Category: Baseball

The Mets continued their excellent play after trading away a bevy of players, beating the Padres 4-2. The Mets are now 11-4 since August 4th, and despite the season being more or less over, it is great to see the Mets’ young core and resurgent bullpen keep racking up the dubs.

Robert Stock started for the Mets today, and threw a ton of pitches in his first two innings, leading to three walks and a hit batsman. However, good defense and some luck saw Stock escape both innings, as well as have relatively quick third and fourth innings.

Michael King was equally as effective early on, not allowing a baserunner over the first three innings. Both teams looked fairly standard for days games after night games, a little more lethargic than you’d like. However, both teams woke up after slow starts.

A.J. Ewing collected the first hit of the day in the top of the fourth, lining single up the middle, just out of the reach of King. Francisco Lindor was up next, and he nubbed a ball that he thought might’ve been foul, but was picked up by Luis Campusano and turned into a 2-6-3 double play. Bo Bichette walked, putting one on with two outs for Carson Benge. Benge worked the count full before muscling an opposite-field home run just to the right of the left field foul pole to put the Mets up 2-0.

In the top of the fifth, Xander Bogaerts led off with a ball drilled off the wall in left field. Bogaerts slowed a bit while rounding first, but Brett Baty triple-clutched in the outfield, and so the throw to second base was just late enough to allow Bogaerts to slide in safely. With one out, last night’s culprit Fernando Tatis Jr. doubled over the head of Ewing with an RBI double.

That would do it for Stock, who was pulled for Jonathan Pintaro. After walking Jake Cronenworth, Pintaro induced a ground ball off the bat of Manny Machado, leading to a 5-4-3 double play and got through the inning While it would’ve been nice to see Stock be able to get through five, having thrown 40+ pitches in his first two innings, it’s impressive that he was able to make it into the fifth, capping out at 83 pitches total.

After his offense going down quietly in the bottom of the fifth, Pintaro was back out for the top of the sixth. But after allowing a leadoff double to Ty France, Pintaro was pulled in favor of southpaw Nate Lavender. Lavender looked great, striking out the first two batters to face him and inducing a slow ground ball for the third out.

King continued to look strong aside from that rough fourth inning. Over his first six innings, he allowed just three hits and one walk against four strikeouts.

The newly returned Austin Warren, on the Injured List since early July, was next up for the Mets. Like Lavender before him, Warren looked great, striking out two and showing no rust from six weeks on the shelf.

King came back out for the seventh and allowed a couple of baserunners on an infield hit and a fielder’s choice. Luis Robert Jr. then pinch hit for Cristian Pache, who came in for defense in the sixth for Baty. Robert drew a walk, which would lead to King’s departure from the game with two on and two out after 100 pitches. King was not pleased leaving the game, seen visibly saying “no way” as Craig Stammen reached for the ball.

Jeremiah Estrada was first out of the ‘pen for the Dads. Marcus Semien lined a single to right field, and Francisco Alvarez tried to score from second base. He slid in behind the throw, but the tag was initially missed, and Alvarez thought that he got his hand in, slapping the bottom of the plate. He was called out, and the replay was inconclusive enough to not overturn the call.

Daniel Duarte continued the new-look bullpen’s dominance, throwing a perfect top of the eighth inning, striking out two.

In the bottom of the inning, the Mets gave themselves some cushion. Ewing collected a one-hit walk, and promptly stole second. Lindor singled, putting men on the corners with one out. Bichette then hit what might’ve been an inning-ending double play, but saw the ball thrown away by Sung-Mun Song, who took over at shortstop after Bogaerts exited with a suspected hamstring injury, allowing Ewing to score and allowing the runners to advance to second and third. After a fielder’s choice got Lindor out at the plate, Jared Young singled home Bichette to extend the lead to 4-1.

Kodai Senga entered to look for his fourth save as the Mets’ interim closer. Senga did not look as sharp as he had in his prior three starts, allowing three-straight one-out baserunners, leading in a run scoring off the bat of pinch hitter Gavin Sheets. Austin Hays was next up for the Padres, and he grounded into a game-ending 4-4-3 double play, taking the series.

One final note: Luis Torrens is a tough dude. He fouled a ball off of his knee in the third that looked like it might take him out of the game. It didn’t. In the seventh, before his at-bat began, during his warm ups Bogaerts nailed Torrens in the face with his bat, knocking his mask off. He stayed in the game.

The Mets are off tomorrow before traveling to the Windy City for three with the White Sox.

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Win Probability Added

What’s WPA?

Big winner: Carson Benge, +23.0%WPA

Big loser: Francisco Lindor, -9.0% WPA

Total pitcher WPA: +2.0% WPA

Total batter WPA: +48.0% WPA

Teh aw3s0mest play: Carson Benge’s two-run dinger, + 24.3% WPA

Teh sux0rest play: Fernando Tatis’s RBI double in the fifth, -12.2% WPA

Two days into one of the strangest absences of the season, someone in Ketel Marte's camp finally spoke up.

His agent, Charisse Espinosa-Dash, told MLB Network's Jon Morosi on Wednesday, Aug.19 that the Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman is dealing with a personal matter and will have an MRI on his knee on Thursday, Aug. 20. She said Marte appreciates the "unwavering support" he's gotten from fans, teammates, the organization and manager Torey Lovullo, and wants to get back on the field.

It was the first public word from Marte's side since he didn't show up at Fenway Park on Monday, Aug. 17 and was placed on the restricted list. It also didn't explain much. A knee injury and a personal matter comingled with no indication of what they have to do with each other. It also did not address Monday's absence.

It cleared up very little about Marte's status and potential return to the team.

Skenes v. Jobe? Holy mackerel, what a matchup!

Well, indeed, on paper it looked to be a game in which the starters would go deep and we’d all be treated to a classic pitching battle. Instead, neither starter stuck around particularly long, the bullpens took over, and in the bottom of the ninth the Tigers gave the game away in a most dramatic fashion, losing 4-3 and dropping the series.

As mentioned, Jackson Jobe got the start for the Tigers. His first outing this year was fantastic: five innings with one hit. His first outing, not so much: he didn’t make it out of the fourth and he coughed-up six runs. Now, remember, recovery from Tommy John surgery means that your control will be a little wonky for a while, so I feel like any great outings the Tigers get out of Jobe this year are a bonus.

Facing the Tigers today was some scrub kid, Paul Skenes. He’s having a lousy year, by his standards: an ERA of almost 4, a WHIP above 1.1, and he’s walking almost 7% of all the hitters he’s faced. What a hoser! All jokes aside, he’s one of the premier pitchers in the sport — but since the middle of May he has struggled to go deep into games, often topping-out at five or six innings, while he previous triple digit velocity is rarely in evidence.

Skenes walked the first two batters to start the game, and a ground ball to first didn’t result in a double play, leaving runners at the corners. Alas, Dillon Dingler struck out and Brett Callahan popped up to the shortstop and that was that.

Pittsburgh got on the board in the bottom of the first: with one out Brandon Lowe walked, and an infield single pushed him up to second. An Oneil Cruz single cashed-in Lowe and it was a 1-0 game at that point.

Hao-Yu Lee (see notes below) led off the third with a single poked down the right-field line, and he aggressively and smartly took third on a Colt Keith single to left. After Gleyber Torres struck out, Kevin McGonigle lofted a fly ball to left field which was deep enough to score Lee and even the score. Dingler followed with a sizzling line-drive to left at 106 mph… and Brian Reynolds made a nice catch on it. Guy can’t catch a break these days.

The Tigers retook the lead in the fifth: Max Clark led off with a double, and Lee followed with a walk. After Keith struck out, Torres lofted a little fly ball to centre that dropped in, scoring Clark and moving Lee up to third. That was the end of Skenes’ day — as has been his custom in the past couple of months — and Old Friend™ Gregory Soto was brought in for a lefty-lefty matchup. On the first pitch McGonigle split the right-centrefield gap for a double; Lee scored, but Torres was cut down at the plate on a great relay for the second out.

Alas, Dingler then flew out to centre to end the inning.

Meanwhile, Jobe was having a decent start, if a little shaky with his control: through five innings he’d walked three batters and hit another. (Plunking, then later walking, the ninth-place hitter in a lineup isn’t exactly what you want to do, but sometimes it happens.) As mentioned above, control takes a while to reacquire after Tommy John surgery, but he made adjustments along the way, including going to his sinker more.

He ended his day after striking out Esmerlyn Valdez on a 99-mph four-seam fastball to end a nine-pitch battle leading off the bottom of the sixth, and his final line was 5 1/3 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 3 K, 53 strikes out of 86 pitches. Tyler Holton was brought in to face Cruz and struck him out on three pitches; he gave up an infield single, but then struck out pinch-hitter Nick “No Relation to Thom” Yorke to end the inning.

Jacob Waugespack, who’s been having a fairly good go of it lately, hung a cutter to pinch-hitter Rafael Flores Jr. with one out and he did not miss, clubbing a long home run to left field to narrow the gap to 3-2. After a lineout to centre, Drew Sommers came in to face Lowe and he struck out on a slider after a couple of pretty wild outside pitches.

Kyle Finnegan took over to start the eighth inning, and it’s been a rough ride for him lately: coming into today’s game his last eleven appearances, spanning 8 2/3 innings, he’d given up nine runs and allowed four home runs. Things started off decently well, with a lineout to left and a strikeout, but then Cruz and Nick Gonzales walked. I gulped in anticipation of what might come next, but then Yorke flew out harmlessly to left field. Had it all along, folks! Had it all along.

The Tigers looked to add some insurance in the top of the ninth off triple-digit lefty closer Mason Montgomery: Zach McKinstry led off with a single, and Clark pushed him up to second with a single of his own, taking 99 mph the opposite way in a nice piece of hitting. With two outs the Pirates’ catcher tried to back-pick to first to nab Clark but the throw went into right field, pushing the runners up a base. Alas, pinch-hitter Eduardo Valencia grounded out for the third out and it was on to the bottom of the ninth, and it did not go well.

Kenley Jansen, who had not given up a home run since the end of June, served one up to Flores, who hit it a long way with one out to tie the score at 3-3, Flores’ second home run of the game. Then, with two out, of course, Lowe hit his 27th of the year off the right-field foul pole for the 4-3 win.

Le sigh.

You know, I’m starting to think that this bullpen isn’t very good.

Observances and Notes

• On Monday night, Hao-Yu Lee broke Yu Chang’s record for hits in a season by a Taiwanese-born player. Congrats!
• Foolish Bailey did a great piece on the Tigers’ troubles this year when it comes to bullpen usage by AJ Hinch. All those Hinch-Haters out there, here’s some more fuel for your ever-burning fires — like you needed it!
• The orbit of a star close to the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way might show how that black hole is spinning. Neat!
• On this day in 1989, the Pan-European Picnic was held on the Austria-Hungary border, as a peace demonstration. During the proceedings, if people crossed from Hungary (then still Communist and under Soviet influence) into Austria, border guards were told to let them freely pass. It was partially a test to see what the Soviets’ response would be to a more open border, and since Moscow didn’t jump all over it, that emboldened leaders across all the Warsaw Pact nations to open things up even more — and the fall of the Berlin Wall a few months later was clearly the climax of those events.

Mets prospect Ryan Clifford has been added to the development list as he deals with a rough stretch at the plate at Triple-A Syracuse.

In his last 18 games, the first baseman/outfielder has just five hits in 67 at-bats (.075) with 35 strikeouts to nine walks and a .299 OPS. Since coming back from a few days on the IL at the start of the month, Clifford is 0-for-22 with 14 strikeouts and two walks, including striking out all five times in his last game on Sunday.

The development list was introduced in 2021 to help clubs monitor their prospects' usage and development, and allow the player the opportunity to stay with the minor league club while not being on the squad's roster. 

This year, he has 31 extra-base hits (16 home runs) with 51 RBI and a .175/.267/.344 slash line for a .611 OPS in 431 plate appearances over 104 games. The biggest issue for the 22-year-old is strikeouts. He's gone down on strikes 175 times, representing 40.6 percent of his times up.

He struck out 148 times in 139 games during the 2025 campaign across 105 games at Double-A Binghamton and 34 at Triple-A, where he only struck out 35 times with 22 walks. At Binghamton, he smacked 24 home runs with 75 RBI while batting .243 with a .848 OPS, which earned him that promotion last August.

Clifford is just a few weeks removed from playing in the MLB Futures Game around the MLB All-Star break. At the time, he said he was looking to work on his consistency at the plate as he had plenty of pop – 16 long balls and 47 batted in 86 games – but was batting .196 with a .678 OPS and 129 strikeouts.

“I think the first half was kind of up and down, so I’m looking to, after the break, just maintain some consistency and stay out on the field and be healthy,” Clifford said at the Futures Game. “Look to cut down on strikeouts and keep the power up.”

Clifford was ranked No. 14 in SNY's midseason ranking of the Mets' Top 30 prospects. 

You can watch Syracuse, who will have No. 2 prospect left-hander Jonathan Santucci on the hill, take on the Worcester Red Sox Wednesday at 6:35 p.m. on SNY. 

Not been a good couple of days for the D-backs. While I’m sure MarteGate (2026 edition) hasn’t helped, the pitching staff allowing twenty runs in two games probably is the main issue. Still, a win today would mean a 3-3 road trip. And, I remind you, the majority of you (57%, to be exact) said that would be an acceptable result for these games in Atlanta and Boston. With Brandon Pfaadt on the mound for the Diamondbacks, got to feel hopeful about us allowing fewer runs than on Monday and Tuesday. Be nice to get the W, fly back to Arizona, and enjoy the off-day tomorrow.

Also want to tidy up something from a few days ago. You may remember, in the opener against the Braves, the D-backs went 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position – but still won the game, 2-0. There was some wondering as to where about that performance stood in the pantheon of Diamondbacks victories, but there was no easy way to look it up. However, we have samath, the master of “no easy ways”, who duly scraped franchise history to find out. Over to you, samath:

The 0-for-14 in a regulation win is indeed a Diamondbacks record. Only one game comes close: On May 9th, 2013 against the Phillies, they went 0-for-12 with RISP in a 2-1 win. They’ve gone 0-for-9 six times, most recently in a 3-1 win over the Padres on July 17, 2022. MLB-wide, it’s also the highest for 2026. Second place is the Guardians going 0-for-12 in a 4-2 win over the Brewers on June 18. The last game to beat that opener in Atlanta was the Mariners’ 2-0 victory over the Astros on August 18, 2023, within which they went 0-for-17 with RISP.

Here are the top five MLB failures with RISP in team victories which samath found, since the D-backs entered the league in 1998.

1. 2023-08-18 – Seattle Mariners over Houston Astros: 2-0, 0-for-17
2. 2006-09-15 – Oakland Athletics over Chicago White Sox, 4-2, 0-for-16
3. 1999-05-29 – Los Angeles Dodgers over Atlanta Braves, 2-1, 0-for-15
4. 2026-08-14 – Arizona Diamondbacks over Atlanta Braves, 2-0, 0-for-14
5. 2017-04-22 – St. Louis Cardinals over Milwaukee Brewers, 4-1, 0-for-14

TV: NESN

First Pitch: 4:10 p.m. ET

Payton Tolle is the perfect man for Boston to send to the mound as the Red Sox play for a sweep of the Diamondbacks. Coming off of three consecutive series losses, the lefty takes the mound as the hot hand of the rotation, most recently tossing a gem with eight scoreless innings in Toronto.  

Here’s who the Red Sox will send to the plate behind him Wednesday afternoon at Fenway Park. 

The Diamondbacks counter with Brandon Pfaadt, who’s fared well this season with a 3.12 ERA in 22 total appearances. 

It has been a brutal month of August for the Washington Nationals on multiple fronts. They lost key players to trades, James Wood got hurt and the losses have been piling up. However, Dylan Crews’ miserable play of late is another factor in the Nats struggles. When the team needed him most, Crews has been woefully ineffective.

After losing James Wood, Luis Garcia Jr. and Curtis Mead, the Nats needed guys to step up in order to pick up the slack. Abimelec Ortiz has done his part, bursting onto the scene. Brady House has not been perfect, but his .258 average and .704 OPS is acceptable. 

However, Crews has not held up his end of the bargain. The Nats were clearly relying on him to do that and you can see that in where they put him in the lineup. Against lefties, Crews has been leading off and even against righties, he often hits third. Despite that faith, Crews is just 8 for 57 in August.

It is yet another disappointing chapter in a wildly frustrating Nationals career for the former second overall pick. One thing that makes it even worse is the fact that Crews was coming off one of the best months of his career. In July he posted an .801 OPS and walked 14 times. It sure seems like that plate discipline was a mirage because outside of August he has just 7 walks all season.

The biggest problem for Dylan Crews this season is the combination of chasing and whiffing. In 2026, Crews has a 32.8% chase rate and 30.6% whiff rate. Both of those numbers are well below average. It leads to him having to fight an uphill battle.

Coming into the season, one of the biggest issues Crews had was his ground ball heavy profile. This season, he has actually gotten a lot better at elevating the ball, cutting his GB% from 50.2% to 38.5%. Unfortunately, a lot of these flyballs are to straightaway centerfield, making it harder to clear the fences. With all the athletic center fielders in the game, getting hits up the middle is now harder than ever.

He still has some issues with his batted ball profile, but I think the biggest problem is his swing decisions. Crews just throws away too many at bats, especially in big moments where he knows he has to do something. Against the Mets there was an at bat where he struck out on 7 pitches and not a single one of them was in the strike zone.

That at bat sums up the Dylan Crews experience for me. He has the talent to be a good player, but everything seems to be moving too fast for him at the plate. You can see that with how often he falls behind 0-2. Whenever you watch Crews, you see a hitter on the defensive.

With this season’s playoff hopes being gone, this should serve as an audition period for Crews. Unless he heats up significantly down the stretch, his spot on the team should not be secure. Right now, he is the fourth best outfielder on this team behind James Wood, Jacob Young and Daylen Lile. 

At the moment, he is closer to the likes of Andrew Pinckney and Sam Petersen than being the star fans thought they were getting. I still think there is a talented player in Crews, and he is a guy who could be a late bloomer. He has the exit velocities, athleticism and defense to be a good player. However, the bat leaves so much to be desired.

Is it possible that Crews becomes the next Jordan Walker type breakout star? I suppose, but it is certainly not something I would bet on. It is more likely that he is an athletic fourth outfielder who plays against left handed pitching. That can be a useful piece to a roster, but a massive disappointment given his pedigree.

Things can change quickly, but right now it just feels like things are over for Crews in DC. If you can get something worthwhile or even package him with other pieces to get a pitcher, it is something I would absolutely do. I have some hope for Dylan Crews, but I no longer have any real belief in him.

Following the 2024 season, the Astros were unwilling to meet Alex Bregman’s price tag. Instead, they settled for a more modest option, signing Christian Walker to a three-year, $60 million contract.

Bregman has slashed .264/.353/.433 while accumulating 7.5 bWAR since leaving Houston, while Walker has slashed .235/.302/.430 with 2.3 bWAR in two seasons with the Astros.

Last winter, the Astros again decided not to pay the market price for high-end starters like Dylan Cease or Framber Valdez. Instead, they gambled on Tatsuya Imai, signing him to a three-year, $54 million contract with two player options.

Cease has authored a Cy Young-caliber season in Toronto with a 2.42 ERA in 23 starts, while Valdez, despite posting just a 99 ERA+, has made every start in the Detroit Tigers’ rotation and completed at least six innings in 14 of 25 starts. Imai, meanwhile, has been banished to the back of the Astros’ bullpen after posting a 5.83 ERA in 15 starts. He failed to complete the first inning in three starts and the third inning in two others.

The Astros have had a clear philosophy in the 15 years Jim Crane has owned the team: They have not given a free agent contract or extension longer than five seasons.

It is a philosophy rooted in prudence. The team doesn’t want to be stuck paying high-end salaries to players in their late 30s. Rarely do those deals age well, but avoiding them altogether has kept the Astros from adding a class of player that can significantly raise a team’s ceiling.

The Astros have spent money in free agency despite this edict, but they’ve handed out shorter-term, lucrative contracts to players a tier or two below who, for the most part, have badly underperformed. 

The team has given out a free agent contract of at least $50 million in each of the past four offseasons. Walker and Imai have been disappointing thus far. Jose Abreu’s three-year, $58.5 million contract was an abject disaster.

After signing a five-year, $95 million contract in 2024, Josh Hader has pitched like one of the sport’s best relievers over the last two seasons after a disappointing first year with the Astros. However, injuries ended his 2025 season early, and he missed the first two months of 2026.

Still, as good as he is, Hader doesn’t have the impact a high-level starting pitcher or everyday player can have, but the Astros refuse to buy into that market. 

The Astros didn’t need to go out and buy All-Stars when they were drafting and developing their own, but that well has dried up in recent years, and no one in the upper levels of their minor league system appears to be headed on a trajectory to have that sort of impact. 

The Astros could still win the American League West this season, but it’s hard to imagine this group advancing far past that. Crane will likely be in the market for a new general manager whenever this campaign ends, but in order for the Astros to get back to the World Series, his philosophy must change.

Now, with a few pleasant baseball weeks between his Mets and the hardest days of this disappointing season, Steve Cohen is finally willing to name the problem.

"I can argue we might have taken too much risk as far as when you think about all the changes that we made," Cohen said in the Mets dugout Wednesday morning in his first press scrum since the team fired its manager and sold assets at the deadline. "Whenever there are significant changes, sometimes it takes a while to integrate. Those are the things I’m looking at to understand exactly what we can do better."

Until Wednesday, Cohen had been conspicuously careful when discussing his team’s struggles. For one, he only spoke about those struggles on the record one time since firing manager Carlos Mendoza – and he did so on a podcast with The New York Post reporters he knows well. When he did address them, he offered support for his president of baseball operations David Stearns, rather than any specific diagnosis of what Stearns might have gotten wrong.

But Wednesday morning, with his major league team playing better, his minor league system rejuvenated somewhat by a trade deadline sell-off, and his commitment to Stearns made explicit, Cohen was willing to share the findings of his private autopsy.

"I just think when you add new players, when you add a coaching staff, maybe adding players with an injury history – when you add risk upon risk upon risk…it doesn’t mean it had to turn out bad," Cohen said. "It just means you have dispersion of results and maybe the possibility of an undesirable result is more of a possibility because of the risk you’ve taken. I equate it to running a portfolio: the more risk you take in running a portfolio, yeah, you can have major upside. But also, your downside can be bigger. So you can have bigger variance in results, and I think that’s what happened here."

The risks Stearns and the Mets took in 2026 have been well-documented. One of them – signing oft-injured Jorge Polanco to a two-year deal to play first base when he had barely ever played there before – loomed particularly large as Cohen spoke Wednesday morning: a few moments earlier, manager Andy Green announced that Polanco would undergo season-ending surgery on the left ankle that has limited him all season. In a season full of risks that yielded suboptimal outcomes, Polanco’s situation yielded a true worst case.

Other risks already look less damning than they did a few months ago. Building an offseason around Bo Bichette, who had never played in New York before, seemed like a risk that didn’t pay off – until he adjusted. For more than a month now, he has looked like the player the Mets thought they were getting.

Cohen also said he did not think changing the whole coaching staff was a miscalculation in itself – and indeed, the Mets' young pitchers and hitters certainly seem to have been able to make adjustments, even if veteran starters like David Peterson and Freddy Peralta struggled to adjust to new tutelage.

"I look at it as in the whole. I look at it as individual decisions that make perfect sense," Cohen said when asked about all the coaching changes. "But when you add it all up, you get into a different realm of did we take too much risk? It’s kind of looking at it from a top-down perspective."

From a top-down perspective, Cohen said, he is more optimistic now than when he expressed concern about 2027 to the New York Post in July. He pointed to the impact Francisco Lindor has had on the team’s energy and success since returning from the injured list. He lamented that Juan Soto and Lindor have not been healthy at the same time, since that combination might have been able to lift this team out of its slump sooner. And he did not speak like a man who believes widespread change is necessary.

In fact, other than affirming that the Mets are taking Green at his word about returning to the front office and are therefore planning to conduct a managerial search this winter, Cohen did not seem desperate for more drastic measures – one of many early indications from Mets decision-makers that this winter might not bring as much roster turnover as one might expect after such an uninspiring season.

Cohen, for example, offered another hint: he is becoming increasingly skeptical of free agency to fill roster holes.

"What are the areas to make the team better? Farm system. Trades. Staff. And free agency. Free agency is a negative expected value," Cohen said. "…If you have to fill in holes, you have to fill in holes, too. So you have to be tactical. But every time you dip into free agency, you just know that’s a tough place to be."

Free agency is a particularly difficult place to be this winter, when a looming lockout and weak free agent class (outside of Tarik Skubal) means the Mets likely weren’t going to find many answers there anyway. The Mets need a starter or two, and perhaps the market has enough of those that free agency can yield them. For what it’s worth, on Aug. 19, people familiar with the Mets' thinking say it's too early to characterize their interest in Skubal, though they would not rule out a situation in which Cohen pushes Stearns to leave his comfort zone and pursue a long-term deal for the right kind of starting pitcher.

But when it comes to the Mets’ lineup, the answers cannot come until they decide what their questions are – and those are yet to be determined. For one, they do not know whether Bichette will opt out of his deal. They also do not know what they can count on from Polanco, other than that he is under contract for $21 million and will therefore be part of their plans in some form.

They could choose to pursue a slugging first baseman, and a person familiar with their efforts confirmed reports that they have scouted Japanese star Teruaki Sato this year. Almost every contender has. And if bringing players to New York for the first time constitutes a risk, bringing a player across the world for the first time certainly seems like an even bigger one.

But they could also choose to work with what they have, particularly if Bichette returns. In that scenario, their two least productive offensive positions would be second base and first base. Marcus Semien is under contract for two more years and a combined $46 million, so the path of least resistance would be to let him start the season at second base until one of the many infield prospects in the higher levels of the Mets system (Mitch Voit, Jefferson Rojas, Emilien Pitre, etc.) is ready to take a shot there.

At first base, Jared Young continues to prove he is a capable platoon bat against right-handed pitching, meaning he could pair with Polanco in a modified platoon or rotation to keep Polanco healthy. If Young holds steady and improves and Polanco does anything compared to his career numbers, one could envision that being a serviceable combination.

Still, the word "if" features prominently in almost all those scenarios. If these Mets had played better early this season, they would be fighting for a playoff spot right now. If so many risks hadn’t yielded so many worse-than-expected outcomes, Cohen would not be giving this autopsy at all. The question he and Stearns and the Mets front office must answer between now and the start of the offseason is this: Is the bigger risk to their trajectory doing too much to a roster that struggled with wholesale change once already, or is the biggest risk not doing enough?

For the second consecutive week, the Dodgers have a chance to sweep a last-place team on a Wednesday evening. They were successful at home last week in beating the Kansas City Royals, and try for the same on Wednesday night against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field.

The Rockies have the worst record (50-76) and run differential (-120) in the National League. Only the Athletics are worse in the American League, but for Colorado it’s all relative. They won 43 games all season last year, and are already seven victories clear of that with five and a half weeks left in the season. They are a franchise in transition and improving, but they have a long path to travel before contention.

The Dodgers have already won this series, with Wednesday the last time they will play the Rockies in 2026. The Dodgers are 9-3 against the Rockies this year and are 50-15 (.769) in their last 65 games against the Rockies, dating back to 2022.

That’s the last time the Dodgers lost a series to Colorado, dropping two out of three games at Coors Field that year from both April 8-10 and June 27-29. Since then the Dodgers have swept the Rockies eight times, six at home and two in Denver:

• July 4-6, 2022 (Los Angeles)
• April 3-4, 2023 (Los Angeles, 2 games)
• August 10-13, 2023 (Los Angeles, 4 games)
• September 27-29, 2024 (Denver)
• April 14-16, 2025 (Los Angeles)
• June 24-26, 2025 (Denver)
• September 8-10, 2025 (Los Angeles)
• May 25-27, 2026 (Los Angeles)

After going through an offensive malaisefor a month and a half, the Dodgers have conveniently scored seven and 11 runs in their first two games in this series at Coors Field.

The last time the Dodgers scored at least seven runs in three straight games of the same series against the Rockies — jackpot, if you will — was all the way back in April 5-7, 2019, which was a Dodgers sweep. The last time the Dodgers scored seven runs three games in a row this year was June 9-11 in Pittsburgh, when they scored 12, eight, and eight runs in a series win over the Pirates.

Wednesday game info

• Teams: Dodgers at Rockies
• Ballpark: Coors Field, Denver
• Start time: 5:40 p.m.
• TV: SportsNet LA
• Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)

After two straight gut-punch walk-off losses at Wrigley Field, the White Sox will try to salvage the finale of the Crosstown series this afternoon before heading back to the South Side. Despite the back-to-back heartbreakers, the Sox still hold a four-game lead over the Twins in the AL Central, but there isn’t much time to dwell on what went wrong on the North Side. Atlanta comes to town tomorrow for a makeup game, followed by a big weekend series against the Mets, so stealing one from the Cubs today would be a nice way to build some momentum before another important stretch.

The bigger concern right now might be finding enough healthy, rested arms to get through it. The pitching staff is running on fumes after the Sox emptied the tank during last weekend’s sweep of the Tigers, and the effects have been pretty obvious over the first two games at Wrigley. Noah Schultz is back in Charlotte, Davis Martin is on the IL, and Shane Smith remains on the 40-man roster but hasn’t exactly made a compelling case to return, going 0-2 with a 10.80 ERA and 2.52 WHIP over 8 1/3 innings in his last seven appearances with the Knights. Drew Thorpe is another intriguing possibility after three encouraging rehab outings between Birmingham and Charlotte following Tommy John surgery, but he isn’t currently on the 40-man roster. Ultimately, we can only guess where the reinforcements will come from, but something has to give.

For today, Sean Newcomb gets the ball as the opener, with José Urquidy expected to handle the bulk of the innings. Urquidy’s White Sox debut on Aug. 14 against Detroit didn’t exactly inspire confidence, as the righthander surrendered three runs on five hits over 3 2/3 innings. If the Sox have any hope of giving their bullpen a chance to recover, they desperately need length from him today. His Statcast profile offers a pretty clear roadmap for how he needs to attack the Cubs: Urquidy has struggled with walks and doesn’t generate many strikeouts, so getting ahead and forcing Chicago to put the ball in play will be critical. He also hasn’t qualified in several of Baseball Savant’s run-value categories, but his four-seamer, sweeper, changeup and curveball give him enough variety to keep hitters from sitting on one pitch. Against an aggressive Cubs lineup, pounding the zone and avoiding free passes might be more important than trying to miss bats.

The Cubs counter with Clay Holmes, who has made two starts since coming over from the Mets. His most recent outing came Aug. 14 against the Cardinals, when he earned the win and quality start with 6 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out three. Holmes’ Baseball Savant numbers show exactly what makes him difficult: His overall pitching run value sits in the 82nd percentile, with his breaking stuff in the 83rd, while his sinker ranks in the 91st percentile. He also sits in the 98th percentile in ground-ball rate and the 95th percentile in launch-angle sweet-spot percentage. In other words, the Sox probably aren’t going to beat him by pounding the ball into the dirt. Holmes doesn’t generate a ton of whiffs or strikeouts, though, and his hard-hit rate is only in the 12th percentile. The best approach is to make him work, resist chasing his pitches off the plate and look for something they can elevate rather than helping him pile up quick ground-ball outs. With Holmes ranking in the 80th percentile in chase rate, discipline outside the zone will be especially important.

Venable is going with almost the exact same lineup as yesterday, with Sam Antonacci getting the leadoff assignment and Chase Meidroth batting seventh. Munetaka Murakami, Miguel Vargas and Andrew Benintendi follow Antonacci, while Braden Montgomery bats fifth and Colson Montgomery sixth. The only difference from last night is that Jake Rogers slots in at backstop. Against a ground-ball machine like Holmes, getting traffic at the top and finding a way to elevate the baseball will be key. Mune hit his 29th home run last night and has a 32-game on-base streak, so hopefully the rookie can keep that going today.

On the other side, Pete Crow-Armstrong — who has already terrorized the Sox throughout this series — gets a day off his feet at DH but remains atop the Cubs’ order, followed by Seiya Suzuki, Alex Bregman and Michael Busch. So, you know, Urquidy can ease into things.

First pitch is at 1:20 p.m. CDT. The game will be televised on CHSN and can be heard on ESPN Chicago 1000. Hopefully, today’s ending is a little less painful.

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We're heading up to cheese country! 

Here is my Mariners vs. Brewers predictions and MLB picks for Wednesday, Aug. 19.

After the Brewers put up 22 runs on the Mariners, Seattle looks to get back on track tonight, and they're +105 to rebound.

Who will win Mariners vs Brewers today: Mariners (+105)

It will be extremely tough for the Milwaukee Brewers to replicate their 22-run outing from last night, which is partly why the Mariners are well-positioned to bounce back after their embarrassing 22-0 Tuesday loss. That marked the most lopsided win since 1887.

Seattle rolls with Logan Gilbert on the bump this evening, and he's been lights out on the road and overall this season. Gilbert owns a 2.90 xERA and 0.99 WHIP while allowing just a 33.75% hard-hit rate and 8.75% barrel rate across his last five starts.

On the other side, Milwaukee sends Dustin May to the mound, and he's been just as good over his last five outings, minus a 4.36 xERA, 10.17% walk rate, and 43.42% hard-hit rate allowed.

Despite the Brewers' offensive explosion last night, they've posted just an 87 wRC+, .300 wOBA, and .121 ISO over their last 12 games. Meanwhile, the Mariners have been turning it up over the past week, posting a 120 wRC+, .338 wOBA, and .766 OPS.

COVERS INTEL: Jackson Chourio has maintained a .538 SLG, .905 OPS, .269 ISO while genertating a 55.6% hard-hit rate and 16.7% barrel rate over his last 30 at-bats versus right-handed pitching. 

Mariners vs Brewers Over/Under pick: Under 7.5 (-137)

After last night's thumping, this evening should be far less high-scoring, especially with Gilbert and May on the mound.

Both hurlers own at least a 3.64 xERA and 1.25 WHIP. The Mariners should be able to get on top of May's offerings this evening, but don't expect anywhere near the same level of run production from the other side.

Gilbert is simply too locked in right now, posting a 2.29 ERA and 0.97 WHIP while allowing just a 38% hard-hit rate.

The Under is firmly in play. Don't pay more than this current price tag.

Mariners vs Brewers home run prediction: Jake Bauers (+365)

Jake Bauers has been white hot, and he's the best option in this matchup. The Milwaukee first baseman owns a .647 SLG, .265 ISO, 51.9% hard-hit rate, and 14.8% barrel rate over his last 10 games. He's logged five extra-base hits in that stretch too, though falling short of clearing the fence is a concern. However, there wasn't a close second among the other hitters who stood out as a strong home run candidate.

Bauers owns an elite rating on Batters-Box's current-season dataset. He covers 85.7% of Logan Gilbert's pitch mix and goes yard 21.74% of the time when rated elite this season.

Take this down to +350.

Mariners vs Brewers weather

This game is being played in a dome.

Mariners vs Brewers odds

• Moneyline: Mariners +105 | Brewers -121
• Run line: Mariners +1.5 (-200) | Brewers -1.5 (+180)
• Over/Under: Over 7.5 (+124) | Under 7.5 (-137)

Mariners vs Brewers trend

The Seattle Mariners have covered the first five innings run line in five of their last seven games (+2.50 Units / 27% ROI).

Find more MLB betting trends for Mariners vs. Brewers.

How to watch Mariners vs Brewers and game info

Mariners vs Brewers latest injuries

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On the heels of Monday’s piece it can be difficult to keep a level-headed outlook on these things. I try to stay above board, but I am also human and subject to the kind of emotional responses any fan would have during good times and bad. In this case, when we have decided that a manager or general manager should be on their way out, it becomes a lot easier to find evidence that supports that particular point of view. Often times, that evidence can be jaded or slanted to meet our particular viewpoint. Certainly evaluating the results of particular trades can fall into that category.

The early returns on Daulton Varsho fall under this paradigm. There are two primary problems with evaluating trades this way. The first problem is small sample size. Varsho has less than 50 at bats as an Astro and is just over 50 plate appearances total. That is equivalent to about two full weeks of baseball. Any player (including Yordan Alvarez) can look bad for two weeks at a time. So, evaluating a trade at the trade deadline is difficult at best under those circumstances.

The second problem is that all moves should be evaluated based on the available evidence at the time of the decision. So, to provide a perfect example of this, I am looking at three trade deadline acquisitions from recent Astros history and looking at what they did after they became Astros. Clearly, I think everyone will notice a trend, but to keep things interesting I will remove their names so that we can remove any emotional baggage that may come with those names.

None of these are good baseball players based on the numbers we are seeing. Clearly, Player C is a special kind of awful, but I think most people know that is Varsho and most people know that is only two weeks worth of baseball. I think everyone will look at the Arrighetti for Varsho deal as an abject failure if those are the numbers we are looking at some May 27th. Fortunately for Varsho, he has a little more than a month to fix what clearly looks broken.

Player A and B were acquired in 2015 and 2022 respectively. It is easy to look at those numbers and assume failure. Carlos Gomez (Player A) had an extra year of control beyond 2015, but was released prior to the end of the 2016 season. Trey Mancini (Player B) was a free agent following 2022 and the Astros had no interest in bringing him back following that performance.

We have to be fair to Jeff Luhnow, James Click, and Brown, so we have to look at these deals in the same lens. So, what we will do is look at what these guys were doing before the deals were consummated. We get the benefit of hindsight. General managers do not. So, I always try to look at things given the information they had at the time. Since we already know who the players are, we will dispense with the anonymous pleasantries.

It’s ironic that Gomez and Mancini had the exact same OPS coming into their time in Houston. The average OPS in the league usually hovers between .700 and .720 depending on the season. So, it was perfectly reasonable to expect both players to provide above average performance. There are usually three things that can happen when acquiring a player midseason and two of those things are bad. The Red Sox saw the other one when they acquired Curtis Mead and he was almost immediately hurt. A player can play significantly worse than what he has done. He can play as good or better. Two of those three outcomes are bad.

So, there are two separate questions we have to ask and answer. The first question is whether I would have made the trade at the time given the same set of information the general manager had. The Carlos Gomez trade was a hard one because it included Mike (“El Rato”) Fiers but saw Josh Hader going the other direction. Three other prospects went the other direction as well with Domingo Santana being the most significant of those prospects. Hader is likely to be a borderline Hall of Famer, but no one could have known that at the time.

The Mancini trade primarily involved Jose Siri. That one obviously doesn’t hurt as much in retrospect and the club did win the World Series, so the overall results are not as disappointing. Still, I think most people would add an above average center fielder and first baseman at the deadline for just prospects or fringe players. That brings us to the second question.

The second question is how should the players be used? This is more on the manager than on the general manager. Why in God’s name is Daulton Varsho batting cleanup? Even if he produced at his Toronto numbers that doesn’t set him up for success. Mancini was yanked around between left field and first base because Dusty Baker didn’t want to commit a spot to him. The Astros may have expected too much out of Gomez as well in retrospect.

Ultimately, this will be the test for both Brown and Espada. As hard as it is, we have to be fair. What is reasonable based on the information available at the time? Sometimes the most logical decisions don’t work out. Occasionally the least logical decisions will actually pan out. Managers and general managers should be evaluated mostly on the efficacy of their decision making and not necessarily on the short-term results.

For the near-decade that Aaron Boone has been manager of the New York Yankees, fans have been able to memorize the script of every season with near-perfect accuracy. They play well, then they struggle, then they rally to reach the playoffs, but lose their way in the postseason en route to a crushing defeat. The magic of sports—and, less romantically, the sheer mathematical variance of baseball—is meant to thwart the I’ve-seen-it-already musings of the cynics, but the Yankees have proven those cynics right each year. 

Perhaps the largest and most frustrating throughline in the Boone era has been the the extended, one-to-two-month team-wide hitting hibernation which generally comes along near the regular calendar’s midway mark. These outages, which tend to accompany a frightening rash of silly mistakes and poor fundamentals, have been a staple even in the seasons where most of their best players are healthy; obviously not the case in 2026. Yet even without Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton, the Bombers still boast plenty of superbly talented hitters who are fully capable of keeping the offense running serviceably until those key contributors return.

Instead, the Yankee offense has utterly flatlined since the All-Star Break. To wit, they have scored a paltry 3.15 runs per game in the second half, hitting .203—barely over the Mendoza line!—with a .626 OPS overall. Toss all those ugly numbers into the computer and it churns out a noxious 75 wRC+ figure, second-worst in baseball ahead of only the blatantly-tanking Angels. This comes despite the valiant efforts of a pitching staff which has been in an absolute groove: their 2.89 ERA since the intermission is head-and-shoulders above their peers. 

How can a talented lineup blessed with the backing of what is currently the best pitching staff by a country mile, fail so spectacularly to meet them even two steps of the way, let alone half?

We must first acknowledge the MVP-sized vacancy at the top of the lineup. Judge has not been in the Yankees’ lineup for over two months and it is still unclear when he will return from the rib fracture he sustained on June 2. His absence, along with that of his good buddy Bellinger, are difficult to overstate, but this season the Yankees would seem to be better set up for an extended Judge absence than most. After all, Ben Rice’s numbers at the time of Judge’s injury were essentially just as spectacular. Rice has had to pick up Judge’s torch as the team’s top offensive player. You should expect a decline in his numbers during this time, as pitchers fine-tune their approaches and treat him like the number-one weapon he now is—but it’s hard to imagine he would completely fall apart. 

Unfortunately, Rice’s season has completely fallen apart. To wit, he is hitting .158/.254/.297 (.551 OPS) since the Midsummer Classic, while running an eye-watering 31.6 percent strikeout rate across that span. It seems as if, rather than stick to his strengths and build on his spectacular first half, Rice is trying to make up for the production the lineup lost when his co-star hit the shelf. The result: his production has tumbled from Judgian heights to Chris Carter-esque doldrums.

Now fully lacking an intimidating presence at the heart of the order, the lineup has resembled a bunch of dudes who vaguely recognize the fact that they are on a team together. They wear the same uniform, but simply have not played as such—failing to adjust to the concrete reality that their best power bat and best contact bat are both out of commission. They play with little of the urgency you would expect a team that shorthanded to carry, flailing against pitchers who are under no illusions that more imposing hitters lurk in the weeds behind them.

It is in equal parts a testament to the superb maturity of George Lombard Jr. and a profound condemnation on the rest of the offense that the 21-year old rookie shortstop has been by far the team’s most consistent hitter in terms of working quality at-bats. He can’t hit 1.000, but Lombard has operated with an unflappable approach armed with an intimate understanding of his strengths and weaknesses as a hitter. When I watch Lombard hitting, I can see the meticulous thought he is putting into every pitch, the preparation which informs every decision to swing or take. It feels like we’re thinking along with him, and it’s been the main reason watching him has been a joy, regardless of whether he ultimately gets a hit. 

I cannot claim to know what any of the rest of the lineup is thinking when they get up there; your guess is as good as mine. Heliot Ramos has looked utterly overmatched since joining up at the deadline, equally punchless against righties as the lefties he was brought aboard to hit. Luis García Jr.’s staggering 22.1 percent home run-per-fly ball rate with Washington was due to regress to the mean, and that regression has come right as the rest of the team endures an extended outage. Jazz Chisholm Jr. is continually adding to the list of reasons why he may be playing his final few months in pinstripes. Trent Grisham is at last climbing out of an extended slide of his own (and he did carry the team to a win last night), having hit .165 in July.

This offense lacks the kind of modularity or adaptability you see from rivals like the Rays, Red Sox, or Blue Jays. They have one gear, and if that gear stalls out halfway up the hill, you’d better call roadside.

This all came to a head where else but Rogers Centre, where the Blue Jays (owners of the league’s third-worst wRC+ since the break at the time I’m writing this) outmaneuvered the Yankees in two close games to take the series. The Yankee offense did little to put up any kind of resistance to the Blue Jays pitchers, and routinely did them favors with poor effort, like Ramos failing to run out a groundball flubbed by Andrés Giménez; or poor decision-making, like García—far from a burner—trying to steal second with Spencer Jones at the plate.

The Jays, meanwhile, played to their strengths: working deep counts, forcing the Yankees’ terrific pitchers to labor for outs, and hustling on every play, legging out infield hits against a New York defense all too often caught on its heels. Again, they’re a far cry from the thumpers they were in 2025, but they at least did the little things to beat the Yanks. Remember, the Bombers’ pitching staff hasn’t just been cromulent during this span, they’ve been as good as it gets. That’s a group with an identity: a tightly-knit coven of obsessive pitching wizards. But their stats aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on if you don’t score some damn runs for them.

The Yankees don’t have the kind of contact chops or speedy runners to play the Jays’ brand of ball, but they have options. They could build a brand of baseball that isn’t just standing around and waiting for Judge and Bellinger to come back.

Even if and when those two return, what positive habits have the rest of the lineup cultivated which can allow them to succeed on the days where they don’t produce? If Judge and Bellinger—who had stopped hitting for power even before his injury—don’t produce right away, what is their recourse? What can they lean on if their top-end talent scuffles, or hits into hard luck? Watching this team hit this same wall every year, it’s unclear if they’ve ever cared to figure out the answers to these tough questions.

I’m certain that Boone and the Yankees would bristle at the implication that they lack an offensive identity. Boone has fiercely defended his players during their struggles, attesting to their talent, degree of preparation, and competitiveness. He is entitled to that view. He is also more or less obligated to have it, as any admission otherwise would immediately imperil his job. It’s like those ads Meta is running about how optimistic they are about the future of AI. Of course you think like that—your entire business model depends on it.

In 2019, the Bombers had to contend with a rash of horrible injury luck. They overcame that misfortune with the ascendence of new important contributors like Mike Tauchman, Cameron Maybin, Gio Urshela, and of course DJ LeMahieu, who had the best reputation from that group but still far exceeded preseason expectations (which had him on the Opening Day bench). When Plan A couldn’t materialize, Plan B still got the Yankees to a 103-59 record. They were ultimately outclassed by the Astros in the ALCS, but it felt as if the best years were still to come; that a team who could find ways to find production even when their stars weren’t in the mix was bound to put it all together soon.

Instead, the Yankees have become more reliant on their stars than ever before. Judge’s brilliance at the plate became the primary variable which determined whether the team’s offense lived and died—one brilliant Juan Soto campaign notwithstanding. In the years since “Next Man Up”, their lineup has regressed into the Bunch of Guys, content to sit back and play the percentages rather than rallying behind their greatest strengths or adjusting to the realities of their roster.