Category: MLB

The Atlanta Braves are coming off their first sweep of the Phillies in Philadelphia since 2016 while also leading MLB in run differential, total runs scored, team ERA, and hold the best division lead in MLB. The start for the Braves could not have been much better, especially considering they are down half their rotation, their starting SS, and Sean Murphy.

Speaking of good starts, Bryce Elder is back to All-Star form this season with his sterling ERA of 0.77 and will be taking the mound to face the second place (tied) Washington Nationals. The Nationals have a losing record but some could argue that they have been better than expected, especially offensively. Only the Dodgers and Braves are scoring more runs per game than the Nationals are this season. 5.50 runs per game is an elite offense, the only problem is that the Nats are also allowing the most runs per game tied with the Astros at 6.09.

With the level of runs that the Nats have been scoring it will be interesting to see if Elder can hold them at bay. It does not take much research to know that it is highly likely that Elder will not be able to sustain a sub one ERA, but his expected ERA (xERA) of 2.30 is easily the best of his career. In fact, his Statcast numbers look the best they ever have too.

Now, you always want to take early season Statcast numbers with a grain of salt because they can change drastically as the season progresses, but the point is that Elder has not just been lucky this season, he has also pitched very well. Good strikeout and walk rates to go along with a good groundball rate and an elite barrel percentage is a mix for solid results, which has clearly happened.

It will be fun this evening to see how the Nats hitters will do against this new and improved Elder, because in the past they have absolutely wrecked him. Of the seven hitters on the roster who have faced him before, five of them have an OPS .800 or higher. CJ Abrams has a .905 OPS in fifteen at-bats, and Luis García Jr. has a 1.227 in eleven at-bats. Keep an eye on rising star James Wood as he is the only player to hit a HR off of Elder in his six at-bats against him.

Jake Irvin will be taking the mound for the Nats and he has had the opposite results of Elder. He currently sits at an ERA of 6.16, and it has not been entirely bad luck either. His xERA of 5.07 shows he has likely had some misfortune, but even if he actual ERA matched his xERA, it would not be a result to be proud of. The Braves currently have the fourth best walk rate in MLB and Irvin’s 12.8 percent walk rate is in the bottom 24.0 percent of the league. Walks could be the key to success for the Braves’ offense tonight.

Michael Harris will be the offensive player to watch this evening for the Braves. Not only is he red hot right now, but he has more at-bats than anyone else against Irvin with eighteen. He has a .389 average and .950 OPS in those at-bats as well. Matt Olson has the second most at-bats with sixteen but has struggled to a .188 average and .610 OPS against Irvin.

Two of the top three offenses offenses meet tonight, so on paper it should come down to which pitching staff can perform the best. First pitch is at 6:45 EDT.

Game Info

Game Time: Monday, April 20th, 6:45 pm EDT

Location: Nationals Park, Washington, DC.

Watch: BravesVision

Radio/Audio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan

Boston Red Sox right-hander Sonny Gray left his Patriots' Day start against the Detroit Tigers in the third inning after experiencing what the team called "right hamstring tightness."

In his first season with the Red Sox after being acquired from the St. Louis Cardinals in a trade last November, Gray was making his fifth start of the 2026 campaign.

He had allowed one run on three hits and a walk over 2 ⅔ innings when he began having difficulty executing his pitching motion. After a brief visit from an athletic trainer and one practice pitch, Gray walked off the field.

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Ernie Clement’s bat is sizzling right now, and with the Angels sending a southpaw to the mound, I’m banking on the lefty-masher to stay hot.

Read on to see why in my Blue Jays vs. Angels predictions and free MLB picks on Monday, April 20.

Blue Jays vs Angels predictions

Blue Jays vs Angels best bet: Ernie Clement Over 1.5 total bases (+115)

Ernie Clement is riding a four-game hit streak while recording a hit in eight of his last nine games. 

The Toronto Blue Jays infielder has gone Over his total bases prop in five of those, including each of his last three outings. 

Clement is starting to find his power stroke, too, doubling in three straight, with six total two-baggers in this nine-game stretch, averaging 2.11 bases per game. 

The pitching matchup is in his favor as well. 

The Los Angeles Angels are starting LHP Reid Detmers tonight, who Clement should be able to take advantage of. He’s 6-for-18 against lefties this season and had a .900 OPS against southpaws in 2025.

COVERS INTEL: Clement owns an .833 OPS in six career at-bats against Detmers.

Blue Jays vs Angels same-game parlay (SGP)

The Angels' lineup has baseball's seventh-highest strikeout rate. Dylan Cease is a strikeout machine, ranking in the 95th percentile in K-rate this season, while averaging eight punchouts per start. 

For the last leg of the SGP, I’ll pair Cease’s strikeout total with Jorge Soler to go Over his 1.5 Ks prop. The outfielder has struggled mightily in this matchup throughout his career, going just 1-for-23 against Cease with a 56% K-rate.

Blue Jays vs Angels SGP

• Ernie Clement Over 1.5 total bases
• Dylan Cease Over 7.5 strikeouts
• Jorge Soler Over 1.5 hitter strikeouts

Blue Jays vs Angels home run pick: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (+475)

I’ll make this a half-unit wager.

Detmers is a flyball pitcher who relies on his four-seam fastball often, which has a 43% usage rate and a hard-hit rate of 56.5%. 

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. crushes the fastball and has a .500 average against the four-seamer, with a .571 SLG against the pitch.

Blue Jays vs Angels odds

• Moneyline: Toronto -120 | Los Angeles +100
• Run line: Toronto -1.5 (+145) | Los Angeles +1.5 (-170)
• Over/Under: Over 7.5 (-115) | Under 7.5 (-105)

Blue Jays vs Angels trend

The Toronto Blue Jays have hit the 1st Five Innings (F5) Team Total Under in 8 of their last 11 games (+5.50 Units / 44% ROI). Find more MLB betting trends for Blue Jays vs. Angels.

How to watch Blue Jays vs Angels and game info

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The New York Rangers will hold a top-five pick in the 2026 NHL Draft coming up on June 26.

The NHL Draft Lottery is set for May 5, in what will be a critical day for the Rangers’ organization. 

To close out the 2025-26 season, the Rangers finished 30th in the NHL league standings with a 34-39-9 record and 77 points, which means the Blueshirts have the third-best odds to land the first overall pick. 

At the May 5 draft lottery, the Rangers will have a 11.5% chance to get the first pick, 11.2% chance to get the second pick, 7.8% chance to get the third pick, 39.7% chance to get the fourth pick, and 29.8% chance to get the fifth pick. 

This draft will be a golden opportunity for the Rangers to land a potential cornerstone piece going into the future.

“It's exciting because we can potentially add a high-quality player that could potentially be a New York Ranger for a long time,” Mike Sullivan said. “And so from that standpoint, it's really exciting.”

We’ve seen a number of top-five picks in recent years make immediate impacts for their respective teams upon arrival, including Macklin Celebrini, Matthew Schaefer, Leo Carlsson, Beckett Sennecke, Ivan Demidov, and many more. 

“We’re excited it’s in the top five,” Chris Drury said of the Rangers’ 2026 first-round pick. “Will see on May 5 to where it is.”

The last time the Rangers held a top-five pick was in 2020, when the team selected Alexis Lafrenière first overall, while they drafted Kaapo Kakko second overall in 2019.

The 13-game NL East gauntlet continues on for the Atlanta Braves and so far, they’ve passed their first divisional test with flying colors. They’re 5-1 through the first six games and they’re two wins away from making this a successful divisional swing. They’re also just one win away from confirming a successful road trip on this seven-game jaunt across the Eastern Seaboard after picking up a very lovely sweep in Philadelphia.

With that being said, I think this Braves team has more than just the bare minimum expectations for success at the moment. They’ve already built up a relatively large cushion in the division and they’ve got an opportunity to continue to put plenty of space between them and the rest of their foes in the NL East. The good news is that it’s the type of opportunity that feels like a golden one for this team.

Sure, they’ll have to deal with the Phillies again but they’ll be doing it in their own dojo this weekend. Also, the Braves will have four games against the Nationals in the nation’s capital. While the Nationals clearly aren’t going to be moribund (as you’ll see below), it’s a situation where if the Braves are the caliber of team that we think they’re shaping up to be, they should be considering a series split as the bare minimum.

Let’s take a look at what lies ahead this week for the Braves:

April 20-23: Washington Nationals

Current Record: 10-12 Projected Record(via FanGraphs): 69-93

_{(We’re now using up-to-date standings since the Braves are finally into repeat opponent territory starting this week)}

Well this’ll certainly be an interesting series! The Nationals might be under .500 like the rest of the NL East but it’s not for lack of trying at the plate! While Atlanta has been cooking at the plate to the tune of a team wRC+ of 122 (tied for second in all of baseball with the Astros but 16 points behind the Dodgers for first place because of course), the Nationals aren’t that far behind with a team wRC+ of 109. A lot of that has to do with the fact that Michael Harris II’s good buddy CJ Abrams has been very dangerous at the plate so far — he’s hitting .320/.429/.600 with a 182 wRC+, six home runs and a .443 wOBA across 91 plate appearances and 21 games.

James Wood isn’t too far behind with a 153 wRC+ and they’ve also gotten strong contributions from Jorbit Vivas and Joey Wiemer now that they’ve gotten more chances to show their stuff. Ivan talked a bit about this offense during his article earlier and it’s going to be very interesting to see if they can keep it up against a Braves pitching staff that is proving to be very formidable for any opponent to deal with so far.

With that being said, there’s a reason why this team is still under .500 and it’s their pitching staff. Like, full stop: They have been straight-up bad on the mound so far this season. Their best pitcher (according to fWAR) so far has been Cade Cavalli, who is sporting a 4.12 ERA and a 3.59 FIP across 19.2 innings of work and five starts. That’s not great, and hopefully the Braves will be able to do plenty of damage against this pitching staff before they run into him in the series finale on Thursday afternoon.

Outside of Cavalli, this pitching staff has been varying degrees of mediocre-to-bad so far. If this was 2024, I’d be terrified at the prospect of the Braves having to deal with Jake Irvin but Atlanta appears to have slain that particular boogeyman after what they did to him last season so he seems like a manageable prospect for this Atlanta lineup. Foster Griffin has been more in the “okay” category and he did manage to limit the Dodgers to just one run over five innings on April 5 but he got dinged for four runs against the Pirates in his last time out. Then you have Zack Littell, who has gotten lit up so far this season. Again, he also has a five-inning, one-run stint to his name but he’s given up at least three runs in his other three starts and he even got smacked for eight runs in his most recent start.

As bleak as this starting rotation looks for Washington, the bullpen looks just as bad. The bullpen is currently sitting on an ERA- of 136 and a FIP- of 144 — that ERA- number is the second-worst mark in the NL and the FIP- is the worst. Both of those numbers are actually better than what the starting rotation is putting up, as they’ve collectively delivered an ERA- of 152 and a FIP- of 131. Even if these games end up turning into slugfests, I like Atlanta’s chances in those slugfests since their offense has been better as well. It would be a crying shame if the Braves didn’t put in some serious work at the plate during this series as this Nationals pitching staff appears to be ripe for the picking at the moment.

April 24-26: Philadelphia Phillies

Current Record: 8-13 Projected Record: 84-78

Assuming they don’t get right this week against the Cubs, the Phillies might be really hating baseball life by the time the get to Atlanta. The sweep they suffered at the hands of the Braves is now part of a five-game losing streak and a 2-8 stretch. If it wasn’t for the Mets being completely dreadful for two weeks now, the Phillies would be at the bottom of the NL right now. Instead, they’re next to the bottom and currently looking up at the Colorado Rockies in the NL standings. Are they going to be trailing the Rockies for much longer? Probably to but it’s still funny to see!

Either way, we just got done seeing Philadelphia and the problem is clear: They are doing some serious scuffling at the plate. They’re currently bottom-five as a team in the National League when it comes to team wRC+ (88) and outside of Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber, this lineup isn’t providing the type of production that we’re used to seeing from them and subsequently being annoyed by. Again there are some potential big boppers in this lineup so I don’t think that they’re going to stay down like this for a lot longer but I’m sure the Braves would appreciate it if they continued to scuffle while making their visit to Truist Park this weekend.

Atlanta will also be getting a bit of a break due to the Phillies’ visit to Wrigley Field being a four-gamer as well. Cristopher Sánchez is currently set to start the series finale in Chicago, which means the Braves will avoid get to avoid him this weekend. There is a chance that Zack Wheeler could return to the Phillies rotation just in time to see the Braves but if not, they’ll likely get another dose of Andrew Painter. On top of that, Atlanta will still have to deal with the tricky propositions of Jesús Luzardo and Aaron Nola on the weekend — Luzardo has been a tough customer for the Braves to deal with since his time with the Marlins and I think we’re all too well acquainted with Nola at this point in his career.

Either way, if the Cubs extend Philadelphia’s misery then the Braves could have a chance to really pour on the pain once this weekend rolls around. I’m not going to count any chickens before they hatch but Atlanta could be in line to put some serious distance between them and Philadelphia right away if all goes well for the Braves this week.

It’s hard to place all that much importance on an April series against a division rival, but the Mariners series win over the Rangers last weekend was pretty important. Not only did it serve as a reset after a tough stretch of games — not unlike the Astros series a few weekends ago — it also ensured Seattle has a much better chance to win the season series — and the all-important tiebreaker — later on this season. It’s probably too early to start worrying about things like that. First, the M’s need to take care of business against another upstart division rival.

The Athletics have gotten off to a bit of an up-and-down start to the season. A few weeks ago, they won consecutive series against the Astros, Yankees, and Mets but just dropped a three-game set against the White Sox last weekend. The young offense that looked so impressive last year has gotten off to a bit of a slow start this season. They’re just 19th in baseball with 4.14 runs scored per game. 

There are a ton of high-whiff, high-power guys populating the A’s lineup and then there’s Jacob Wilson and Jeff McNeil. Those two high-contact hitters aren’t enough to offset the high strikeout rates from guys like Nick Kurtz, Lawrence Butler, or Shea Langeliers; the team’s strikeout rate is fifth highest in baseball right now. After taking a pretty big step forward last year, Langeliers has been even better this season. He’s already blasted six home runs and is currently sporting a 163 wRC+. Kurtz, in particular, has gotten off to a slow start at the plate. The reigning Rookie of the Year has hit only two home runs this year, though he’s walking in more than a quarter of his plate appearances; opposing pitchers are treating him a lot more carefully after he torched the league last summer. He isn’t the only guy off to a slow start; Tyler Soderstrom (87 wRC+ so far), Wilson (68), and Butler (58) have all scuffled in April.

Probable Pitchers 

Updated Stuff+ Explainer 

• Stuff+ scores for Mariners starters

J.T. Ginn has spent the last few seasons bouncing between the rotation and the bullpen for the A’s. He’s dealt with a number of injuries over the years, stunting his development, but the stuff models really love his sinker-slider combo. He gets a ton of groundballs with those two pitches and can turn to a pretty good changeup to get a whiff if he needs it. Considering the problems the A’s have had developing mid-rotation arms, and Ginn’s penchant for groundball contact, it’s surprising they haven’t given him a longer look in the rotation. 

Jacob Lopez was a surprise last year. Never regarded as a top prospect, and a throw-in in the Jeffrey Springs trade a few years ago, he had a stretch of 13 starts last summer where he ran a 2.64 ERA and a 3.08 FIP. He ran into the Mariners on August 24, allowed nine runs, and was placed on the IL with an elbow strain the next day. His raw stuff just isn’t that impressive; his fastball barely averages 90 mph and a slow looping slider is hardly optimized for whiffs. Still, some deception in his throwing motion allows his stuff to play up a bit.

The A’s signed Aaron Civale in February to give them another veteran innings eater while their top pitching prospects continue to develop in the minors. Pitching for his sixth team in four years, he’s a prototypical back-end starter with a deep repertoire. He doesn’t stand out in any one area, but average skills across the board help him work through a lineup a couple of times without courting disaster. His best pitch is a hammer curveball and he’ll mix in five other pitches to keep batters off balance.

The Big Picture:

The AL West standings are currently a big ol’ mess. The Rangers and A’s are tied in first with matching .500 records with the Angels and Mariners following close behind. And then there’s the Astros who are limping along at the bottom with the second worst record in the AL. Texas returns home to begin a long homestand beginning with a series against the Pirates, Los Angeles hosts the struggling Blue Jays, and Houston will try and turn things around in Cleveland this week.

As another former Mets’ skipper, Yogi Berra, once famously opined: “It’s getting late early”.

Fair or not, the writing is on the wall for current Mets’ manager Carlos Mendoza: His time with the club is approaching its end.

It felt somewhat inevitable with last year’s collapse, and it appears all but etched in stone as the team’s losing streak reached an unfathomable, incomprehensible eleven games. The Mets haven’t lost 11 straight since the 2004 season—incidentally, the team fired Art Howe about a week after that losing streak ended. If they lose on Tuesday, their losing streak will reach 12 games, their longest since 2002. Bobby Valentine was fired at the end of that season. It’s simply hard to survive that much prolonged failure, whether it’s directly your fault or not.

The current Mets’ situation calls to mind another skipper who faced the ax. In 2006, the Mets seemed poised for a World Series run, and their season was cut short in the NLCS (sound familiar?) In 2007, the Mets suffered a monumental collapse which concluded with a loss to the Marlins on the final day of the regular season (again, familiar?) In 2008, a lethargic start with sky-high expectations led to the team firing Willie Randolph in one of the most embarrassing (and inappropriate) ways imaginable, in the middle of the night after a win at the start of a June West Coast trip. While these two situations are not entirely mirror images, they do bear striking resemblances, and will likely end the same way—did I mention the Mets also poached Randolph from the Yankees, much like Mendoza?

I think the current Mets regime knows well enough not to repeat the same mistakes of the past regime—I will add, for no reason in particular, that the Mets do have a trip to Anaheim Los Angeles coming up in a couple of weeks, so Mendoza may want to book a back-up return flight, just in case. Hell, Mendoza may not even have a job by Tuesday, let alone two weeks from now. But the greater point is that, when captaining a ship that goes down the way the 2007 and 2025 Mets, it’s hard to recover in the court of public perception, unless everything goes right (and everything has, decidedly, gone wrong).

One could argue that, in both instances, the Mets should have never let it get to the point it did. The collapse of 2007 greatly overshadowed the success of 2006, to the point that Randolph entered 2008 a dead man walking. Similarly, the failures of 2025 all but erased the good will built up during the 2024 OMG/Grimace/Rally Pumpkin playoff run. With the Mets jettisoning basically every coach besides Mendoza after last season, it seemingly made sense to just clean house entirely. In failing to do so, Mendoza entered 2026 on a short leash, one that has all but run out with a disastrous start nobody, not even the most pessimistic in the fanbase or in the media, could have seen coming.

So that brings us to the $64,000 question (or, more accurately, the $381 million question): What should the Mets do with Mendoza? In times like this, when expectations are what they are and results are…well, this…something has to be done, and as we’ve all come to learn, you can’t fire or trade an entire team. The torches are getting hotter, the pitchforks are getting sharper, and the screams are getting louder, so much so that Steve Cohen and David Stearns cannot ignore it for that much longer. This failure, to be clear, falls squarely on the shoulders of the players, and while Mendoza is far from a great manager, he is the easiest target to do something and show the outside world that they are taking this seriously.

I’m of the belief that most managers don’t really have much of an impact on the day-to-day results, especially in modern baseball. I can’t even really point to much he could do differently in this exact scenario to make things better. I don’t think firing Mendoza will functionally change anything, and I’m not a huge believer of firings to “light a fire under the players’ asses” or whatever phrase you want to use. If nothing else, the players, led by Francisco Lindor, have given Mendoza a vote of confidence, but the way they’re playing, that means less than nothing. At the end of the day, Mendoza is the public face of this mess, and there’s enough criticism of his work that it won’t seem like a desperation move and people will come to understand the rationale.

Mendoza has two things strongly working against him: a) the aforementioned collapse, and b) an expiring contract. The Mets have fired managers with many more years left on their deal, so parting with a manager with a few months left to go anyway will not phase them. If anything, it makes a decision much easier, allowing them to review an interim—Kai Correa? Carlos Beltran? Probably the former more than the latter—and make a determination on the future direction they want to go in.

We can’t close this discussion without addressing the elephant in the room: David Stearns. Fans are extremely split, to put it mildly, on the job he has done here, with some praising his focus on modernizing the organization and improving the farm system, and others blasting the choices he’s made to field a competitive major league roster. Many fans already entered this season ready to throw hands with Stearns for letting some fan favorites go, and that was before these results. Stearns, it stands to reason, should face as much criticism as anyone for the early-season struggles, but let’s make one thing clear (and I say this without any inside knowledge whatsoever): Stearns is under no threat to be fired, this year or likely in many future years. Steve Cohen has put a lot of trust into Stearns, and letting go of him this early will torpedo any trust the organization may have in searching for his replacement, and make the organization a laughingstock—well, more of one, anyway. Moreover, Cohen would have to return to making the baseball decisions, and he does not seem eager to do so. Love him or hate him, Stearns is here to stay, to make the decision on both the Mets manager and future player and personnel moves for the foreseeable future.

So that brings us back to Mendoza. The Mets ultimately face two choices: Fire Mendoza or do nothing at all. There are no player moves to be made and no front office decisions to be had. As such, Mendoza is probably gone, if not in April, then before Memorial Day. Aside from the brief boost that inevitably follows a move like this—a warning to the players, an improvement in performance, a reprieve of negative public perception—the team will likely continue to underwhelm and miss the playoffs. Very few teams have lost 11 straight and rebounded, and this one, while loaded with talent, doesn’t inspire confidence that it can buck that trend.

This is the time for decisive action, not waffling from the team’s leadership. Stearns and Cohen currently have the media and weight of the fanbase breathing down their necks, and are facing harsh economic blowback (an empty stadium, fewer merch and concession sales, etc.) if they do nothing. If this is the decision the team is currently leaning towards, then the firing should probably happen before tomorrow’s game, because if the team builds up any momentum between now and, say, when they decide to fire him, it’ll look even worse. Mendoza’s time is clearing ticking, so the best (and perhaps most humane) thing to do would be to not let it drag on any longer and relieve him of his duties. It’s not entirely fair, but as we’ve learn, baseball isn’t always that fair.

The New York Yankees have obviously had many successful decades in their history, but despite winning more games than anyone in baseball in the ’80s, it ranks among their lowest-achieving. After losing the World Series in 1981, the Bombers wouldn’t play postseason baseball for well over a decade, not playing meaningful October ball again until 1995. Though that stretch was rough on the organizational level, they were fortunate enough to at least enjoy a player who would be one of the franchise greats during that stretch, Don Mattingly.

The Captain of the Yankees, despite having his career cut short by injuries, was a six-time All-Star, won nine Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers, and an MVP award. In a so-so stretch in the Bronx, Mattingly provided excitement by reaching heights few players do.

Donald Arthur Mattingly
Born: April 20, 1961 (Evansville, IN)
Yankees Tenure: 1982-95

Drafted out of an Indiana high school in the 19th round of the 1979 MLB Draft, Mattingly absolutely tore up minor-league pitching from the beginning, and ascended to the big leagues within just a few years. After a solid season in Triple-A in 1982, Mattingly earned a call-up late in that season to join the big club in the Bronx. Wearing No. 46 at the time rather than the number that he would soon make famous, Mattingly recorded a pair of hits in seven games that season.

The future star earned himself a roster spot in 1983, but was unable to find much playing time on the veteran-laden team before returning to Triple-A Columbus. He once again destroyed the minors with an OPS over 1.000, and when a roster spot opened up due to Bobby Murcer’s retirement, Mattingly was called to fill it. Donnie Baseball would never look back.

That season, he showed he could at least survive in the big leagues with a 107 OPS+ in 305 plate appearances. As the years to come would show, Mattingly could do a far more than just survive — as he would enter more than a half-decade as one of the game’s better position players.

1984 was Mattingly’s first chance at a full-time role out of camp, and the lefty took full advantage of it. In 153 games, Donnie Baseball led the league in hits, doubles, and batting average (edging out teammate Dave Winfield in a memorable battle), while topping 20 homers and posting an astute 156 OPS+. That first All-Star season was only a sign of things to come, as Mattingly continued to blister American League pitching throughout the 1980s.

1985 saw Mattingly hit a different level, as he was now paired with speedster Rickey Henderson at the top of the lineup. The combination worked out as well as it could, as Henderson led the league with 146 runs, and Mattingly in RBI with 145. It was another step forward in the power department as well, as he swatted 35 homers, including 26 in the final 76 games. He led the league again in doubles, as well as RBI and total bases, while collecting another All-Star selection, a Silver Slugger, and the first of five straight Gold Gloves. His monster season was capped off with his selection as the 1985 American League MVP.

The following year was debatably even better for Mattingly. In 1986, the Yankees’ first baseman played in all 162 games, leading the league with a franchise-record (!) 238 hits and 53 doubles, also leading the majors at 388 total bases while swatting 30-plus homers once again en route to an AL-best (and career-best) 161 OPS+. He placed second in MVP voting, behind Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens, but he continued to build on his trophy case, in the middle of what continued to be a stellar run.

As Mattingly entered his late-20s, he continued to produce as the leader of the Yankees. From 1987-89, the team captain averaged well over 20 homers, hit to the tune of a 136 OPS+, and collected an All-Star selection and a Gold Glove Award in each of those three years, as well as a Silver Slugger for good measure. The first of those seasons was one for the record books in two different ways, as Mattingly tied a record with homers in eight consecutive games from July 8th through the 18th and set a new standard with six grand slams in one year (a mark since tied by Cleveland’s Travis Hafner in 2006). It was a bit of a quirk, as he never hit a slam before ’87 and never hit another one after that year, but it was impressive nonetheless.

At the very beginning of the 1990 season, Mattingly signed a five-year $19.3 million deal, making him the highest-paid player in baseball. Despite the big price tag, this was also the time that Donnie Baseball’s career took a turn for the worse. By mid-season, he was hitting under .250, with essentially no power in the bat. It was not without reason, as the back he injured a few years prior was acting up again, and it was enough to force him to miss most of the season from July onward. It was the worst year of his career, as he hit just five homers with a 72 wRC+ in 428 plate appearances.

1991 was a subpar offensive year again, as Mattingly had a 99 wRC+ and hit just nine home runs in 152 games. He would experience a couple of bounce-back seasons in 1992 and ‘93, hitting 14 and 17 home runs respectively, and posting a 114 OPS+ in that span. He was no slouch, but his career was slowing down awfully fast for a 32-year-old former superstar.

Mattingly played well in the 1994 season, in what looked to be a prime chance for him to make his postseason debut with the Yanks leading the AL at 70-43, but it was a year that was cut short due to the strike. Although play resumed in ‘95, it was another disappointing year for Mattingly, now 34, and his worst in a few years with just six homers and a .754 OPS. Despite all this, he turned on the jets down the stretch as the Yankees just barely secured the first AL Wild Card with a 22-6 finish, Mattingly batting .321 with a .472 slugging percentage in his final month of regular-season play. He knew that he was probably jeopardizing any playing future due to severe wear and tear on his back through this kind of play, but his long wait for meaningful October baseball was over.

Although their postseason run only lasted through the Division Series thanks to a furious comeback by Seattle, Mattingly hit .417 with four doubles and a homer in his first postseason experience. It was a run that included one of the most thrilling moments in Yankees history, which literally made the old Yankee Stadium shake.

That postseason would come to stand as the end of Mattingly’s playing career at the age of 34. The Yankees would, of course, go on to win four World Series in the next five years.

Despite the lack of team success during his tenure, Mattingly’s impact on the franchise is impossible to deny. Not only did he help to usher in that new era of success, but there is something to be said for being the statistical and emotional leader of a team through forgettable times. Mattingly was also simply one of the game’s best at the peak of a career that was unfortunately cut short. The ripple effects of his leadership were felt during the dynasty that followed, as his character was held in the highest reverence by the likes of Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, and Paul O’Neill.

After his playing days were over, Mattingly went on to a successful career in the dugout, beginning as a hitting coach with the Yankees from 2004-06. He was bumped up to bench coach in 2007 and interviewed to succeed Joe Torre as Yankees skipper, but the club elected to go with Joe Girardi. So Mattingly joined Torre when he took the job as Dodgers manager, and he ended up succeeding him in LA in 2011. He was there at the ascendance of the Dodgers’ dynasty, winning the first three of their dozen division titles since 2013 before Dave Roberts replaced him. Mattingly then went on to lead the Marlins and garnered NL Manager of the Year honors for a surprise Wild Card berth with the Fish in the shortened 2020. He got his first taste of World Series play as the bench coach of the 2025 Blue Jays, but a ring continues to elude him. He currently serves as the bench coach for the Phillies, where his son Preston is the GM under Dave Dombrowski.

Although Mattingly has made a fair mark in the dugout for other franchises, it obviously pales in comparison to his impact on an otherwise dark period for the Yankees. His excellent play was poorly timed as far as the team goes, but that does not diminish its significance.

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.

In 2023, I thought it would be fun to title my series previews using lyrics from Beastie Boys songs. It seemed like a fine idea until the Phillies found themselves seven games under .500 in early June. I decided that they no longer deserved me making the effort to find an appropriate song lyric. Once I stopped, the team promptly began to play better.

As you may have noticed, I had been using Guns N’ Roses lyrics for my series preview titles, and just like in 2023, it hasn’t been going very well for the team. Therefore, GNR is being shelved, and I am switching back to the player-focused opposition research previews from last season. If the team’s fortunes turn around, feel free to thank me.

After a dreadful homestand, the Phillies will head to Wrigley Field to face the Cubs. Despite the Phillies’ success at home in recent seasons, it is probably for the best that they get away from the understandably irate hometown fans for a little bit.

After a slow start, the Cubs enter the series on a five-game winning streak, partly because they’ve had the good fortune of playing the Phillies and the Mets. One of their hottest hitters in second baseman Nico Hoerner, who appears to be adding top offensive performance to his elite defensive game.

Hoerner spent the first seven years of his career as an excellent defender (two Gold Gloves) and adequate hitter. You can do far worse than a Gold Glove middle infielder putting up an OPS over .700. But this season, he has been far more than adequate. He’s batting .325 with three home runs (his career high for a season is ten) and leads the NL with 21 RBIs.

There’s a good chance the Hoerner won’t be able to keep it up and he’ll slowly regress closer to the numbers we’re used to. But if he can find a way to continue this performance for a full season, he’ll likely find himself in MVP discussions at the end of the year.

Pennant year song battle

It’s a Mistake by Men at Work defeated Clumsy to hold on to the title.

The next contender comes from 2022 and describes how most Phillies fans feel about the team right now: I Hate U by SZA:

Vote now:

Additional thought about the series

Maybe the team really has collapsed, and the future is as bleak as some want to believe. But I still have trouble looking at the roster and seeing a bad team, despite what the on-field results indicate. It would be one thing if the older players were showing a drastic drop off, but that hasn’t really been the problem. It just seems to be a team-wide malaise in which they’ve been a special combination of unlucky and bad.

This core has gone through other awful stretches in recent seasons (Think May 2023 and July 2024) and eventually came out of it, so there’s reason to believe they will do so again. But darned if this hasn’t been painful to watch.

This past Friday, amid the Mets' then-eight-game losing streak, president of baseball operations David Stearns spoke with reporters in the dugout ahead of the team's three-game series with the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

Stearns, who regularly makes himself available to reporters once per homestand and also speaks to provide updates on big injuries or big player moves, does not ordinarily have the kind of press gaggle that he did on Friday.

The Mets were on the road. There was no injury to announce. There was no move to discuss.

Stearns was simply being accountable, given the Mets' rough stretch.

That day, Stearns expressed confidence in manager Carlos Mendoza, talked about the team's offensive difficulties, and said that urgency was not the issue.

Then, the Mets went out and got swept by the Cubs, extending their losing streak to 11 games while falling to 7-15 on the year.

The season is by no means lost, but it's getting to a point where the Mets are flirting with digging a hole that might be too big to climb out of.

With that as the backdrop, who is to blame for what has gone wrong this season?

Let's assess it, from least responsible to most...

Carlos Mendoza

Managers are often the fall guys when teams underperform. And Mendoza, who is in the final guaranteed year of the three-year contract he signed when he was hired by Stearns in November of 2023, is a lame duck of sorts.

The Mets hold a club option on Mendoza for the 2027 season, but just overhauled most of his coaching staff and jettisoned a big chunk of the roster's core.

Still, there's seemingly not much Mendoza could be doing that would change what has befallen the Mets.

During their 11-game losing streak, the Mets have lost nine times because they couldn't score more than a few runs, and lost twice because Kodai Senga got shellacked.

This entire streak has also come without Juan Soto, which should add an asterisk to it -- especially when assessing the manager.

Meanwhile, already without Soto, the Mets recently lost Jorge Polanco to the IL.

That has left Mendoza to insert players who would either be backups or in Triple-A into a lineup that was already drastically underperforming.

If there's one thing that is fair to partially lay at the feet of Mendoza, it's the alarming amount of mental errors the team has made, including forgetting how many outs there are and being out of position. But it's unfair to blame him for whatever has been going on with Francisco Lindor, who has been in a bit of a fog in the field at times.

With all that said, it's fair to wonder what the Mets will do if their losing streak reaches 13 or 14 games, or if they have a brutal nine-game homestand against the Twins, Rockies, and Nationals.

David Stearns

As the person responsible for assembling the roster, it is Stearns who shoulders much more of the blame for what is happening.

That these struggles are going on a few months after Stearns really put his stamp on the team by moving on from Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil, and Edwin Diaz has put an even bigger magnifying glass on the situation.

However, it's fair to point out that most people who cover baseball for a living (and most projection systems) had the 2026 Mets being a very good team. And after the 2025-26 offseason started slowly for New York, Stearns pounced late, turning the Mets into a team many thought would win the NL East.

But paper doesn't always translate to the field. And while Stearns brought in players whose additions were lauded (including Bo Bichette), his plan also meant that a big portion of the roster would be adjusting on the fly to a new team, a new market, and -- in some cases -- a new position.

About the positional situation...

Bichette being at third base (where he's looked much more smooth lately), a revolving door of players who aren't natural first basemen manning that position, and some others who are natural infielders being in right field with Soto out (including Brett Baty) hasn't helped. But it has also been blown out of proportion. Specifically, fielding issues haven't cost the Mets any games during this losing streak.

It should also be noted that Stearns' infamous "run prevention" term had just as much to do with pitching as it did with defense. It's strange that many seem to have forgotten that.

In any event, the early on-field returns on Stearns' offseason are poor. Aside from Luis Robert Jr., all of the key offensive additions have performed poorly at the plate. That includes Bichette (54 OPS+, uncharacteristically high strikeout rate), Jorge Polanco (who had a 52 OPS+ before landing on the IL) and Marcus Semien, who was brought in mostly for his glove, but whose struggles have been a tough juxtaposition with how Brandon Nimmo is performing for the Rangers -- slashing .311/.386/522 with four homers.

While Nimmo has excelled, the three other core pieces who are no longer Mets are not performing well. Alonso (92 OPS+, two homers), McNeil (94 OPS+), and Edwin Diaz (10.50 ERA, 2.33 WHIP, diminished velocity, possible health issue) have all had their own issues.

Devin Williams, Diaz's replacement, got off to a great start before getting tagged last week in the first game he had pitched in eight days, and blowing the save in Sunday's loss. So the jury is still very much out on that move.

The players

There have been some unforeseen circumstances thrown in the players' way to start the season.

The most crippling was the injury to Soto, which has taken an MVP-level bat out of the middle of the lineup.

Another is the fact that Lindor could still be dealing with the after-effects of surgery on his hamate bone.

The Mets have also played in some truly awful weather conditions over the first three-plus weeks of the season, and have been handed a schedule that borders on the absurd (including the fact that they've already made two separate trips to the West Coast).

But good teams persevere through obstacles, and this Mets team has not done so.

The most alarming thing on the offensive side has been the performance of Bichette. And while Lindor's bat has start to come around, others -- including Baty and Mark Vientos -- haven't done much. Carson Benge has been better lately, but still needs to do a lot more.

There's also the approach, which has been in between far too often, with hitters expanding the zone, failing to work deep counts, hitting the ball on the ground too much, and watching hittable fastballs go by.

On the pitching side of things, Nolan McLean, Clay Holmes, and Freddy Peralta have been formidable in the rotation. But both Senga and David Peterson have struggled so badly lately that their spots in the rotation came into question. 

The bullpen performed well out of the gate, but has stumbled lately, including poor performances by Williams, Luke Weaver, and Brooks Raley -- who were all terrific for the first few weeks of the season.

As has been noted already multiple times, though, this tailspin has been mostly on the offense. And it will be on that group to turn this around before it's too late.