it appeared!

Drafting Corbin Carroll was like winning a jackpot.  So far, he has earned 18.9 bWAR, making his impact far above all the other Diamondbacks first-round draftees.  In addition, his performance earned the Diamondbacks an extra draft pick, which was used to draft Ryan Waldschmidt.

Could other first-round draftees make an impact in the future?

In a 3-step process, I estimated the future impact of each draftee. Opinions on future impact differ widely.

• Estimated each player’s future bWAR for the Diamondbacks. 
• Subtracted bWAR equivalent to their salary divided by $9 million per bWAR.
• Rounded the result to acknowledge the huge uncertainty in the estimate.

Three of the seven first-round draftees who did not make an impact, could make an impact in the future. They were Ryan Waldschmidt,  Jordan Lawlar, and Tommy Troy. IF that optimistic impact happens, the percentage of first-round draftees who made an impact could possibly increase from 30% to 60%.

Two tables show the first-round draftees.

Looking at the players drafted in the first round after Mike Hazen became GM, the following table shows the first-round draftees who made it to the Majors.

Looking at the players drafted in the first round after Mike Hazen became GM, the following table shows the first-round draftees who have not yet made it to the Majors.

Data from Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, and MLBcom.

Summary.

Looking at the 10 players drafted in the first round after Mike Hazen became GM:

• 7 draftees reached the Majors within 3 seasons.
• 3 draftees made an impact of at least 1 bWAR.  I was surprised that 2 of the 3 were pitchers.
• My optimistic estimate is that an additional 3 draftees could possibly make an impact of at least 1 bWAR.
• Corbin Carroll made the largest impact, with 18.9 bWAR and his performance earned the Diamondbacks an additional draft pick.

The Colorado Rockies are a team in the midst of a rebuild. With this in mind, the staff at Purple Row thought it would be useful to revisit the “State of the Position” series that we ran in March to see where things stand. We’ve asked authors of the spring articles to re-evaluate their earlier remarks with an eye toward the August 3 trade deadline.

The state of the Rockies’ starting rotation is, well, less than ideal as we reach the midpoint of the 2026 season.

To put it in perspective, Colorado’s starters rank 30th in ERA, 30th in WHIP, 29th in K/9, 30th in H/9, and 16th in BB/9. Some of that is to be expected. Pitching at Coors Field is an inherently difficult challenge, thanks to the combination of altitude and the vast outfield dimensions.

Even with those caveats, however, the rotation has fallen well short of expectations. Too often, it has struggled to keep the Rockies in games, putting the club at an early disadvantage.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way.

The offseason plan, the first under Paul DePodesta’s front office, was built on a specific bet: durability. Tomoyuki Sugano, José Quintana, and Michael Lorenzen were signed to one-year deals precisely because they take the ball — the trio averaged 26 ⅓ starts a season over the previous two years. Paired with Kyle Freeland, they were supposed to guarantee that the Rockies never had to start someone who couldn’t hold a major league job. Instead, availability — the one thing this group was supposed to provide — is exactly what has fallen apart.

The injuries came for everyone

Quintana hasn’t pitched since late May, when a left elbow sprain sent him to the 60-day injured list. Sugano was scratched from his scheduled July 4 start and placed on the 15-day IL with back spams. Chase Dollander, one of the two real upside plays this rotation has, underwent an internal brace procedure on his right elbow on June 22 and won’t pitch again until 2027.

The backup depth got hit, too. Tanner Gordon (hip impingement) and Ryan Feltner (right ulnar nerve inflammation) both spent time on the IL, while McCade Brown has been sidelined by shoulder inflammation since late March without throwing a pitch this season.

The veterans who stayed healthy haven’t held up their end

Freeland’s season has been the most difficult to watch. The franchise leader in career innings pitched carries an ERA above seven through 17 starts, and he hasn’t resembled himself since returning from a shoulder issue of his own. The 170 innings he needs to vest his 2027 option is, at this pace, out of reach. The lone bright spot came in June, when he became the second pitcher to reach 1,000 strikeouts in a Rockies uniform.

Lorenzen’s first half was, for stretches, the roughest of any starter in baseball. He leads the majors in hits allowed, and his home/road splits have undercut the theory that his eight-pitch mix would translate to altitude. There is a real trend worth nothing though: Over his last seven starts, he’s posted a 3.22 ERA. It’s not dominance, but it’s the first sustained stretch that looks like the pitcher Colorado thought it signed.

Then there’s Sugano, who has been the staff’s most reliable arm — and has done it backwards. The 36-year-old is 8-4 with a 4.80 ERA, built on a 4.14 ERA in seven starts at Coors Field, with most of the damage coming on the road. In a season where the organization is starving for any pitching lesson that travels, its most interesting data point is a command-and-mix veteran thriving at altitude. His back injury is reportedly minor, but every start he misses goes to someone who probably shouldn’t be making it.

Feltner has been the plan that actually worked

Feltner won a rotation spot out of camp, validating the offseason strength work that was supposed to put his lost 2025 behind him. Right ulnar nerve inflammation cost him five weeks in the middle of the first half — poorly timed for a pitcher re-establishing himself.

But he’s made the layoff look like a footnote. Since returning in late May, he has been arguably the Rockies’ most dependable starter, posting a 3.74 ERA across eight starts. He is also the only member of the Opening Day rotation under club control beyond this season — which makes him less a nice story than the lone bridge.

Dollander, the other camp arm with long-term upside, saw his season end before he could truly make his own case — leaving Feltner as the last man standing from what was supposed to be the rotation’s future-facing competition. Gordon has filled his familiar swingman role when healthy, while Antonio Senzatela and Jimmy Herget — the two spring wildcards — both settled into the bullpen, the outcome that always seems likeliest.

The future arrived early, ready or not

The injuries dragged the prospect timeline forward by months. Sean Sullivan (No. 8 PuRP) got the first call and struggled, surrendering 22 earned runs across 22.1 innings before being optioned back to Albuquerque — a reminder that the gap between the Pacific Coast League and Coors Field is wider than a plane ride.

Gabriel Hughes (No. 12 PuRP) is the more encouraging test case. Selected on July 1, the former first-round pick made the first start of his career Wednesday at Dodger Stadium — opposite Roki Sasaki — and turned in the kind of outing the final score undersells in a 4-3 loss. He velocity is up from a year ago, the strikeouts followed in Albuquerque, and he now has a three-month audition to prove he belongs in the 2027 rotation.

What the second half is really about

Here is the uncomfortable math underneath all of it: Freeland, Sugano, Lorenzen, and Quintana are all headed to free agency this winter. Felnter is the only starter who projects to open 2027 in the rotation. The most expensive free-agent pitching class since Jorge De La Rosa was never a foundation — it was scaffolding, and it comes down in October, no matter what happens between now and then.

That makes the trade deadline, not the standings, the story of the second half. Any healthy veteran becomes the front office’s clearest chance to turn this season into something with a longer shelf life. And the auditions — Hughes, Sullivan, maybe eventually Brown — become the competition that actually matters: the one for jobs that won’t exist until next spring.

The question in March was whether this rotation was better. The midseason answer is: barely, briefly, and not where it counts. The better question now is whether anything from the first half — Sugano’s Coors formula, Feltner’s return, Hughes’ arrival — is something the Rockies can keep.

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The Yankees are riding high into the All-Star break on the back of a three-game sweep of the Nationals, overcoming a deficit in the eighth inning or later in all three games for the first time since they were the Highlanders sweeping the Cleveland Naps in 1910. However, we have to go back a game further for the unequivocal selection for AB of the Week. In the final game of the pivotal four-game series against the Rays, Ryan McMahon won a 12-pitch AB against typical Yankee Killer Drew Rasmussen to spark their eventual six-run outburst and win to split the series.

We join McMahon with no outs in the top of the third, Max Schuemann standing on second after leading off with a double. The Rays lead, 1-0, courtesy of a Junior Caminero solo shot in the first. McMahon has returned to the starting lineup after starting on the bench the previous two games with the Rays throwing out a pair of lefty starters, and just his glove alone at the hot corner is a welcome sight.

Rasmussen entered this contest with a career 0.89 ERA against the Yankees in nine starts. Stylistically he is similar to Cam Schlittler in that he throws his three fastballs a combined 80-percent of the time, relying on the divergent movement profiles of the four-seamer, sinker, and cutter to create deception for the batter. He starts this AB looking to front-door a sinker for a called strike.

He achieves just that, starting this pitch as a ball in off the plate and allowing its 16 inches of arm-side run to tail it back across the inside edge of the zone. McMahon gives up on the pitch early assuming it will be a ball inside only to watch the movement carry it into the strike zone for called strike one.

Now that he has shown McMahon an inside fastball that moves back toward the plate, it’s time for the fastball that breaks in the opposite direction. He attempts to start a cutter down the same tunnel as the first pitch, which should get McMahon to chase in off the plate after watching the previous sinker land for a strike.

This is a pretty good take by McMahon. The cutter looks like a strike down and in out of Rasmussen’s hand, but McMahon must have picked up the movement pretty soon out of Rasmussen’s hand because he reads it all the way as it cuts away from the plate for ball one inside.

Follow two straight inside fastballs to open the AB, Rasmussen has the situation for a changeup down and away — it should look like a heater right down the middle before diving down arm-side.

Oh man, McMahon missed a cookie here. They say you might only get one good pitch to hit per AB and it looks like this was the one. Rasmussen misses his spot badly with the changeup and leaves this one belt high down Broadway. However, McMahon cannot take advantage of what is effectively a batting practice fastball and slashes it foul straight back — right on time with the swing but not precise enough with the barrel.

After failing to punish that mistake, McMahon is in trouble, 1-2. His focus now should center solely on hitting something to the right side to advance the runner to third and pass the baton to the next batter.

Rasmussen changes speeds back up to the four-seamer after seeing that McMahon’s swing timing is synced to the changeup. He nails his spot out over the plate but just above the zone, yet McMahon is still able to fire off a strong swing, his barrel again just under this pitch to foul it back to the zone as the four-seamer does not drop the way that the sinker and cutter McMahon has already seen did.

Rasmussen succeeded in getting McMahon to chase a four-seamer just above the zone, so the logical choice here is to climb the ladder a rung higher and see if he can get the chase and whiff this time.

Fortunately for McMahon, Rasmussen overthrows this four-seamer and it sails up out of the zone about head high, making for a pretty straightforward take despite an initial temptation to swing.

That take on a four-seamer above the zone informs Rasmussen’s next pitch selection. If he can throw a sinker that looks like a ball high out of the hand, McMahon should give up on the pitch only watch in drop into the zone for called strike three.

Rasmussen executes that pitch plan to perfection, but McMahon is all over this sinker, fouling it straight back to the screen. It’s impressive diagnosis of the pitch to recognize that he has to foul it off to avoid getting punched out looking.

With McMahon showing a renewed willingness to offer at a fastball that starts as a ball above the zone, Rasmussen reverses his course looking to get the hitter to whiff beneath the elevated four-seamer with the movement profile of the sinker he just fouled off still fresh in his mind.

Once again McMahon is able to fight off this pitcher’s pitch foul to keep the AB alive. You can see by the way he fouls it off the handle of the bat that he is anticipating a sinker’s movement toward the right-handed hitter’s batter’s box, but the four-seamer flies straight and he gets jammed.

The last four fastballs that Rasmussen has thrown all exhibit arm-side movement, so he has created an opportunity to deceive McMahon with the glove-side-breaking cutter.

This is definitely the most impressive swing from McMahon to this point. I do not know how he is able to make the immediate adjustment in eye level to a fastball down and in and breaking toward him after fouling off three heaters at the top of the zone. It’s another near-flawless pitch from Rasmussen on the corner, but McMahon’s confidence is growing with each pitch he spoils.

Now that Rasmussen has reminded McMahon that he can throw an inside fastball that breaks further in, he feels he can freeze him with a four-seamer up and in as McMahon should be anticipating a cutter to handcuff him in off the plate.

That’s two straight pitches command right to the corners but it’s the same result from McMahon. You can see from the way he pulls his hands in that he’s thinking this is another cutter and he therefore needs to make an extra effort to stay inside the pitch.

Rasmussen has now thrown six straight fastballs, so despite having failed to execute the changeup earlier on, he might have a little more margin of error with the off-speed having sped McMahon’s bat up to fastball speed.

Rasmussen again leaves this changeup elevated but somewhat fortuitously gets it to the corner up and away. McMahon is pretty early with his swing after all those fastballs and can count himself lucky that he is just able to tip a piece of the ball foul off the end of the bat to stay alive.

It’s not until the 11th pitch of the AB that Rasmussen finally throws his first breaking ball. His intention is to start it off the plate and break it back across the outside edge for a called strike three, and McMahon should be frozen after seeing so many heaters over the plate.

The fact that McMahon is tempted to chase this pitch tells me he has been secretly hunting a breaking ball this whole time. He finally gets one and almost loses his discipline before reading the pitch just in time and halting his swing.

It’s taken a monumental effort from McMahon to this point to work the count full. He knows Rasmussen does not want to walk him, so he can pretty reliably hunt a fastball in the zone, likely up given the way Rasmussen has attacked the top of the zone with heaters to this point.

McMahon gets the pitch he is looking for and does everything the situation requires of him. He pulls the ball, meaning at the very worst it’s a productive AB to advance the runner to third. However, he’s finally able to fire off a swing with some authority rather than a fight-off swing to stay alive. He gets the barrel directly to this cutter up and out over the plate, managing to keep this ball fair down the right field line to plate Schuemann as the tying run.

Here’s the full AB:

Where do I even begin with this incredible effort from McMahon? For starters, it’s such a professional AB, swinging at all the pitches that are in the zone or are too close to take while laying off the three balls that are intended for him to chase. It’s fabulous pitch recognition to identify five different pitch types, anticipate their movement, and tailor his swing path and timing to make contact, especially when you consider the location of many of the pitches — just look at how many Rasmussen was able to command to the edges of the zone, yet McMahon was able to fight every one of them off foul to stay alive! There was never a moment of panic in McMahon’s approach, allowing him to keep a level head and do damage with a controlled swing when he finally got a pitch he could hit McMahon winning the 12-pitch marathon proved the turning point in the game, the floodgates immediately opening for the Yankees to score six in the frame and hand Rasmussen by far his worst start against them.

McMahon is poised to play an important role for the Yankees down the stretch. As the failed experiments of Amed Rosario and José Caballero at third have shown, they absolutely need a reliable defender at the hot corner capable of making all the routine plays and even a handful of spectacular ones, and there are few third baseman in the league better equipped for those duties than McMahon. What’s more, since returning from a throat infection that landed him on the sidelines for two weeks, McMahon looks way more in control in the batter’s box, posting a 148 wRC+ in eight appearances off the IL. If that can continue, he quietly becomes one of the Yankees’ most valuable all around players.

The 2026 MLB Draft is in the books and the Atlanta Braves had a huge year with a lot of interesting players to follow. The Braves held their highest pick since 2019 and with that and their extra pick due to the Prospect Promotion Incentive, they had a massive bonus pool to work with that they are expected to spread across numerous hands. The biggest of those will be 9th overall pick AJ Gracia (Draft Report | My Take). While Gracia will demand a high bonus he is still expected to come in well below the slot value at the 29th pick, freeing up a load of money for the slew of high school players the Braves are targeting.

Another savings pick is 26th overall surprise selection Carter Beck (draft report). Beck will receive at least $2,684,100 due to the rule that players who attend the draft combine and submit a physical must receive at least 75% of their slot value for a bonus, however Beck is not expected to get much over that numbers. These numbers are all going to be significant as the Braves selected seven later round high school players that are expected or to at least could receive over slot bonuses. The highly drafted guys will absolutely get big money. For the following players click on their names to view their draft day report. Kaiden McCarthy, Jensen Hirschkorn, Cole Dennis, Tyson Grulkowski, and Jack Brenner are all going to get significant bonuses, especially the first three of that group. Ryne Barker in the 11th round is also going to be a tough sign away from a Texas Tech commitment, and 13th round pick Cole Dorland has to be swayed away from a chance to attend Alabama. These players will stretch the bonus pool of the Braves, but with the lack of any late shot-in-the-dark picks the Braves should still be expected to sign all 21 players drafted. We are likely to get a slow trickle of bonuses for top guys announced over the next two weeks, though the Braves typically make quick work of their signings and are going to announce the full signing class likely within that two-week timeframe. In the meantime we seek to be a hub for all of the announcements and rumors prior to the official blue box from the Atlanta Braves. For the list of signing rules if you are unfamiliar, scroll past the spreadsheet below, though for those that are familiar there are no rule changes this year. The official signing deadline is July 27th at 5:00 pm ET.

To know a little about each player, I encourage you to read the fantastic write up by our draft expert Matt Powers here. He does fantastic work every single year and is the backbone of our pre-draft and draft day coverage.

Now to the signing rules. For those of you following for the first time or in need of a reminder, the MLB draft signing is structured significantly different to other sports leagues. Each pick is assigned a specific value, and the sum of that value is the amount a team is allotted to spend total across all of their selections.

For the first ten rounds of the draft every dollar spent counts against the teams total bonus pool, and for picks after the tenth the signing bonus allotment is $150,000 with any amount over that being charged against the pool. For example, if the 11th round pick gets $500,000, $350,000 of that would count towards the bonus pool. The bonus pool is not a strict limit, and the Braves should be expected to go over that by anywhere from 1-5%. In that range the penalty for overage is just a tax on the signing bonus. However, any amount over 5% will induce a penalty of future draft picks, so teams have never in the history of this format exceeded that mark, but will often come within a few dollars of it. The total pool as well as the 5% overage is labeled in the chart.

A strategy for the Braves to save money to spread around to multiple players is to take a couple of highly drafted players who will sign for well below the value of the pick. Another is to take senior college players in the middle rounds, in the Braves case this season rounds eight through ten, and then throw small bonuses (usually just a few thousand dollars) that they can’t really turn down as they lack the leverage of returning to school. The savings will go to entice younger players away from commitments to university, a task that has become a bit more daunting in the NIL era of college spots.

One other applicable rule to this draft is the contingency bonus. It’s a bit of an accounting trick, a $2,500 portion of the bonus that does not count against the bonus pool. The players still get this money no matter what, but the Braves typically report numbers like $997,500 to save that little bit of extra penalty and keep themselves under the 5% margin. This is a pretty minor squabble with the big bonus guys, but when you see a senior sign that gets, say, $7,500 it is important to remember there is a solid chunk of money going to that player that isn’t directly reported by that “official” number.

The final major rules relate to unsigned picks. The Braves have likely already locked down specific bonuses with top players, so barring a late NIL push or a failed physical it is a near guarantee that the top 10 rounds will sign. In the event of this occurring, if the player decides not to sign the Braves would lose slot value from the total pool. In the case of a player like Gracia, who would be expected to save them a chunk of money, this could throw their entire draft into disarray, but typically a team is aware of any medical or commitment concerns before the draft and players not signing inside the first ten rounds is exceedingly rare. It can be a bit tougher with high school guys, but with the Braves going the college route in the first round there is no realistic chance that they are going to see their draft blown up by a lost signee.

However, it does happen, like in 2018 when Carter Stewart and the Braves failed to come to terms. In that case, within the first two rounds the team (assuming they offered at least 40% of the slot value) would receive a pick in the following draft one pick later than this draft. So in Gracia’s case, the Braves would get the 10th pick in 2027 if he did not sign. For a third round pick that does not sign, a replacement selection would be wrapped in at the end of the third round as a compensation pick.

Jamie Aloy, who was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 48th round of the 1999 MLB Draft out of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, had two sons and both followed in his footsteps, pursing baseball not just as a passion or hobby, but as a profession. His eldest son, Wehiwa Kapahulehua, attended the University of Arkansas and was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles with the 31st overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, where he is one of their top prospects. His youngest son, Kuhio Kamakanawehiwamaikalewa, was just drafted by the Mets. Kuhio attended Henry Perrine Baldwin High School in Wailuku, Hawaii, overlapping with his brother’s time there in 2022. Graduating in 2023, he struck out on his own and attended Brigham Young University.

The outfielder spent a single season with the Cougars, appearing in 52 games and hitting .269/.329/.447 with 9 doubles, 1 triple, 8 home runs, and 20 walks to 62 strikeouts, good for a 84 wRC+. He entered the transfer portal and transferred to the University of Arkansas; the season prior, his brother had done the same thing, and now they were once again playing together. Head coach Van Horn often penciled the two brothers into the line-up back-to-back, and multiple times over the course of the season, the two hit back-to-back home runs, or homered in the same inning, or drove each other in. In total, Kuhio appeared in 61 games for his new team and hit .317/.404/.539 with 15 doubles, 13 home runs, and 31 walks to 77 strikeouts, good for a 120 wRC+. That summer, as Wehiwa was being drafted and getting ready to begin his career as a professional in Delmarva, Kuhio was playing for the Bourne Braves of the Cape Cod Baseball League. In 16 games for them, he hit .333/.463/.500 with 3 doubles, 2 home runs, and 12 walks to 16 strikeouts. He had intended on playing for them longer, but a hand injury prompted him to withdraw from the team early.

Kuhio returned to the University of Arkansas for his junior year in 2026 and started 49 games in a row, 35 as DH and 14 in right field, before his season ended prematurely in late May due to a broken hamate bone in his left wrist likely sustained during an early at-bat in a game against the University of Tennessee. All in all, the outfielder hit .293/.352/.486 with 8 doubles, 9 home runs, 5 stolen bases, and 15 walks to 48 strikeouts, resulting in a 98 wRC+.

The 6’1”, 205-pound Kuhio stands square at the plate, holding his hands high with his bat wrapped behind his head angled at 2:00. He swings with a slight leg lift but is otherwise very still at the plate, utilizing virtually no load and weight shift, primarily engaging his upper body and generating power from bat speed and torque. When he makes solid contact and barrels balls, Aloy has the capability of launching balls with 100+ MPH exit velocity readings using composite bats, regularly launching tape measure home runs- the University of Arkansas measured many of his home runs over the course of the 2026 at 450+ feet.

The power comes with some swing-and-miss, with Aloy running a 25.8% strikeout rate with his two seasons with the Hogs and a 26.5% rate factoring in his season with Brigham Young as well. He draws a solid amount of walks- 9.4% walk rate over the course of his college career- but his 3:1 strikeout to walk rate is still a bit high for a player who is not a major slugger. While Aloy has maximized his HR/FB% ratio with a 23.7%, the outfielder still has some work to do elevating the ball in general. His batted ball data is extremely non-optimal for a player of his profile, running a 45.9% groundball rate, 25.6%, line drive rate, and 28.6% flyball rate in 2026, and 42.1%, 24.9%, and 33.0% over the course of his collegiate career. The preponderance of strikeouts and groundouts are a major reason why Aloy is a very streaky hitter.

Defensively, Kuhio does not bring much to the table, which is why the preponderance of his games have come as designated hitter. He does not have much foot speed, with a slow and plodding gait, and as such does not have much range. He does have a strong arm, possibly strong enough to profile well in right field. Because he carries his weight well and is already fairly well filled in, Aloy is unlikely to add enough mass to force him out of the outfield, but because of his limitations out there to begin with, he might simply be better at first base.

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Sox fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.

No, we’re not issuing this survey as a goof: We know most of you will favor the top overall pick, Roch Cholowsky. Perhaps it’s the battle for No. 2 that intrigues. The White Sox made an extra sandwich pick at the end of the first round materialize out of thin air (well, actually it materialized at the cost of No. 15 pick overall in 2024 Jacob Gonzalez) and grabbed a local kid with ties to White Sox/baseball royalty with it, Landon Thome. And their second round pick proper, Cole Prosek, might be their own mini-Grady Emerson (left-handed prep bat with pop, middle infielder).

Anyway, let’s ride out the fumes of the triumphant 2026 draft with one more look at it!

The 2026 MLB Draft is now over and if they all sign, there will be 21 new members of the Cubs family. Scouting director Dan Kantrovitz said before the draft that the Cubs would work on the weakness on the pitching side of the Cubs farm system and boy, did they ever. With 21 picks over the 20-round draft, the Cubs took 16 pitchers, one outfielder, one shortstop, one catcher, and two first basemen, although one of the first basemen catches some. Nineteen of the 21 picks were college players.

Here, once again, are all 21 Cubs draft picks.

Round 1 (23): Cade Townsend RHP Mississippi

Round 2 (62): Caden Sorrell OF Texas A&M

Round 2 Comp (75): Myles Bailey 1B Florida State

Round 3 (98): Carson Jasa RHP Nebraska

Round 4 (126): Dylan Marioneaux RHP Northwestern State (LA)

Round 5 (159): Dylan Blomker RHP La Cueva HS (NM)

Round 6 (188): Isaac Morton RHP Minnesota

Round 7 (217): Cole Tryba LHP UC Santa Barbara

Round 8: Lance Williams RHP Maryland

Round 9: Chase Meyer RHP West Virginia

Round 10: Luke Alwood RHP Seattle University

Round 11: Ariston Veasey RHP Clemson

Round 12: Brandon Arvidson LHP Tennessee

Round 13: Emanuel Hernandez C Carlos Beltran Academy (PR)

Round 14: Corey Nunez SS UC Santa Barbara

Round 15: Griffin Naess RHP Caly Poly SLO

Round 16: Ashton Pocol RHP Florida Gulf Coast

Round 17: Ryan Marton RHP UNLV

Round 18: Luke McGrath RHP James Madison

Round 19: Luke Guth RHP Vanderbilt

Round 20: Brennan Hudson 1B Georgia

So the Cubs stuck to their long-standing preferences for college players over high school players by drafting only two high schoolers—Blomker in the sixth round and Hernandez in the 13th. That’s a trend that is taking hold in all of baseball as around 77 percent of the players drafted came from a four-year college. Another two percent came from the junior college ranks, so only around 1 out of 5 picks were high school players.

Otherwise, two things stand out. Obviously the Cubs took a lot of pitchers. Kantrovitz hinted that they would and they did. But what is striking is what kinds of pitchers they took. While the Cubs did not take many soft-tossers, even the hardest throwers sit more 95-96 miles per hour on their four-seam fastball. Some have touched the upper-90s and perhaps the Cubs think they can put a few ticks of velocity on them in the pitch lab. They’ve had some successes doing that in recent years.

But the one thing that unites almost all these pitchers is a high spin rate. In his video press conference with the Cubs media, first-round pick Cade Townsend said:“Spin is really my super power. That’s what I tell everyone. I just have a weird, innate ability to spin the ball and make the ball move left or right.” Kantrovitz said he was going to work with Cubs pitching coordinator Tyler Zombro to identify pitchers that he could work with. Apparently Zombro wants pitchers who can spin the ball.

Beyond Townsend, 3rd round pick Carson Jasa, 4th round pick Dylan Marionneaux, 5th round pick Dylan Blomker, 6th round pick Isaac Morton, 8th round pick Lance Williams and 9th round pick Chase Myers are praised for the spin they get on the ball. Spin affects the path of the ball—more spin means less vertical movement and more arm-side horizontal movement. Basically, the mis-named “rising fastball” is a fastball with a lot of spin. A pitch with a high spin rate is just harder to hit.

Clearly, Kantrovitz and Zombro targeted pitchers with that high spin rate and Zombro thinks he can build upon that kind of profile better than he can with lower-spin pitchers.

The two position players taken with the two second-round picks are interesting as well in that neither one of them have great contact rate, which is something that the Cubs have targeted in past drafts. Instead, Sorrell and Bailey are athletic and powerful sluggers who struggle sometimes to make contact. Sorrell’s problem is pitch recognition and swinging at too many pitches out of the zone. Bailey just swings so hard that he misses a lot of hittable pitches, even if he tends to lay off bad ones and draw a fair number of walks.

I’m not going to go over the first five picks as I already wrote about Townsend, Sorrell,Bailey, Jasa and Marionneaux. I will add, because I didn’t have much information on Marionneaux right after he was drafted, is that he’s a pitchability right-hander whose best pitch is his mid-80s slider. He also has a low-90s fastball, a cutter, a curve and a change. He was used as a starter at Northwestern State, but he’s almost certainly a reliever in the professional ranks where his slider could be an effective weapon out of the pen. In my article on Saturday I said that Marionneaux was likely a below-slot pick so that the Cubs could sign a player who wanted a bigger bonus later. That pick turned out to be Blomker. But I do want to make clear that the Cubs didn’t just grab some random pitcher who’d sign cheap. They clearly like Marionneaux and that slider fits in with what Zombro wants to work with down in Mesa.

I also want to add that Bailey is likely to be the most fun Cubs hitting prospect since Daniel Vogelbach and maybe even farther back than that. He’s going to strike out a ton and we hope that doesn’t derail his career. But man, he hit home runs than just made your jaw drop at Florida State. Bailey is gonna be a must-watch player for the sheer entertainment value.

So here are some quick thoughts on the Cubs other 16 draft picks.

Dylan Blomker is one of the two high school players the Cubs took in the draft. He’s a 6’4” right-hander with a pretty vertical pitching motion. His fastball is timed in the low-90s, but it touches higher and a lot of scouts think he can add a few ticks on to his four seamer as he develops. But his best pitch is a sweeping slider with a lot of spin and impressive break. He, like most high school pitches, needs to work on his changup.

Blomker has already said he’s going to sign. Fun fact: the Blomker family is friends with the Bregman family and Dylan has known Alex most of his life. Alex Bregman helped recruit Blomker to LSU. Now he is a major reason Blomker is excited to forgo LSU and sign with the Cubs.

Isaac Morton is a 6’3” right-hander who had two seasons at Texas A&M before transferring to Minnesota. He’s got a hard sinking fastball that sits 94-96. He also has a low-90s cutter and a mid-80s slider. Both pitches have a lot of spin and the slider is his put-away pitch. He also made major strides with his control his junior year after coming home to Minnesota.

On talent alone, Morton should have gone in the top three rounds. Baseball America named him as one of their “college sleepers” in this year’s draft. But he struggled to stay healthy with the Aggies and after making 13 starts with a 3.26 ERA for the Gophers, he suffered an arm injury that required Tommy John surgery. So it will probably be late next season before we see Morton pitch at the earliest. But Baseball America write that Morton is the best pitcher to come out of Minnesota since Max Meyer and if Morton is anywhere near as good as Meyer is these days, he’ll be worth the wait.

Cole Tryba is an undersized lefty with a low arm release and above-average control. His fastball is around 90-93 mph. He also has a sweeping slider that is his go-to pitch. Tryba’s changeup needs some refinement, but it’s promising at this point. He also has a cutter.

Tryba has been the Gauchos closer for the past three years and he’s most likely going to stay in the pen as a pro. Tryba pitched well in the wooden bat Cape Cod League last summer (1.07 ERA over 25.1 innings) and that’s always a good sign.

Lance Williams is an undersized (5’11”) righty who nevertheless gets some good velocity on his fastball, which sits mid-90s and has touched 99. Once gain Williams ties into the “spin rate” that the Cubs are chasing, and both his slider and cutter some impressive spin. He rarely threw his change, but when he did, he got a lot of swings and misses.

In his one year at Maryland, Williams split time between the rotation and the bullpen. He missed a lot of bats and missed the plate a lot, leading to 69 strikeouts and 29 walks over 57 innings. It’s a profile that works better in the pen than as a starter as a professional, but it’s also some good clay for the pitch lab to work with, so I wouldn’t completely dismiss the chance that he starts.

Chase Meyer is a 6’2” right hander with some electric stuff. Meyer sports a fastball that sits around 96 and can go as high as 98. He’s also got those high-spin breaking pitches. His change is a low-8os 12-6 with a hard break and the slider comes in just a bit faster but with good glove side break.

Unfortunately, Meyer was dismissed from the Mountaineers after two appearances and 3.1 innings this February after he was involved in a locker room incident where he angrily criticized the coaching staff. Since then, he’s pitched in both the MLB Draft League and the Cape Cod League to give scouts some looks. Again, Meyer is likely a reliever.

Luke Alwood ia a big, 6’5” right-hander who spent four full years at Seattle University. His fastball is only 92-94, but there is some thought that someone that big should be able to throw harder and he has hit 98 once or twice. He has good control, although his pitches can be a bit too hittable. For a college senior, his stuff is still pretty raw. With his size, Alwood is definitely someone whom the pitch lab would like to work with and see if they can make something out of him. It’s definitely a starter’s frame, if not a starter’s arsenal at this point.

I fully expect that all of the top ten draft picks will sign. There may be one or two picks in the second half of the draft that don’t.

Ariston Veasey is a 6’1” right-handed junior out of Clemson. He missed the start of the season after getting involved in a campus bar fight, but all charges were dropped in the end. Veasey transferred to Clemson after two years at Alabama and quickly became the best reliever on the Tigers with a 3.29 ERA and 37 strikeouts over 25.1 innings. Opposing hitters managed just a .143 average against Veasey. He did struggle with control at times and walked 18 batter. Veasey has a mid-90s fastball.

Brandon Arvidson is a tall, 6’5” left-handed reliever with a lot of swing-and-miss in his fastball/slider combination. The mid-80s slider breaks down hard and is a potential plus pitch if he can learn to throw it for more strikes. It’s Arvidson’s bread-and-butter pitch. The fastball sits low-90s but can touch 95-96. Arvidson struck out 35.2 percent of hitters over his two years with the Volunteers. He improved his walk rate this past season and he will need to improve it still if he wants to be a major league reliever.

About all I know about Emanuel Hernandez is that he’s a Miami of Ohio commit and that the Cubs needed to grab some catchers or all these pitchers they drafted will have no one to throw to. I did see a video of him throwing to second base from behind the plate and he looked fine there. We’ll see if he sticks to his college commitment. The Cubs need catchers.

Corey Nunez is the second Gaucho the Cubs took in this year’s draft after Tryba and after they took two more Gauchos, Ryan Gallagher and Ivan Brethowr, in the 2024 draft. Nunez took a step forward in his senior season at UCSB with a line of .280/.361/.393 and hit .345 in limited (seven games) action this summer in the Cape Cod League. Despite being 6’3”, Nunez doesn’t have much power and has a stroke that is geared towards contact on a line to all fields. Nunez struck out just 23 times in 200 plate appearances this past season.

Griffin Naess is another tall, 6’6”, lanky right-hander who was a three-year starter for Cal Poly. From what I’ve seen of Naess, despite his size, he’s not a hard-thrower with a fastball checking in around 90 mph. But by far his best pitch is a fall-of-the-table upper-70s changeup that gets a lot of swings and misses. He’s also got a mid-70s curve with some good break on it but I didn’t see him land it for a strike much.

With the Mustangs last year, Naess went 8-5 with a 4.63 ERA over 91.1 innings and 17 starts. He struck out 97 and walked 35. The Mustangs seems to ride his arm more than I like and he threw 137 pitches in the Big West Championship Game.

Ashton Pocol was the senior closer for FGCU. He put an impressive strikeout-to-walk ratio with 50 strikeouts and just ten walks over 33.1 innings. He was 3-4 with a 3.24 ERA and six saves.

Canadian Ryan Marton is a big 6’4”, 235 right-hander who spent two years in junior college before transferring to UNLV this past year. He didn’t get much of a chance with the Rebels, throwing just 19 innings over four starts and nine relief appearances. His numbers aren’t all that impressive—6.16 ERA, 22 strikeouts and nine walks—but he was pitching in Las Vegas.

Luke McGrath is a 6’2” redshirt sophomore right-handed reliever who struggled with control last year at James Madison. I didn’t get a radar reading on his fastball from the video I saw of him pitching, but it looked hard. He also appears to have a slider and a curve, again, at least from what I saw. The breaking pitches appeared to have good movement, but from the 20 walks he had in 28 innings last year, I wonder how often he can throw them for strikes. McGrath struck out 28.

Luke Guth is another one of those big spin guys that the Cubs took so many of in this year’s draft. Guth has a 92-93 mph fastball with that good spin and “rise” that the Cubs have targeted. His breaking stuff has a lot of movement—maybe too much as he seems to struggle to throw them for strikes. Guth was dominating as a sophomore reliever for the Commodores with a 0.93 ERA and 22 strikeouts and seven walks over 19.1 inning. But Guth couldn’t follow that up and he struggled this past year with a 5.18 ERA. The problem was he was just walking too many batters. If Guth can live up to his promise of 2025, there might be a solid reliever in there.

I have Brennan Hudson listed as a first baseman but a lot of places list him as a catcher. He did both at Georgia this year, with more first base than behind the plate.

Hudson wasn’t much of a draft consideration last year in his first season with the Bulldogs after transferring from Georgia State. But as a senior this year Hudson had a breakout season, hitting .294/.466/.730 with 22 home runs in 56 games. The big difference between Hudson’s junior and senior season is a huge drop in his strikeout rate from a whopping 37 percent as a junior to 20.8 percent as a senior. Hudson walk totals also increased as his power numbers soared. He has a kind of violent left-handed pull swing that is geared to power.

Despite those impressive numbers, both the scouts and the data analysts think those senior season numbers were a bit of a fluke. That’s why Hudson was still available in the 20th round. But he certainly seems like someone worth the gamble this late. And if he can catch, that’s all the better.