Category: Sports News

The Super Bowl is over. It’s almost time for baseball.

Pitchers and Catchers report this week in Arizona.

Jim Rosenhaus is interviewing the Guardians’ director of International Scouting.

It’s almost time to see who is in the best shape of their life *TM*.

Tom Pohlad wants you to believe the Twins will be able to contend in this division despite not giving the front office the resources to do so. They have a lot of talent and untapped potential, and maybe a new coaching staff can do a better job of helping them reach their ceiling, but they’re also running a payroll below Metrodome levels when adjusting for inflation and league spending.

FanGraphs projects the Twins to go roughly 80-82 with a 16% chance to win the division and 32% chance to make the playoffs. That feels optimistic relative to how 2025 finished, but it’s important to remember that the Twins were missing Pablo Lopez, Byron Buxton, Bailey Ober, Zebby Matthews, David Festa, and Ryan Jeffers for most of that stretch.

The Twins also still managed to take regular leads into the late innings and lost them thanks to Justin Topa and Cole Sands getting overworked and overtaxed. They were the third-worst bullpen in baseball by WPA after the trade deadline, but will naturally see that improved due to sheer bullpen luck and some combination of Connor Prielipp, David Festa, Marco Raya, Mick Abel, and Kendry Rojas giving a boost in pure stuff, if nothing else.

Their main competition will be the Tigers, led by back-to-back Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal and new acquisition Framber Valdez. The Royals made some additions on the margins but are currently slated to start a 22-year-old rookie catcher at DH. The Guardians, meanwhile, are always a threat due to the black magic and satanic sacrifices they make to start each season. Their most recent sacrifice to the baseball devil was three-time All-Star closer Emmanuel Clase, who reportedly fixed pitches in 48 (!!) separate games in the past two seasons.

That being said, the Twins’ starting pitching is probably the single best position group in the division. The Tigers are giving them a run for their money, but there are still a lot of question marks and health uncertainty behind their two stars. Minnesota’s rotation goes legitimately 12-deep with MLB-caliber starters. Even if several move to the bullpen, they have the prospects to withstand a slew of injuries at any point in the season.

They’ll need better health luck from players who haven’t had it in the past (Lewis, Keaschall, Wallner) and major steps forward from some young hitters (Lee, Roden, top prospects Jenkins and Rodriguez), but that was essentially the formula that allowed the Tigers to compete last year and the Royals to do so in 2024. The Twins are flawed, but they’re also in unquestionably the worst division in MLB.

Do you believe Tom Pohlad that the Twins can compete right now? Does their have to be a major trade to do so, or would a few marginal upgrades in the bullpen be enough with internal development?

The NFL season was concluded last night with the Seattle Seahawks defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX in a relative beatdown, as Seattle’s defense throttled Drake Maye’s offensive line and put him on the ground multiple times forcing some ugly turnovers late in the game. A couple of garbage-time drives made the score a little more respectable, but the Seahawks were in control pretty much the whole way through.

In the old format of Today on PSA, we often included a secondary question on NFL events during the long offseason, checking in after each round of the playoffs to see who were the favorites and what you all thought of particularly flashy games. But with football officially giving way to the start of baseball season, I figured it was a good time for a more lighthearted opener to the day and give a nod to the NFL one last time until the World Series passes the baton back to them and discuss the league through a Yankees-centric lens. So, with that in mind, what NFL team would this current Yankees team appear most similar to?

If we were talking long-term, there’s an argument to be made about those Patriots that just struck out in the title game. New England is seen as the Evil Empire of the NFL, the bad guys that lorded over an entire generation of the game, one of the winningest franchises in the sport, all things that lead to a similar background as the Yankees. On top of that, they underwent a changing of the guard with Tom Brady leaving the team and missed out on the playoffs for a few years, before finding their new captain in Maye and making a surprising charge to the Bowl. It wouldn’t be a far stretch to compare that to what the Yankees did in passing the torch from the Core Four days to the Aaron Judge-led Baby Bombers with the 2013-16 teams trudging through the valley before their 2017 team nearly upset the favored Astros.

If we’re keeping that mindset, the San Francisco 49ers may fit the bill even better. The 49ers boast a legacy of winning from decades past with Joe Montana and Steve Young, and their modern era of teams have been highly competitive but not good enough to win it all. Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy aren’t quite as flashy a name as Judge is, but their rosters have been star-studded and picked to go deep often, just to come up short to those pesky Chiefs much like the Dodgers stood in the way of the Yankees in 2024. A rival in their division overtook them in the most recent season — for the 49ers, the Seahawks, for the Yankees the Blue Jays — and went to the title game right after demolishing them in the playoffs. That’s pretty uncanny.

If you wanted to look purely at the short-term though, perhaps a team like the Bengals fits their mold best. They have a dynamic superstar in Joe Burrow who led Cincinnati to one Super Bowl appearance, just to lose and then lose out on future opportunities due to injury. Injuries have cost these Yankees significantly over the years, with staff ace Gerrit Cole sitting out last year when he could have tilted the scales back against the Jays, and the 2023 season ended up being lost in no small part to the Yankees missing Judge for the summer thanks to one unpadded section of Dodger Stadium’s walls. On top of that, the Bengals’ head coach Zac Taylor faces an enormous amount of scrutiny for his decision-making, and there’s no denying that Aaron Boone has had his head-scratchers over the years. It’s an element that’s missing in our previous two contenders at the very least, as both Mike Vrabel and Kyle Shanahan respectively are considered two of the best coaches in the league.

Would you say these Yankees mirror the post-dynasty Pats, the legacy-haunted 49ers, or the injury-plagued Bengals? Perhaps a different team completely?

Today on the site, we start off with Estevão considering the fit Anthony Banda could have in the bullpen after he was put on waivers by the Dodgers. Andrew then gives Clete Boyer some shine on his birthday praising his elite defense at the hot corner for the early 1960s Yankees, Andrés previews Jazz Chisholm Jr. ahead of his walk year, and Matt goes back to the signing of fan favorite Masahiro Tanaka as our free agent series’ next feature.

We are officially done with the 2025 NFL season, and congratulations to the Seattle Seahawks for winning Super Bowl LX.

Now, we are into another new era of Arizona Cardinals football, and hopefully we will be talking about the Cardinals in a similar situation as the Seahawks in a couple of years.

It’ll start with free agency in 2026, and we first need to decide who the Arizona Cardinals need to bring back or who they can watch move on.

Let’s take a look.

Cardinals pending free agents 2026

• Jonah Williams
• Jalen Thompson
• Calais Campbell
• Kelvin Beachum
• Greg Dortch
• L.J. Collier
• Zay Jones
• Will Hernandez
• Blake Gillikin
• Aaron Brewer
• Pharaoh Brown
• Matt Haack
• Simi Fehoko
• Josiah Deguara
• Michael Carter
• Darren Hall
• Channing Tindall
• J.J. Russell
• Travis Vokolek
• Zonovan Knight
• Chad Ryland
• Joshua Karty
• P.J. Mustipher
• Starling Thomas V
• Emari Demercado

There are some names on this list that it feels like should be priorities to be brought back, but I am interested to see what Arizona Cardinals fans think and who they would view as priorities.

You can't tell the baseball players without a program ... and you can't find spring training camps without a map.

Of course, you probably could do both just fine on your own, but why make things difficult?

The 30 Major League Baseball teams' spring headquarters are split evenly between Florida and Arizona. The 15 clubs in the Grapefruit League are more spread out than those in the Cactus League, making trips between the different parks a bit longer drive, on average.

Still, baseball fans who want to hit the road and watch their favorite teams at spring training have any number of options.

Florida spring training map, Grapefruit League sites

• Atlanta Braves – North Port
• Baltimore Orioles – Sarasota
• Boston Red Sox – Fort Myers
• Detroit Tigers – Lakeland
• Houston Astros – West Palm Beach
• Miami Marlins – Jupiter
• Minnesota Twins – Fort Myers
• New York Mets – Port St. Lucie
• New York Yankees – Tampa
• Philadelphia Phillies – Clearwater
• Pittsburgh Pirates – Bradenton
• St. Louis Cardinals – Jupiter
• Tampa Bay Rays – Port Charlotte
• Toronto Blue Jays – Dunedin
• Washington Nationals – West Palm Beach

2026 REPORT DATES:When pitchers, catchers and full squads are due in camp

Arizona spring training map, Cactus League sites

• Arizona Diamondbacks – Scottsdale
• Athletics – Mesa
• Chicago Cubs – Mesa
• Chicago White Sox – Glendale
• Cincinnati Reds – Goodyear
• Cleveland Guardians – Goodyear
• Colorado Rockies – Scottsdale
• Kansas City Royals – Surprise
• Los Angeles Angels – Tempe
• Los Angeles Dodgers – Glendale
• Milwaukee Brewers – Phoenix
• San Diego Padres – Peoria
• San Francisco Giants – Scottsdale
• Seattle Mariners – Peoria
• Texas Rangers – Surprise