Category: MLB

The 11th in an occasional seriesof profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing careers.

Curtis Pride was born deaf, and when he started playing baseball he was doing it mainly for himself. But the closer he got to becoming the first deaf major leaguer in nearly half a century, the more he realized he was actually playing for a far bigger audience.

“Growing up, I never really had a role model,” he said. “I wanted to be that person because I wanted to tell people that no matter what kind of disability you have, we should not let those disabilities stop us from pursuing our golden dream.”

Yet seven years into what seemed like endless minor league purgatory, Pride’s dream had become a nightmare. He was stuck in double A, where he batted .227 and struck out 110 times in fewer than 400 at-bats. His longtime girlfriend had just broken up with him, his teammates were mocking him behind his back and, at 23, he had crossed the line from prospect to liability.

With a finance degree from William & Mary, he could surely do better things with his life.

So he put away his bat and glove and took a temporary job with a special education program at John F. Kennedy High, his old school, in Maryland, where he quickly learned quitting wasn’t an option. When the students, all of whom had disabilities, found out what he did during the summer, they threw his own words back in his face and insisted he go back. How could he urge them to chase their ambitions if he was willing to give up on his own?

“It kind of hit me. What kind of message would I be sending to them if I walked away from baseball?” he said. “So I thought maybe I should give it another try and see what happens.”

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Less than a year later, Pride was standing at second base in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, doffing his batting helmet to a long-standing ovation he couldn’t hear after doubling in his second big-league at-bat.

“I shed a tear,” said Jim Tracy, Pride’s manager at double-A Harrisburg, where he began his comeback. “That was, for me, a sense of accomplishment for a young man that was driven his whole life to eventually be standing there.

“It was a moving moment.”

“He wanted to be an inspiration,” added Mike Scioscia, Pride’s final big-league manager with the Angels. “He is an inspiration.”

Pride would go on to play 15 more seasons and wouldn’t take the uniform off again until he was forced to, teaching thousands of children (and almost as many adults) that success is possible if you refuse to quit.

“I’ve had so many parents come up to me [and say] ‘wow, you have really given them hope,’” Pride said two days into September, which is Deaf Awareness Month. “To provide that inspiration, that’s more important to me than being a Hall of Famer.”

Pride first learned he could be that inspiration when, as a 17-year-old struggling through his first season of rookie ball in Kingsport, Tenn., he opened a letter from a blind elementary-school student named Amanda. She had always wanted to play baseball, but until she heard about Pride she felt there was no place in the game for a girl with a disability.

The same summer Pride made his professional debut, Amanda set aside her hesitations and joined a tee-ball league.

After his first major league game with the Expos, the trickle of fan mail became a deluge, with hundreds of letters arriving annually from children dealing with everything from hearing and vision loss to debilitating illnesses and injury. Pride answered every one.

“For parents of children with hearing differences, one of the hardest worries to carry is not knowing how to support your own child, or whether they’ll be able to communicate with the people who love them most,” said Cathleen Mathes, president and CEO of the John Tracy Center, a private, nonprofit education center in Los Angeles for infants and preschool children with hearing loss. “Curtis’ story proves that hearing loss puts no barriers on what can be achieved.”

“He’s a shining light,” added Scioscia, who managed Pride for three seasons in Anaheim. “He’s got so much to offer — not only the baseball world, but just [to] people who strive for their goals.”

One of Pride’s goals now is to stay busy.

“I play pickleball every morning. And golf,” said Pride who, 18 years after his last game, isn’t far off his playing weight of 205 pounds.

Pride and his wife Lisa, a former TV journalist, have two children, a daughter Noelle, 22, who is a senior at Ohio State, and son Colten, 19, a sophomore at Central Florida. Noelle has bilateral cochlear implants while Colten has hearing loss in his left ear; both children appeared alongside Judd Hirsch and Amy Smart in the 2024 coming-of-age movie “Rally Caps,” and are active in their father’s advocacy for deaf and hard-of-hearing youth.

For Pride, who has lived most of his life on someone else’s schedule, the free time of retirement in South Florida can be both a luxury and a burden. After his final season as a player with the independent Southern Maryland Blue Crabs in 2008, Pride was hired as the head coach at Gallaudet University, a school for deaf students, taking the team from an 8-23-1 record in his first season to 27 wins in 2014. He was also appointed to the President’s Council of Fitness, Sports and Nutrition under Barack Obama, represented the U.S. at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London and worked as an ambassador for inclusion with Major League Baseball.

But Gallaudet dropped baseball two years ago and MLB scaled back much of its inclusion programming two months into the second Trump administration, so now Pride, 57, coaches part-time with the Louisville Slugger Warriors, an amputee and limb-difference baseball team made up primarily of former and current military members. Pride shares his story in motivational speeches and through his book, “I Felt the Cheers: The Remarkable Silent Life of Curtis Pride” (co-written with Doug Ward, the former publications manager for the Angels).

“I never really thought [I was] different from everyone else,” Pride said on a videoconference call, where he fielded questions by reading lips and real-time captions that scroll across his computer screen. “I never knew what hearing is like so there was never an adjustment for me to make.”

In clinical terms, Pride is profoundly deaf. While others with hearing disorders can perceive certain low-frequency vibrations as sound, for Pride almost everything is completely inaudible without powerful hearing aids. And even then loud environmental vibrations such as a low-flying airplane or a heavy truck passing are no more than faintly perceived.

Pride was 6 months old when doctors told his father John, who served eight presidents in a long government career during which he helped investigate the civil rights noncompliance of Southern states, and mother Sallie, a nurse, their son was deaf. After meeting with doctors, audiologists, speech therapists and the families of other deaf children, Pride’s parents made a series of decisions that would change the course of his life.

Pride could learn to communicate orally, through cued speech or in American Sign Language, they were told. Sign language, or the use of hand signals that correspond to separate words or phrases, is the most common choice in the deaf community while oral communication, which involves reading lips and learning to pronounce words you’ve never heard, is by far the most difficult. Yet that was also the option that presented the best chance for Pride to achieve his maximum potential.

So the Prides chose that one, moving to Silver Spring, Md., and enrolling their son in top educational programs for deaf children. At age 6 they also signed him up to play tee ball with the other neighborhood kids, teaching him his deafness may be an obstacle to a normal life but it was not a wall that separated him from one.

Read more:Deaf since birth, Taft High's Carter Wallace making an impact on the football field

“My mom, she explained to me that it was something that I was born with and that I had to make the most of my situation,” recalled Pride, who speaks clearly but with atypical speech patterns since he cannot hear his own voice and adjust his pronunciations.

“[It] should not keep me from fulfilling my dreams and goals.”

And those dreams and goals weren’t confined to the baseball diamond. As a senior at Kennedy High, where he was the only hard-of hearing student, Pride was arguably one of the greatest prep athletes in the country, batting .509 and making the all-county and all-state teams in basketball while becoming the first player at his school to score more than 1,000 career points.

Soccer, however, was his best sport. Pride was a Parade high school All-American, the national player of the year and was ranked by Kick!, a UK soccer magazine for kids, as one of the top 15 youth players in the world after scoring two of the three U.S. goals in the FIFA U16 world championships in China in 1985.

Pride was also an honor student academically, earning a 3.6 GPA despite not being able to hear any of his teachers. So after the New York Mets selected him in the 10th round of the 1986 amateur draft — ahead of future teammate Tim Salmon and future All-Stars Steve Finley, Chuck Knoblauch and John Olerud — his father insisted the Mets allow Pride to attend William & Mary on a basketball scholarship while playing minor league baseball in the summer, an arrangement that may have slowed his progress as an outfielder but one that allowed him to earn a bachelor’s degree in finance in four years.

Pride often refers to his deafness as a “hearing difference” rather than an impairment or handicap. He wasn’t disabled, he said, he was differently-abled — and in some ways, he thought his deafness actually helped him on the field.

“I relied on my other senses,” he said. “My other senses have been enhanced because of my lack of hearing.”

He had no problem communicating with coaches and teammates as long as they stood in front of him, where he could read their lips. And while his teammates could be distracted by raucous crowds and heckling fans, Pride heard nothing but silence. Some outfielders could be fooled playing balls off the crack of the bat, but Pride got good jumps by watching the swing. He also learned to avoid pickoffs by watching for the shadows of opponents sneaking up behind him.

“He had an innate sense of positioning and really relied on that sense,” said Scioscia, who never saw Pride make an error in parts of three seasons with the Angels. “He worked hard at his craft.”

The first deaf player to excel in the major leagues was Billy “Dummy” Hoy, an outfielder who debuted for the Washington Nationals in 1888. He would go on to play 14 years, batting .288, averaging more than 100 runs scored a season and stealing 596 bases before retiring as the all-time leader in career chances and putouts by an outfielder.

Both records have long-since been eclipsed, but Hoy’s influence lives on in the visual signals umpires use to indicate strikes at the plate and out and safe calls.

At the start of Hoy’s career, those calls were typically made verbally, meaning Hoy would have to turn around and look at the umpire to find out if a pitch was a ball or strike. Opposing pitchers would take advantage of that by quick-pitching Hoy, who eventually asked umpires to indicate strikes with a raise of their right hands.

By 1906, four years after Hoy’s final game, that practice was widespread and by 1908 umpires were required to use visible hand signals alongside verbal calls so players, fielders and fans could understand rulings.

At least six deaf men have played in the majors since Hoy, but Pride is just the second to do so in the last 112 years. And only Hoy appeared in more big-league games than Pride.

“Most of the deaf kids who follow sports know who he is,” Joe Strasser, Pride’s longtime agent, said of his client. “To a deaf kid he is like Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan. And when he talks to them, the kids realize that hey, this guy knows what I’m going through because he went through it himself.”

Pride, like Hoy, also left his own unique mark on the game by inspiring the now-ubiquitous practice of players and coaches covering their mouths during meetings at the mound.

Although there is some disagreement over exactly how that ritual started, Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux insists it began after Pride was called up by the Expos in September 1993. Nine days later Maddux started for the Braves in Montreal and took the mound remembering something his brother Mike, also a major league pitcher, had told him about Pride.

“He always reads lips, then tells the coach or the manager exactly what they said,” Maddux later recounted to the Athletic. “When I started [covering my mouth], I started doing it because of Curtis Pride.”

That wasn’t Pride’s only contribution to the teams he played for. A slashing and slender left-handed hitter with blinding speed, Pride hit .300 or better six times, stole 20 or more bases seven times and reached double digits in homers in six seasons, mostly in the minors.

“His physical abilities were flooring,” said Tracy, who managed Pride during his best minor-league season, when he hit .356 with 15 homers and 21 steals in 50 games for Harrisburg. “I think he was driven to prove that hey, not only am I a player, I’m a major league player.”

That last part didn’t go so well. Because while Pride did everything every big-league team asked of him — homering in his first games for both the Red Sox and Yankees — it was never enough to make him an everyday player. Yet Pride wouldn’t quit, Strasser said, urging his agent to call around each winter hoping to get one club interested.

“I would say ‘Curtis, you understand that if you retire now, you would make more money working for an investment banking firm,’” Strasser said. “He wanted to keep playing as long as he could because he saw what kind of effect he would have on kids. That’s why he kept doing it.”

Pride hit .444 with three extra-base hits and five RBIs in nine at-bats as a September call-up for the Expos in 1993. But he got just 63 more big-league at-bats for Montreal before being let go two years later.

After signing with Detroit, he played a career-high 95 games for the Tigers in 1996, hitting .300 with 10 homers and 11 stolen bases — only one teammate with at least 300 plate appearances did better — then batted .252 in 70 games for Atlanta two years later, only to be released both times.

“If a team had given me a chance to be an everyday player, I have no doubt in my mind that I’d have done well,” said Pride, who spent parts of 11 seasons in the majors, hitting .250 in 421 games for six teams. “It’s one of those unfortunate situations where I [was] a pinch-hitter or the fourth or fifth outfielder off the bench.”

As for why he couldn’t stick, Pride has a theory, one that goes back to the second of two short trials with the Red Sox. In the 13th inning of a midseason game in Toronto, the Blue Jays’ Chris Woodward drove a ball to the alley in left-center that center fielder Carl Everett misplayed after he saw Pride closing in from his right.

Read more:Wes Parker has fond memories of his Dodgers career, and no regrets that he ended it

The mistake cost Boston the game and even though Everett took ownership of the error, many incorrectly blamed Pride’s inability to hear his teammate calling for the ball. Boston released Pride less than two weeks later.

“That sort of reinforced his fear that he had to be twice as good to get half the chance,” said Ward, the co-author of Pride’s biography. “He just didn’t have the margin for error that maybe some of the other players had.”

Pride would play just 108 more games in the majors, making an encore with the Expos and spending a week with the Yankees before finishing with three short stays with the Angels; at 37, he walked and scored a run in his final plate appearance on the last day of the 2006 season.

He would play one more season in the minors and another in the independent Atlantic League before retiring after 23 pro seasons and 1,853 professional games, his debt to the special education students at John F. Kennedy High more than paid off and his legacy as an inspiration secure.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Texas Rangers ace Jacob deGrom sat back on the visitor’s bench at Chase Field this weekend pondering whether any pitcher will ever strike out 3,000 batters again, let alone win 300 games, but ever, so quietly, we’re about to witness a historic pitching feat.

One that hasn’t been accomplished since 2009, and one that we may never see again.

Detroit Tigers reliever Kenley Jansen is on the verge of reaching his 500^th career save, a feat accomplished only by Hall of Famers Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, who each eclipsed 600.

“Now that I’m getting close to it," Jansen tells USA TODAY Sports, “it’s a wow moment. How did I achieve all of these? It’s unbelievable. It shows you how fast it goes."

Jansen, one of only three active pitchers with more than 300 saves, entered Saturday with 495, five shy of an automatic ticket into Cooperstown.

“I can’t wait to see it," Houston Astros executive De Jon Watson says. “He’s worked so hard to get to this point, maintaining success, and he keeps climbing the ladder. His journey is amazing."

Then again, without Watson, the baseball world may never have heard of Jansen.

Jansen was a 6-foot-5, minor-league catcher in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization trying to save his career. He had fine defensive skills, but he badly struggled at the plate. He had a .229/.310/.337 slash line with 15 homers in 953 plate appearances in 304 minor-league games.

Watson, the Dodgers’ vice president of player development at the time, visited him at Triple-A Albuquerque and laid down the truth. He told Jansen, who was hitting .185 with no extra-base hits, that if he wanted to be a big-leaguer, he needed to give up catching and covert to being a hard-throwing reliever.

“He did not want to hear it," Watson said. “He was adamantly opposed. I told him to talk to your family, talk to your parents. He talked to them, took a a day, came back, and said, “Let’s go do it.’’’

Says Jansen: “I still remember that day. I didn’t want to pitch, and I told De Jon Watson that I still wanted to catch. I talked with my mom and my dad and then my dad told me that he always wanted to see me as a pitcher. That made it smoother for me."

Jansen was sent to their Class A Inland Empire team in San Bernardino, Calif., to be with revered pitching coach Charlie Hough. He began throwing 95-97 mph in his side sessions, and in his first outing, threw 96-99 mph, and struck out the side.

“Oh my goodness,’’ Hough told Watson, “we may have something here."

Says Jansen: “I remember feeling at that moment this could be something special."

Jansen was called up to the big leagues a year later, posted a 0.67 ERA in 25 games for the Dodgers, became the closer in 2012, and now after 3,844 batters faced, 978 games and 495 saves, he’s on the verge of history.

Who would have imagined that the same man who caught Clayton Kershaw’s first professional game in the minor leagues in 2006, and who recorded his first save in the same game that Kershaw pitched eight shutout innings in 2010, now could be joining him one day in Cooperstown?

“I know when I get my 500^th save," Jansen said, “I’m going to get a call from that man, and De Jon is going to say to me, 'So, how about that? You didn’t want to pitch. Now, look at you.’ I know I’m going to hear all about it when I get to 500."

Oh yeah, you better believe it.

“I can’t wait," Jansen said, “because I appreciate him so much for what he did for me. He was always hard on me, and I didn’t understand it at the time, but he saw something special in me. He believed in me before I believed in myself.

“Believe me, I’m not here without him."

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association met for about an hour Thursday in New York, as they do just nearly every week, this time talking about the domestic violence policy and the debt-service rules.

The meeting ended, they promised to convene again next week, and will continue to discuss non-core economic issues for the next few months.

When it comes to talking about that monstrous elephant in the room, the one that’s expected to result in a Dec. 1 lockout that could last anywhere from a few months to Memorial Day weekend to the entire season, that’s going to have to wait.

Nightengale's Notebook: From failed catcher to Cooperstown? 500 saves beckons for Jansen

Those serious talks may not transpire until February, just like the 99-day lockout in 2021, when nothing became urgent until spring training was about to commence.

But once they do, and MLB reiterates their demand for a salary cap, and the union again tells them to take a hike, circle last Friday on the CBA negotiations calendar.

This was the date the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays became the first teams in baseball to clinch playoff berths. Yes, the two smallest markets in all of baseball are the first ones invited to the October dance.

And the proof, the union declares, that baseball does not have a competitive balance problem.

The Mets evened up the Subway Series on Saturday, walloping the Yankees 12-2 as Gerrit Cole couldn’t keep the visitors from launching balls over the fences. It was the second straight concerning start on that front for Cole, who insists that he’s perfectly healthy but has noticed the issue and believes there’s some ironing out to do mechanically — hopefully he gets that in line quickly, because time is running out before the postseason and Cole is expected to be one of the team’s top three starters in a short series to determine their fate.

Before the finale of the series gets underway, we’ve got some things on deck for you to check out. Matt starts us off with a look at your responses to Aaron Judge’s return and how far you think the Yankees will go with him back in the mix. Then, Peter covers the Roundup where the Rays and Red Sox both managed to secure wins, John celebrates Bernie Williams on his birthday, and Estevão compares how the Yankees and Mets have done covering games without their superstars this season. After the game, John will return to deliver the weekly social media spotlight.

Today’s Matchup:

New York Yankees vs. New York Mets

Time: 1:35 p.m. EST

TV: YES Network, SNY

Venue: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY

Questions/Prompts:

1. How big of a concern have Gerrit Cole’s last two starts been on a scale of 1-10?

2. Are you going to watch any of the Jets or Giants’ season openers today?

The Athletic | Brendan Kuty ($): All of a sudden, Gerrit Cole has a home run problem. He allowed four last week against the Padres including the first three batters of the game and another three against the Mets on Saturday, the combined seven the most he’s given up in a two-start stretch in his career. He didn’t have an immediate answer when asked about the cause, but did agree with the observation that chase and swing and miss have regressed significantly this season. He and Aaron Boone maintained that health is not an issue and sounded confident they would find the necessary adjustment. This stretch is reminiscent of Cole’s 2022 campaign, when he led MLB with 33 home runs surrendered.

New York Post | Zach Braziller: The recent turnaround in the Yankees’ offensive performances seems to coincide with Cody Bellinger’s return from injury. With another long ball in the loss to the Mets on Saturday, Bellinger has launched three home runs in his last four games. His bat is getting hot just at the right time, the left fielder slashing .368/.359/.605 in September, and his return alongside Ben Rice’s resurgence at the dish helps take some pressure off Aaron Judge, allowing the captain to focus on regaining his timing in time for the playoffs.

SNY | Phillip Martinez: Clarke Schmidt dominated in what he and the team are hoping is his final rehab appearance before joining the big league team for the first time this season. Schmidt threw 1.1 scoreless innings of relief, striking out three while requiring just 21 pitches for Double-A Somerset on Saturday. Schmidt hasn’t pitched in MLB since undergoing Tommy John surgery in July of 2025 and focused his rehab assignment specifically to join the bullpen when he is activated to the major league roster.

Yahoo! Sports | J.P. Hoornstra: Former top Yankees pitching prospect Chase Hampton has been claimed off waivers by the Nationals after the Yankees designated him for assignment to clear a 40-man roster space for Aaron Judge’s return. Hampton was a consensus top-10 Yankees prospect and top-100 prospect overall before suffering a forearm injury in 2024 and undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2025. The 25-year-old righty was drafted by the Yankees in the sixth round of the 2022 MLB Draft and at one point was the top-ranked pitching prospect in the organization before injuries derailed his career. The Nationals have assigned him to Double-A Harrisburg where he will look to improve upon his 8.18 ERA in 55 innings this year.

The Mariners dominated the A’s to a 19-1 victory on Saturday night. The fun got started early as Dominic Canzone sent out a two-run home run to put the Mariners up early in the first inning.

The Mariners didn’t stop there; in rare form, they continued to pour the runs on. For an offense and team with such high expectations this year, it was nice to watch them go out and seemingly play up to their full potential.

Randy Arozarena would follow up Canzone in the third with a three-run home run of his own.

But the Mariners weren’t relying purely on power; contact played a role too, and they stayed patient in the box. The A’s walked six and hit one over the course of the game. It’s rare to see the Mariners take advantage of free baserunners, so enjoy it while you can, folks!

The A’s ended up getting one back in the 4th after a bad throw by Woo on a dribbler back to the pitcher put men on first and third, with a grounder from Shea Langeliers leading to a fielder’s choice that brought home the A’s only run of the game.

But the Mariners picked Woo right up in the next inning. Michael Arroyo led off the inning with the first hit of his career on a double, hopefully the first of many.

Weston Wilson came through with a single on the very next at-bat to bring Arroyo around and put the Mariners up 6-1, making the gap five again.

Wilson would advance to second on a fly ball from Crawford. Randy Arozarena would bring home his third RBI of the night with a single bouncing off the glove of A’s second baseman and former Mariner Donovan Walton.

The Mariners kept the pressure on in the 5th inning and continued to punish the A’s for giving up soft contact. A Josh Naylor single was immediately regretted as Cole “Cole Young” Young followed it up with his 17th home run of the year.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but to me Cole Young has been as advertised so far this year. The 22-year-old is well within reach of a 20-homer season in only his first full season in the majors. Having already logged 4 bWAR so far this season, the future is bright for the former first-round pick.

Jealous of the shine their fellow infielders were getting, both Michael Arroyo and J.P. Crawford decided to get in on the action. Arroyo smashed an inside fastball for his first career home run with two outs in the 7th:

After a double from Weston Wilson, his third hit of the game, J.P. Crawford brought him home with a home run of his own, pushing the Mariners’ lead into double digits heading into the bottom of the seventh:

An error by the A’s in the top of the 8th allowed Victor Robles, pinch-hitting for Canzone, to reach first. Julio punished the A’s mistakes again with a single of his own for his third hit of the night, men on first and second. Josh Naylor decided to get in on the fun and doubled down the right-field line to score Robles and put himself on second, with Julio on third.

Cole Young drove one to deep second base, but ran hard to beat out an infield single and bring in another, his second hit of the night and third RBI of the game.

Michael Arroyo, not to be ignored, follows that up with his third hit of the night and his second RBI of the game, bringing home Brock Rodden, who was pinch-running for Naylor. Arroyo finished with three hits and a triple shy of the cycle.

Weston Wilson singled to load the bases and notch his fourth hit of the game. Where were you for the Weston Wilson 4-hit game?

Lazaro Montes was sent to pinch-hit for Randy Arozarena. Not wanting to be left out of the scoring, Montes notched an RBI of his own, drawing a four-pitch walk and forcing Cole Young home for the Mariners’ 16th run of the game.

Position player Carlos Cortes came in to record the final out in the eighth, and remained in the game for the top of the 9th, promptly walking the bases loaded. Cole Young doubled to drive in Julio and Cal to put the Mariners up 18-1, his 4th and 5th RBI of the game.

A sacrifice fly by Arroyo to right field brought home Rodden to put the Mariners up 19-1, his third RBI of the game.

As the 19th run crossed the plate to put the Mariners up 18 the Mariners set a team record for the largest margin of victory in team history. The true standouts today on offense were Michael Arroyo and Cole Young. The Greenhorns showed up big for the Mariners tonight, hitting a home run each and driving in eight of the Mariners 19 runs. Cole Young continues to show he belongs, and Michael Arroyo notches his first hit, first extra-base hit, and first home run in the first road game of his career. If both can continue to play like they have tonight, getting on and driving runners in, the Mariners might just be closer to securing a playoff spot than we think.

Now, as much as the offense deserves credit for a great performance this time out, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a resurgent Bryan Woo. Woo has struggled on the road this year, but more recently the 26-year-old has started to find his form both at home and on the road. Last time out, Woo dazzled at home, going eight innings of one-hit ball, giving up just two walks and striking out nine. Woo kept the good vibes going tonight with another great performance against the A’s. Woo went six innings, giving up three hits, two walks, and tallying five strikeouts, with just one (unearned) run allowed. The one run being counted as unearned preserves a 17-inning streak that Woo has against the A’s over his last few starts. Woo has also seemed to find his form on the road again as he continues to add to a string of impressive starts he’s had on the road since the beginning of August, owning a 1.59 ERA over 17 innings since the start of August. It’s encouraging to see Woo stay strong and even improve late in the season. With only a handful of games remaining, every performance matters, and Woo’s recent dominance has come at the perfect time as the Mariners continue to push for the playoffs.

The Mariners showed up dominantly tonight in every part of the game, keeping the A’s stifled to one run and scoring 19 of their own. Truly a full-team offensive effort, with nearly every player contributing a hit. The Mariners are still in the race for the playoffs, and wins like tonight are a big step towards making that happen. Obviously, we can’t expect the Mariners to show up like this every game, but games like this could be the start of a great run right when they need it most. The Mariners had one of the easiest schedules remaining at the All-Star break, and that hasn’t changed, as they are set to face the Angels, the Rockies, the Astros, and then the Angels again to finish the season. The last time the Mariners were in a position like this, I distinctly recall the Angels eliminating them at the end of the season; I’d like to avoid having to witness that twice.

We know how good this team is; we have seen what it can look like when it’s firing on all cylinders. Let’s hope the Mariners haven’t spent all their runs in one place and this is just a sign of more to come.

Nasty result tonight. The A’s had their butts handed to them in this one, dropping the middle game of the series to the Seattle Mariners 19-1. Nothing went right on either side of the ball. Still have a chance at the series win tomorrow.

More to come…

Mariners 19, Athletics 1

Historic blowouts (complimentary): Randy Arozarena, +.18 WPA

Historic blowouts (derogatory): Josh Naylor, -.07 WPA

Game Thread Comment of the Day:

Well, you know what they say: “You can’t win ‘em all.“ On paper, it looked like maybe we should have won this one, and if you were keeping score, it would not have been lost at you that we basically won eight out of the nine innings that were played tonight. Sadly, however, that’s not how baseball works. Early in the season, before his forced vacation in Reno, we became very familiar with Brandon Pfaadt, tonight’s starter, pitching at least okay for a handful of innings and then having there be the One Big Inning™ where everything kinda blew up. Upon Brandon’s return, we still saw some of that, except that the offending innings were generally pretty mild—one or two or three runs at most, which kept things close enough that we could get back into it. But that was not the case tonight.

He was going up against former first-round draft pick and general underperformer Kumar Rocker, and in terms of the numbers, it was a very favorable matchup. Rocker is often wild, and throws a bunch of pitches, and gives up a lot of walks, and leaves ballgames a lot earlier than you tend to want your starter to leave. Irritatingly, though, he was quite efficient in the early going tonight, as he and Pfaadt traded quick, scoreless innings in the first and second. After two innings, Rocker had thrown 24 pitches; Pfaadt, despite having given up two hits to Rocker’s none, had only thrown 23. Pfaadt had another shutdown inning in the top of the third, adding only 12 more pitches to his count and setting down the Rangers in order, and Tim Tawa led off the bottom of the third with a triple off the wall in pretty much straightaway center field:

Pavin Smith, who was for many of us a surprise call-up from Reno today, then grounded a single past Corey Seager and into left field to drive in Timmy. Three quick outs followed, but we’d drawn first blood against Rocker and that Rangers. 1-0 DBACKS

Pfaadt recorded another 1-2-3 inning in the top of the fourth, we sat down in order against Rocker in the bottom half, and then the fifth inning rolled around, much like a giant stone boulder bearing down a steep slope in a narrow passageway, heading straight for our guy. And alas, Brandon Pfgaadt was no Indiana Jones; he couldn’t get out of the way.

It started with a leadoff dinger by Wyatt Langford to tie the game, and was followed by a single, a stoledn abse, a sacrifice bunt, another single that scored a run, a hit by pitch. and then a fielder’s choice that looked like an inning-ending double play but which was overturned by a review that determined that Brandon Pfaadt’s foot was perhaps not on the bag when he ran over to cover first base. The call on the field was “safe,” and while the replays we saw on the broadcast really looked like they’d be enough to overturn that call, but it was not to be, and the call stood. That completely knocked Pfaadt off kilter, and the next three batters went single-double-single before he finally struck out Wyatt Langford, the tenth batter of the inning, to put it to bed. 6-1 Texas

And that was pretty much that. Somewhat surprisingly, Pfaadt came out and pitched the sixth, and he even recorded the first two outs in the seventh, and it was all good and all zeros, but the damage had been done.

Kumar Rocker, meanwhile, walked Nolan Arenado and Tim Tawa to lead off the bottom of the fifth, and that ended his night, and Texas got their bullpen involved and that bullpen also proved to be irritatingly effective. Both of the leadoff walks were left stranded. Rangers’ opening day starter Nathan Eovaldi, fresh off the IL and returning to big league action without any rehab starts or anything, let us get a second run in the bottom of the sixth, thanks to one-out singles by Gabriel Moreno and Geraldo Perdomo, followed by a Corbin Carroll sacrifice fly that scored Moreno from third, which narrowed the game to 6-2 Texas

But that was where it stayed. Jonathan Loaisiga, Derek Law, and Juan Morillo put zeroes up the rest of the way for us, but there was nothing further doing from the offense, despite us putting the leadoff runners on in both the seventh and eighth innings. And so it was. 6-2 Texas FINAL

Loss Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs

The Lost Ark: Nobody.
The Last Crusade: Tim Tawa (3 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 1 3B, 1 BB, +10% WPA)
The Crystal Skull: Brandon Pfaadt (6 2/3 IP, 10 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 1 HR, -34% WPA)

It was a fairly sparse Gameday Thread this evening, with 201 comments at time of writing. Precious few recs got handed out tonight as well, and pretty much the only comments to go Sedona Red were concentrated at the start of the game, when folks were still marveling at the return of Pavin Smith to a major league roster and a starting lineup. As such, tonight’s Comment of the Game goes to onedotfive, for this solid suggestion about how we might find a way to turn his presence to our collective advantage in the remaining days of the season:

Works for me….I think Baxter is creepy anyway.

So join us tomorrow afternoon for the rubber match of the series. Hologram Eddie takes the mound for us; Cal Quantrill goes for Texas. First pitch is scheduled for 1:10pm AZ time. Hope to see you around the place!

As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!

Smokies right-hander Jake Knapp went on the 7-day injured list and right-hander Kenyi Perez joins Knoxville from the Development List.

Iowa Cubs

The Iowa Cubs choked on the Toledo Mud Hens (Tigers), 9-7.

Andrew Wantz started this game for Iowa and held Toledo to just one run on three hits over 3.1 innings. Wantz walked four and struck out three.

Iowa had a 7-1 lead going into the top of the fifth inning, but Toledo scored six runs in the fifth to tie it. Five of those runs came off of Luis Peralta, who gave up five of the runs on four hits over one inning. Peralta walked one and struck out one.

Tyler Ferguson allowed a two-run home run in the top of the ninth to take the loss. Ferguson’s final line was two runs on three hits over one inning. He struck out two and did not walk anyone.

Right fielder Chas McCormick hit a two-run home run in the fourth inning, his 14th on the year. McCormick was 2 for 5.

Left fielder Jordan Nwogu hit a two-run triple in the fourth inning. Nwogu went 2 for 4 with three total RBI. He scored once.

Center fielder Justin Dean went 2 for 5 with a stolen base. He drove home Nwogu after a bunt single in the fourth.

McCormick’s home run.

Nwogu’s triple.

Knoxville Smokies

The Knoxville Smokies were vassalized by the Birmingham Barons (White Sox), 5-2.

Starter Dawson Netz lasted 3.2 innings and gave up two runs on two hits and one walk. Both runs scored after he left the game in the fourth. Netz struck out six.

Luis Martinez-Gomez let in those two inherited runs, but then he settled in and threw 3.1 scoreless innings of relief, giving up just the one hit. Martinez-Gomez walked three and struck out five.

Frankie Scalzo Jr. pitched the eighth inning and got shelled for three runs on three hits including a solo home run to the first batter he faced. Scalzo walked two, hit one batter and struck out two in his one inning of work.

Both Knoxville runs came in the sixth inning when left fielder Carter Trice tripled in a run and then scored on a sacrifice fly by shortstop Angel Cepeda. Trice went 2 for 3 with a double, a triple and a walk. Cepeda was 1 for 3 with the sac fly.

That’s all three hits Knoxville had tonight.

The start of this game was delayed 1 hour and 43 minutes because of rain.

The Braves have now all-but won the NL East after winning the first two games of this three-game series against the Phillies. Tyler Mahle continues to cement his spot as the presumptive game 2 starter going into the playoffs, with another solid outing Saturday. Perhaps most encouragingly, the offense showed some life, which has been a struggle recently for Atlanta. Needless to say, the Braves will need the offense to show up to have success in October.

Braves News

The Braves bowled over the Phillies 12-2, with a strong outing from Tyler Mahle and a big 4th inning from the offense.

MLB News

The A’s activated former Braves’ top prospect and star catcher Shea Langeliers, after a long absence since July.

The Rays called up top 100 pitching prospect Brody Hopkins Saturday, as he still awaits his MLB debut.

The Twins called up top outfield prospect Emmanual Rodriguez.

The Mets and Yankees conclude the Bronx half of the Subway Series on Sunday at 1:35 p.m. on SNY.

Mets Notes

• Carson Benge is batting .293/.358/.447 with 17 doubles, three triples, 15 home runs, 51 RBI, and 16 stolen bases since May 13 (112 games)
• Christian Scott has pitched to a 3.81 ERA and 1.29 WHIP. He also has 120 strikeouts in 99.1 innings pitched this season
• Scott is looking to pitch out of the fifth inning again after allowing two runs in 4.1 innings against the Giants in his last start
• Cam Schlittler has an AL-best 2.01 ERA and 220 strikeouts in 30 starts. He's also tied for the AL lead with a 0.92 WHIP

Today's Lineups

Here's how some of the Mets top prospects did down in minor league action on Saturday...

INF Emilien Pitre, Triple-A Syracuse 

Pitre kept up his solid production since joining Triple-A with two more hits against the St. Paul Saints. The 23-year-old finished 2-for-4 with a walk, two runs scored and an RBI and is hitting .292 with a .802 OPS in 18 games for Syracuse. His RBI came with two strikes and two outs in the second inning and extended the Mets' lead to 4-2.

1B/3B Billy Amick, Triple-A Syracuse

Amick hit his seventh home run with Syracuse and his 14th in the Mets organization since coming over in a trade. He has 37 long balls total in 116 games this season.

The home run came on an 0-2 pitch with a runner on first and gave Syracuse a 7-3 advantage. Amick, 23, finished 1-for-5 and although he's hitting .221 in Triple-A (compared to .307 in Double-A Binghamton), he still has a .844 OPS thanks to his power.

C Kevin Parada, Triple-A Syracuse

Perhaps lost in the shuffle of prospects is Parada who is quietly having a great second stint in Triple-A after finishing the season there in 2025 but struggling. Now 25 years old, Parada is slashing .298/.375/.452 with two home runs and 16 RBI in 28 games with Syracuse after getting promoted despite struggling in Double-A.

Parada went 1-for-3 in the No. 9 hole, but also had a throwing error at catcher, his third.

SS Mitch Voit, Double-A Binghamton

Voit extended his hit streak to five games following a 1-for-4 day for the Rumble Ponies. It wasn't all good for the 21-year-old, though, as he was caught stealing second and had a throwing error.

Still, Voit is hitting .347 with a .947 OPS in 29 games since getting promoted to Double-A.

Carson Benge decided to show off for the neighbors Saturday. 

It’s already well established in Queens that the rookie outfielder is a multitool threat, but that might be lost on fans in The Bronx unaware of the scene across town. 

On a day of Mets offensive firepower, Benge resonated loudly with a 2-for-5 performance that included a homer in the team’s 12-2 victory over the Yankees. 

If his bat wasn’t enough, Benge also robbed Aaron Judge by racing into the right-center gap in the eighth for a full-extension diving catch. 

Benge homered against Gerrit Cole in the third inning before delivering an RBI single in the sixth. 

“[Benge] doesn’t impress me anymore,” Juan Soto said. “I think he’s a superstar. He’s doing things that superstars do every day. Every day he will find a way to make us smile with the swing, with the running, the throws. It’s incredible.” 

It was a needed contribution from Benge, whose NL Rookie of the Year candidacy had cooled in recent weeks.

He began the day with a .577 OPS in September, his first real offensive drop-off following a torrid summer. 

Interim manager Andy Green said he is hopeful that Brett Baty will start Sunday’s series finale; he was available Saturday off the bench but did not play.

Baty is recovering from knee discomfort he sustained while running to first base last week in Miami. 

“We still felt [Saturday] he needed a little bit more time before putting nine innings on him,” said Green, who inserted Nick Morabito in left field and moved Soto to DH. 

Robert Stock will remain as part of a six-man rotation and pitch Wednesday against the Orioles, according to Green. The right-hander last pitched Wednesday. 

The Mets’ six home runs were their most in a Subway Series game.

The previous high was five, both times at Yankee Stadium (in 2018 and ’24).

Once again the Giants offense made things interesting against the San Diego Padres, and once again they came up short. 

A late outburst of power from the unlikely sources of Drew Cavanaugh (his first career HR) and Drew Gilbert forced the Padres bullpen to rally their arms with Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller stopping the buck to serve the Giants their second loss in the series, and seventh of their last nine games against San Diego. 

The afternoon didn’t start with the Giants playing catch-up. Two batters into the bottom half of the 1st, Rafael Devers put San Francisco up by two with his 37th home run of the season.

The 2-run jog earned Devers his 61st and 62nd runs batted-in at the intimidating cavern that was/is Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T/Oracle Park, the second highest RBI total after Barry Bonds’ 71 in 2001. Devers’ 19 home runs at Oracle are the most by a player not named Barry Bonds and is tied with the ‘02 Bonds model for fifth most HR in a season at 3rd and King. (Fun fact: Devers never hit more than 16 in a single season at Fenway.)

Unfortunately, the two-run lead in the hands of the rookie southpaw Cesar Perdomo didn’t last. Nor did the one-run lead regained on Shay Whitcomb’s solo shot in the 2nd. All in all, four home runs blasted by Giants bats weren’t enough in Saturday’s 7-6 loss, and that comes down to a major difference in starting pitching, as well as some key miscues on defense. 

Perdomo had allowed just one run on six hits in his first 10 career innings (2 games). By the end of the 4th, both of those numbers had been surpassed by the relentless press of San Diego’s offense. Trouble boiled over in every inning. Perdomo toiled with little finesse. Offerings were elevated, out over the heart of the plate. The Padres didn’t miss much, and when they did, it proved to be the exception not the rule. 

Jackson Merrill waving over an 0-2 change-up to end the 1st and strand two was not, as it turns out, a sign of good things to come. It was an aberration. That offspeed offering whistling down Main Street without a care in the world — a mistake. A mistake that was punished going forward. Dustin Harris was all over a fastball that stayed flat out over the zone and pushed it away from the defense, through the chasm on the left side of the infield, for a game-tying single in the 2nd. 

Three-pitched by Perdomo in the 1st, Merrill returned the favor by one-pitching him in the 3rd. The sucker crushed 405 feet to center? Another change-up whistling down Main Street. 

The game went like this for some time. After Devers’ statement dinger in the 1st, it was pretty much all San Diego until the 8th. They scored in every frame from the 2nd through the 7th using a variety of methods and means at their disposal: The homer, the opposite field single, the safety squeeze, the walk, the stolen base, the sacrifice fly. Perdomo gave up 10 hits along with two walks before getting pulled in the 5th. All those runners clogged up the bases, pressure built up in the pipes behind Perdomo, and though they went just 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position, a steady drip helped their run total to pool. 

San Diego’s starter Michael King  turned off the tap in the 2nd and that was that. The offense stalled out at three runs on three hits as San Diego’s lead grew inch-by-inch. The right-hander retired 14 Giants hitters in a row between Whitcomb’s homer and Jonah Cox’s lead-off single in the 7th — a single promptly erased from the bases with a double play. No Padres pitcher issued a walk. No Giant hitter batted with a runner in scoring position. 

For how busy and hectic and productive their offense was at the plate, and how stifling King was on the mound, it surprised me how quickly the Giants closed the gap in score. Reliever Bradgley Rodriguez took over in the 8th and within seven pitches, San Francisco had doubled their hit and run total.

Rodriguez came into the game with a 1.90 ERA, having allowed just three homers over 66.1 innings. Then Cavanaugh, Koss, and Gilbert happened — our Murderer’s Row. Three batters, three swings, three runs in after six innings of the Padres peppering the baseball around the diamond was all it took to get back within one and make it feel like a ball game.

More accurately: make it sting like a ballgame.

The 7-3 loss you’ve come to terms with in the 4th inning usually goes down easier than when a comeback doesn’t comeback all the way, but comes back enough to force you to linger with hope until the last pitch to accept the outcome you had already accepted before the whole comeback not-comeback started. Was it all just a gigante waste of time? I don’t think so — but a one-run loss does make the postgame autopsy a little more raw in its search for what went wrong.

Perdomo’s pitching was the dark cloud of ambiguous not-good that hangs over this outcome. But if you want to retroactively identify “the fatal play,” look at the defense.

A bunt single by Samad Taylor and a “swinging bunt” single by Tatis started the top of the 4th. Perdomo had to venture far off the mound to field the soft roller up the third base line. With Tatis’s speed, he should’ve known better to chase the out at first, but without a discerning glance towards Taylor rounding second, Perdomo sent the baseball chasing after Tatis. The throw arrived late and allowed Taylor to take third. A small swipe of 90 feet that immediately paid out. One pitch later, Taylor touched home on a sac fly for the Padres’ first lead of the afternoon. 

There it is: the difference in the game.

An inning later, Austin Hays stood on third with two outs and lefty Jake Cronenworth up to bat. Cronenworth took a fastball for a ball. Mike Krukow, savvy as ever, noted how deep Shay Whitcomb at third was playing, exposing them to a safety squeeze, just as Cronenworth squared around. Considering the defensive alignment, Hays’s speed from third, Perdomo’s lack of speed off the mound, Cronenworth’s ability as a bunter, conditions were already perfect to execute the squeeze play, but Perdomo made them even more perfect-er by delivering a 93 MPH fastball, straight, on the outer third of the plate and just above the belt.

There it is: the difference in the game.

And in the 7th, there was just the obvious blunder. The actual error error when Whitcomb, fluctuating between GOAT and goat at third base, had what should’ve been an inning-ending, runners-stranding, no run scoring, routine groundball clang off his mitt and roll into left field. Xander Bogaerts scampered home for the Padres’ seventh and final run of the afternoon. At the time, based on how the game had been going, the misplay felt inconsequential, just some salt in the wound, a little extra blush on the cheeks of an already forgettable day — but in retrospect, after Gilbert’s homer ball skipped into the Cove with the score still coming in a run shy of tied, the error loomed.

There it is: the difference in the game.