Category: Sports News

Baltimore Orioles vs. Pittsburgh Pirates, February 27, 2026, 1:05 p.m. ET

Location: LECOM Park, Bradenton, FL

How to Listen: 93.7 The Fan, 100.1 FM, AM 1020 KDKA, Sports Net Pittsburgh app SNP 360

The Pittsburgh Pirates are at home today against the Baltimore Orioles looking to grab a win in Spring Training.

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Ryan Pepiot takes the hill the today as he makes his first appearance of the Spring.

There will be local radio coverage of the game today by the Rays.

First pitch against the Toronto Blue Jays is at 1:05 at Charlotte Sports Park

Today’s highlight package is from September 14-16, 1999 when the Devil Rays took on the Seattle Mariners

Mets lineup

1. Carson Benge – RF
2. Juan Soto – LF
3. Christian Arroyo – 3B
4. Jose Rojas – 1B
5. Hayden Senger – C
6. MJ Melendez – DH
7. Vidal Brujan – 2B
8. Jackson Cluff – SS
9. Nick Morabito – CF

SP: Freddy Peralta

Cardinals lineup

1. JJ Wetherholt – DH
2. Jose Fermin – SS
3. Nolan Gorman – 3B
4. Nelson Velazquez – LF
5. Ramon Urias – 2B
6. Thomas Saggese – CF
7. Pedro Pages – C
8. Nathan Church – RF
9. Blaze Jordan – 1B

SP: Quinn Mathews

Broadcast info

First pitch: 1:05 PM ET
Radio: Cardinals Radio Network, KMOX 1120 AM/104.1 FM

First Pitch (CT):12:05
TV: Twins.TV
Radio: WCCO 830/The Wolf 102.9 FM/Audacy App
Know Yo’ Foe: Pinstripe Alley

What to watch: Oops, all catchers!

Lineups

The Dodgers take on the San Francisco Giants on Friday in Scottsdale, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto making his second start of the spring, and his last outing before departing to join Team Japan for the World Baseball Classic.

Lineup

The Dodgers have a split-squad day with two games on Saturday, which means several regulars aren’t making the trip to Scottsdale on Friday.

Alex Freeland SS
Santiago Espinal 2B
Dalton Rushing C
Nick Senzel 3B
Keston Hiura DH
Ryan Ward LF
James Tibbs III 1B
Zach Ehrhard RF
Michael Siani CF

Other pitchers

40-man-roster pitchers Edgardo Henriquez and Paul Gervase are slated to pitch on Friday, as are non-roster invitees Ryder Ryan, Adam Serwinowski, and Luke Fox.

Up from minor league camp are .Roque Gutierrez (wearing number 88), Christian Romero (90), Christian Suarez (91), and Nicolas Cruz (92).

Other position players

Everyday non-roster outfielders Josue De Paula, Zyhir Hope, Kendall George, and Chris Newell are on the trip, as are catchers Seby Zavala and Nelson Quiroz.

From minor league camp are Austin Gauthier (01), Sean McClain (02), Jose Izarra (03), Joe Vetrano (96), Kyle Nevin (93), and Yeiner Fernandez (04).

It has been a few years since the Mets were active in the major league portion of the Rule 5 Draft. However, in 2025 they were active in the minor league portion, claiming three pitchers: Justin Armbruester, Aaron Rozek, and Matt Turner.

Turner, an 11th round draft pick for Cleveland in 2017, is a Miami native entering his age 27 season. Turner was named one of the organizational All-Stars in 2019, after his first season above rookie ball. After reaching Double-A Akron in the Guardians org in 2023, he’s bounced around a bit as of late after electing free agency after the 2023 season.

After playing in independent ball and a spell in the Mexican Pacific Winter League, Turner signed with the Rockies ahead of the 2025 season. He pitched for both Double-A Hartford and Triple-A Albuquerque, faring far better outside of the thin air of the Pacific Coast League. All told in 2025, Turner put up a 5.79 ERA across the two levels, making four starts and 37 relief appearances. His strikeout rate was just over one per inning, but he walked five per nine innings. He managed to limit home runs, which in the PCL can be quite the challenge,

Turner was signed by the Yankees to a minor league deal early in the offseason, which was followed up by the Mets’ claiming him in the Rule 5 Draft. So far this spring, Turner has pitched in two games, tossing a scoreless inning in each appearance. He’s walked two, struck out two, and given up one hit.

The Mets clearly saw something in him to both claim him from the Yankees and give him and invitation to big league camp. Being so new to the system, we don’t have a ton of information about Turner, but he’s looked good in his first two appearances. With King of Spring Training still not officially underway, Turner has a chance for the crown and, potentially, a spot in the Mets’ bullpen at some point later this year. +

Here are the lineups for the split squad game you can watch. For the Phillies:

For the Marlins:

And, if you’re interested, here is who is on the road.

Let’s talk about it.

Texas Rangers lineup for February 27, 2026, against the Chicago White Sox.

Spring keeps springing along, and the Rangers have a spring-y lineup today for their game at the White Sox. This is especially true since Josh Jung has been scratched due to hamstring soreness and Corey Seager is under the weather, with Skip Schumaker saying, per the beats, he may miss a few days.

MacKenzie Gore gets the start.

The lineup:

Carter — CF

Burger — 1B

Seager — SS

Smith — 2B

Helman — LF

Osuna — RF

Herrera — C

Perich — DH

Hanson — 3B

2:05 p.m. Central start time.

Today we look at the Cubs’ lefthanded reliever.

Riley Martin hasn’t yet pitched in a regular-season major league game, but this might be the year. The 6’1”, 215 pound Salem, Illinois native has been in the Cubs’ system for five years, rising slowly through the ranks with so-so results until 2025, when he posted a 6-2 record, a 2.69 ERA, two holds and four saves in 63 innings pitched over 47 games. He logged 80 strikeouts but he did issue 35 free passes. A 1.19 WHIP indicates his success, as well.

He was added to the 40-man roster in November 2025.

Martin throws a fastball that sits around 94 miles per hour, a sinker at 92, a slider around 88, and a curve and change that sit around 85. He didn’t throw the sinker in 2025, preferring his four-seam and curve, with the slider a distant third in terms of use. Fangraphs likes his FB, slider, and curve — the FB is 50/50, the slider 55/55, and the curve a nice 70/70. They do give him 20/20 for command — he throws hard, you know.

He was pick No. 22 in the sixth round in 2021, out of Quincy University.

Martin is 27 (turns 28 in a few weeks), so he’s no spring chicken, but perhaps he’s figured things out. No doubt Josh could tell you more if you ask nicely. He’ll pitch in Spring Training so we’ll all be able to see, and that data will be added to last spring’s numbers. It would be far-fetched, I think, to expect him to break camp on Opening Day, but seeing him in Wrigley is very possible — most projection systems like him to taste the coffee this year.

This series will resume on Monday.

A few Rays pitchers have debuted new pitch shapes this spring — and they all have one thing in common: they’re offspeed pitches. That’s not a coincidence.

The Rays are quietly building a pitching optimization template: preserve the fastball traits, kill lift on the offspeed, widen the vertical angle of approach (VAA) gap, and let hitters make bad swing decisions. A wider VAA gap between fastball and offspeed correlates with higher chase rates. Add meaningful velocity separation, and you get more in-zone whiffs.

There are two ways to increase VAA separation: change vertical movement on the fasball or the offspeed, or change location. Lowering the “induced vertical break” (IVB, or how much the pitch rises due to backspin) on the offspeed pitch is usually the easier lever, and doing so naturally drives the pitch lower in the zone. Shape and location aren’t independent variables.

We have limited video in Spring Training, so we won’t be able to analyze all the grip changes at the moment, and the Hawkeye data can wobble in small samples, so exact numbers matter less than trends. But pitch-shape trends stabilize relatively quickly. What we’re seeing looks intentional.

Joe Boyle

There’s been some excitement surrounding Boyle bringing back his old breaking ball shape, but maybe the more interesting thing to follow will be his splitter. It was a new pitch for him in 2025, but you wouldn’t know it based on the results. Boyle threw his offspeed offering over 15% of the time to each side of the plate. It was a fine taste-breaker to RHB (.282 wOBA against, 26.9% whiff rate), but it really shined against LHB (.080 wOBA against, 34.3% whiff rate). He zoned it at a surprisingly average rate, but its location consistency graded well below average.

As Boyle develops more feel for the new pitch, his splitter’s ceiling rises. The shape has already taken a leap forward as he’s now killing some more vertical movement on the pitch (nearly 3 IVB last season, now showing -2 IVB so far this spring) – leading to more optimal VAA separation from his fastball and likely more consistent locations down in and below the zone. The wider IVB gap should push what was average VAA separation into plus territory.

Assuming this new shape holds, improved chase rates will follow. Boyle has the highest ceiling of any Rays pitcher not named Shane McClanahan or Brody Hopkins. His command and control gains coupled with his refined arsenal could make him a front-of-the-rotation starter.

Yoendrys Gomez, Jesse Scholtens, and Ian Seymour

YoGo is also the beneficiary of improved IVB separation between his fastball and offspeed pitch. The vertical movement on the pitch has gone from nearly 7 inches to approximately 2. Again, exact numbers are less important than the trends here given the sample size.

Another former White Sox pitcher, Scholtens joined the Rays late last season and has since held on to a 40-man spot despite the significant turnover this offseason.

Scholtens didn’t pitch in 2024 due to TJS and didn’t pitch a ton in 2025 as he was just coming back. However, his offspeed pitch is noticeably different in Spring Training right now — he has gone from roughly 3 inches of vert on the pitch to it flirting with negative IVB (meaning that it drops more than can be attributed to the force of gravity), and also running over 12 inches armside (up from 4).

Seymour had average VAA separation between his fastball and changeup last season with above average velocity separation. So far this spring, his changeup is coming in with about 5.5 IVB – down from roughly 9 last season – so we can expect even better results from what’s already a plus pitch.

Jake Woodford

I’ve already written about how weird Woodford’s changeup is. There aren’t many other offspeed pitches that we can compare it to, and one of the best things a pitcher can be is unique.

But that didn’t stop the Rays from helping Woodford tinker with his changeup; he’s leaning into his strengths and making it an even weirder pitch by cutting off even more horizontal break. The graphs of offspeed (changeups and splitters) below show just how extreme that shape is. The red circle is his shape sat last season when it was already an outlier, and the green circle is an approximate range of where it’s sitting now in Spring Training:

That’s an outlier, but for good measure, this is how it compares to offspeed pitches from a similar arm angle bucket:

The single dot near his new pitch location is Logan Gilbert, who still throws from a significantly higher slot than does Woodford.

Good luck programming that into Trajekt.

Take-Aways

The Rays used to identify outlier offspeed pitches, but now they’re manufacturing them. Trading for Jeffrey Springs, Zack Littell, Edwin Uceta, and Ryan Pepiot was largely about identifying pitchers with desireable offspeed pitches and then optimizing that usage. But this spring we’re seeing something different: the shapes on offspeed pitches are changing throughout the organization, not just the usage rates.

This mirrors something that’s been going on throughout baseball. As Lance Brozdowski has pointed out, changeups across the league are getting better, or at least more optimized for vertical separation from the fastball.

This is because, over the past few years, teams have gotten a lot smarter about how pitch grip and seam orientation affect the release characteristics and the path of the ball in flight, and have become adept at using their pitching labs to help pitches make small adjustments for meaningful results. The Yankees have gotten a lot of attention for their work with seam orientation throughout their org, most saliently with Luke Weaver.

But the initial Spring Training numbers make clear that similar work with on offspeed shape optimization is happening in Tampa Bay as well.

Alex Carrillo has had a rather arduous road in his professional career, one that eventually resulted in his major league debut in 2025.

Carrillo, now 28 years of age, originally signed as an undrafted free agent with the Texas Rangers out of Faulker University, an NAIA school in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2019. He lost his 2020 season to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was promptly released by the Rangers after appearing in only three games in their organization, all in the Arizona Rookie League.

He got back on the mound in 2021 in independent ball, signing with the New York Boulders of the Frontier League. He did not perform all that well, earning a 7.11 ERA in 19 innings. He moved onto the Mexican League for the 2022 and 2023 seasons, playing both for the Tigres de Quintana Roo, earning a 8.49 ERA in 29.2 innings, and 8.06 ERA in 22.1 innings, respectively.

2024 saw him move back to the Frontier League, this time with the Washington Wild Things, where he had his best season by a mile. He had a 3.31 ERA, striking out 49 batters in 35.1 innings, which earned him his opportunity with the Mets.

Signed prior to the 2025 season, Carrillo was a mainstay in the Double-A Binghamton and Triple-A Syracuse bullpens before eventually getting a call to the Majors in June. While he was far from incredible for the Mets, giving up seven runs (four homers) in 4.2 innings pitched, even making it from where he started is impressive in and of itself.

Carrillo is bullpen depth, which is something you can never have too much of. While the performances were never really there for Carrillo, save for his 2024 showing for the Wild Things and solid showings in both Double and Triple-A (his Triple-A ERA was actually above average, earning an ERA- of 84, because the offensive environment is absurd there), he continues to get chances due to a hard fastball and an ability to generate whiffs. He can touch triple digits, which will get whiffs at any level, and his 35% and above strikeout rate at both stops last season is a testament to that.

While, at the end of the day, it is not a likely scenario that sees Carrillo end up as a high-leverage reliever, stranger things have happened on the pitching side of the game — Reed Garrett is a good example of how a cutting edge pitching apparatus can take a guy from having 6.00 ERA’s in the Major Leagues to being an important reliever with a few changes. It is hard to predict pitchers, and who will break out, and what organizations have cooking behind the scenes with these arms (and if whatever they have cooking can stick), but a pitcher who throws hard and generate whiffs is going to get some chances, and at the very least be a valuable reliever in Triple-A while providing short-term cover for the big league team.

While spending my summer in Pittsburgh last year (having never lived there before), I realized just how important the Pittsburgh Pirates are to the city and its fanbase. The organization, alongside the other major teams in the Steel City, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pittsburgh Penguins, is the lifeblood of one of the nation’s most blue-collar cities.

However, despite the team being essential to the everyday lives of those who wander the streets and suburbs of Pittsburgh, the Pirates did not deliver good baseball for much of the season. For the fifth time in the last seven years, they finished dead-last in the NL Central. Though they were able to play some meaningful series at the end of the season, it was merely because the opposing teams were in a playoff hunt, not what Pirates fans want to see at all from their favorite team.

Pittsburgh Pirates

2025 record: 71-91 (5th, NL Central)
2026 FanGraphs projection: 82-80 (2nd, NL Central)

Last season was simply a fiasco for on and off-field reasons. Pirates fans who attended games at the beautiful PNC Park chanted for Bob Nutting to sell the team over and over again throughout the season, even just seven games into the season, when a plane flew overhead that suggested he do so. There were other series, like their embarrassing weekend against an also-abysmal White Sox club, where fans were vocal. Manager Derek Shelton was fired after an abysmal 12-26 start and replaced by Don Kelly, who saw some improvement in the team’s record by year’s end (59-65) but still struggled during stretches to turn things around.

Despite all of these negatives, there are, of course, a couple of positives to come out of this offseason and what could bring fans back to PNC Park.

First, the most obvious one: Paul Skenes.

Last year, Skenes was fantastic. In his second season in MLB, he started 32 games, pitched 187.2 innings, and finished with a 1.97 ERA. It was the first sub-2.00 ERA season since Justin Verlander with the Houston Astros in 2022. He recorded 216 total strikeouts — his first 200+ strikeout season and good enough to overtake Mitch Keller as the Pirates franchise record holder for single-season strikeout total —and, biggest of all, won the National League Cy Young Award. His 217 ERA+ was the best in all of MLB, and his 6.5 fWAR was the highest in the NL and only 0.1 behind Detroit Tigers ace (and American League Cy Young Award winner), Tarik Skubal. Skenes was the Bucs’ first Cy Young Award winner in 36 years, dating back to erstwhile Yankees up-and-comer Doug Drabek.

The next is a player whose name has been near or at the top of every major scouting list (and is showing why in spring training): Konnor Griffin.

Last season at the age of 19, Griffin shot through the Pirates’ minor league system, making it all the way up to the Altoona Curve in Double-A after starting at the Single-A level. He played only 21 games, but in 83 at-bats, he slashed .337/.418/.542 for an OPS of .961, after batting at least .325 with an OPS of .930 in A-ball. At 6-foot-4, 222 pounds, the Pirates’ ninth overall selection in the 2024 draft is lighting up spring training now and could be in contention for the major league roster, as the part of his game many say is the most impressive (outside of his physical capabilities) is his mature approach at the plate and in the field.

Bubba Chandler’s another young player looking to make his impact on the major league roster for the Pirates. After finishing with a record of 4-1, an ERA of 4.02, a 3.20 xFIP, and an fWAR total of 0.9 in 31.1 innings pitched, the 23-year-old is continuing to try to build a resume that can keep him around PNC Park.

Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that the Pirates, while they do have these young, up-and-coming names blasting through their minor league system, have actually spent money this offseason on known MLB commodities. Despite not landing Kyle Schwarber, the Pirates traded for two-time All-Star second baseman Brandon Lowe, came to terms with DH Marcell Ozuna (who’s hit 100 homers across the last three seasons), signed lefty reliever Gregory Soto, outfielder Jake Mangum, and lefty reliever Mason Montgomery, and inked 2025 All-Star first baseman/DH Ryan O’Hearn to a two-year, $29 million deal.*

*This is somehow the biggest free agent contract for a position player in Pirates history.

Will they be good next season? Despite FanGraphs’ somewhat-rosy 82-win, second-place projection, probably not. In particular, it’s hard to envision them finishing with a better record than the ever-innovative Brewers. Aside from the Andrew McCutchen-led mini-renaissance from 2013-15, the Pirates have almost exclusively floundered since the early ’90s, and more struggles would unfortunately be nothing new in the Steel City. But with Kelly at the helm, general manager Ben Cherington finally spending a little bit of money, and the continuing improvement of the young players in the rotation and around the roster, there’s potential for the Pirates to start making some noise in the NL Central.

More Pinstripe Alley MLB team season previews can be found here.

With this, the final name has been registered and we have a list.

Ramon Marquez – 136
Zach McCambley – 45
Griffin Burkholder – 16
Keaton Anthony – 13
Alex McFarlane – 10
Seth Johnson – 8
Mavis Graves – 1

Kind of fitting that Marquez finishes off this list. A 19 year old kid that has a tough changeup and the makings of a decent fastball, he’s one of those arms that can be dreamt on whenever he is able to arrive. The Phillies might see their system take off a bit in the eyes of national people if players like Marquez can take a step forward this year. It looks like he has the basis to do so.

2025 stats (with complex league and Clearwater)

14 G (12 GS), 55 IP, 30.3 K%, 7.1 BB%, 0.65 HR/9, 4.42 ERA (3.36 FIP)

Fangraphs scouting report

Marquez throws hard for his age, albeit with downhill plane and movement that makes it vulnerable to contact. His best pitch, and maybe the best individual pitch in the system, is a Bugs Bunny changeup that generated an elite miss rate (just over 60%!) last season. It has an absurd amount of sinking and tailing action, and is absolutely the kind of pitch that could spearhead a relief profile on its own. Marquez also has a fringy slider that sometimes has a cutter look and velo, and he might be suited to have an explicit cutter rather than the hybrid look of his current breaker.

And there you have it. You have spoken, we have listened and these are the top twenty prospects in the Phillies’ system according to The Good Phight community.