Category: Baseball

Bohm leads a comeback at Coors Field that puts Phillies in first place originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

DENVER — Alec Bohm was hitting .150 when the Phillies left St. Louis in mid-April. He wasn’t producing, he wasn’t experiencing any luck when hitting the ball hard and was hearing it from all angles as scrutiny intensified.

“I know eventually everything sort of evens out and I know that I’ve hit well over .400 for an entire month in this league at times,” Bohm said that weekend. “I think the longer you play in the big leagues and the more experience you get and the more comfortable you get with who you are and that you belong here, the less anything really affects you.”

Bohm hasn’t quite hit .400 since that weekend but has been one of the Phillies’ top bats for over a month — .324 with a hit in 25 of the 30 games.

He helped turn a potential loss into a win Monday night with a 422-foot, two-run homer to dead center in the eighth inning of a 9-3 Phillies win. Eight of the Phils’ nine runs came in the final three innings.

Bohm was facing right-hander Seth Halvorsen, whose second and third pitches were 100 and 101 mph. Halvorsen then went with a slider, missed middle-in and Bohm made him pay.

The Phils have won four in a row, passed the Mets in the NL East by a half-game and will end the night with the best record in the National League unless the Dodgers come back from a huge deficit.

Trea Turner, who tripled and scored the Phillies’ first run in the fifth, added crucial insurance with a two-run double in the eighth. Those extra runs are always important but especially so a day after the Phillies lost Jose Alvarado for 80 games and the playoffs to a PED suspension. Matt Strahm had pitched in back-to-back games and Jordan Romano had appeared in three of the last five so the Phillies were likely without their top three relievers. Joe Ross, Carlos Hernandez and Tanner Banks pitched the final three innings. Hernandez went 1-2-3 in the eighth.

The Phillies are 29-18 and the Rockies are 8-39 but no game or series is a guarantee. The Rockies scored first Monday for the first time in 15 games and were up two the majority of the night.

“Anybody’s capable of beating anybody on any given day, that’s the way it is,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said pregame. “The other part of it is we historically haven’t played well here, so we need to play well.”

The Phillies had lost seven of their previous 12 games at Coors Field, scoring two runs or fewer in five of them, despite the Rockies averaging 96 losses over that span. Monday night looked like it might be another Denver dud when the Phils had runners on the corners with nobody out, down two in the seventh inning for Harper, Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos and still ended it trailing.

But then came the explosion — four runs in the eighth and three more in the ninth. Schwarber blasted a 466-foot homer in the ninth (his 300th) and Edmundo Sosa hit a two-run shot as part of a 4-for-5 night. Sosa is hitting .386 with a .945 OPS in 62 plate appearances.

The Phillies had 19 hits and seven different players had multiple knocks, a homer or both. That’s the kind of damage you’d expect from this offense at baseball’s most hitter-friendly stadium.

Jesus Luzardo is on the hill Tuesday night as the Phils look to make it five in a row.

What we learned as Giants waste Ray's stellar start in loss to Royals originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

• BOX SCORE

SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants have struggled with left-handed starters all year, but they hit a new low Monday night. 

Bay Area native Kris Bubic flirted with a no-hitter, and briefly thought he had one through six — before a grounder to second was changed to a hit. He still became the latest left-handed starter to have a strong night against this Giants lineup, leading the Kansas City Royals to a 3-1 win at Oracle Park. 

The game was scoreless and speeding along until the top of the eighth, when Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino reached out and crushed a Tyler Rogers pitch into the arcade for a two-run blast. The homer was the rare blemish for Rogers, who had allowed just three runs in his first 22 appearances.

Fire us up, Pasquatch! pic.twitter.com/gHiMZGcuo6

— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) May 20, 2025

The Giants, as they often do late in games, immediately struck back. Sam Huff and Heliot Ramos got them going with one-out singles in the eighth, and two batters later, Jung Hoo Lee lined a double down the line. With the tying run on third and go-ahead run on second, Matt Chapman hit one of the Giants’ seven pop-ups. 

You Make The Call …

The Giants hadn’t even hit a ball 100 mph when Wilmer Flores came up with two down in the sixth. He hit a 74.5 mph bouncer to the right side, but second baseman Michael Massey was shifted toward the bag and slipped as he tried to gather himself to field the ball and throw out one of the league’s slowest runners. 

The ball originally was ruled an error by official scorer Michael Duca and Bubic struck out Lee to get through six no-hit frames, but between innings, Duca announced that his call had been changed to a base hit. 

The error in the bottom of the sixth has been changed to a base hit. The no-hitter is over. pic.twitter.com/pJCxjbK5MT

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) May 20, 2025

Casey Schmitt made sure there was no controversy an inning later, smoking a double down the left-field line for the second hit of the night. 

Enjoying His Return Home

Bubic is from Cupertino and went to Archbishop Mitty and Stanford, so he likely left a lot of tickets for Monday’s game, his third in the ballpark he grew up visiting. His first two starts back home went well, but he has hit a different level this season and entered with a 1.66 ERA, the sixth-lowest in the big leagues. 

The Giants never even made him sweat, picking up just three walks and that “single” before Schmitt’s double. Bubic got some help in getting out of the jam when Tyler Fitzgerald hit a liner to shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who flipped the ball to third for a double play. With the seven shutout innings, Bubic has now allowed just three earned runs and nine hits in 18 1/3 career innings at Oracle Park. 

Typical Ray Day

Robbie Ray once again did his part, throwing seven shutout innings to lower his ERA to 2.67. That’s eighth in the National League and gives the Giants two pitchers in the top 10; Logan Webb is fourth at 2.42. 

Ray put at least one runner on in six of his seven innings, but he never seemed stressed. He picked a pinch-runner off in the seventh and benefited from a break in the third. After a leadoff single and a walk, Witt hit a line drive but right at shortstop Willy Adames. He snared it and doubled the runner off second.

Ray took a no-decision and will have to wait to try and extend his personal win streak to start the year. He’s 6-0 and looking to become the first Giant since Kevin Gausman (2021) to go 7-0. 

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Despite some speculation and rumors, the New York Rangers should not trade Alexis Lafrenière. 

The 2020 first-overall pick has not quite lived up to the expectations that were placed upon him when he was drafted. 

Alexis Lafrenière's Newfound Confidence Was Sparked By One Simple ChangeIt’s been a strange season for Alexis Lafrenière thus far. 

Despite a strong 2023-24 season when he recorded 28 goals, 29 assists, and 57 points, he followed that up with a lackluster 2024-25 campaign as he regressed in every statistical category. 

This regression also happened after he was awarded a seven-year, $52.15 million contract extension by the Rangers. 

Lafrenière has been the subject of trade rumors since the Rangers season came to a close. However, now is not to trade Lafrenière. 

The 23-year-old still has a ton of potential and upside just to give up on him just yet. It would be foolish for Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury not to see that. 

At this point in time, Lafrenière is at his lowest value and the Rangers would not garner a strong enough return to validate trading such a young talent of Lafrenière’s caliber.

With a day to process it, Thomson talks usage in Phillies' Alvarado-less bullpen originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

DENVER — The Phillies flew to Colorado on Sunday after a whirlwind day that began with them losing top reliever Jose Alvarado for 80 games and the playoffs, continued with Mick Abel delivering one of the best debuts in team history, and ended with them trailing the Mets and Dodgers by just a half-game for the best record in the National League.

A day later, everyone has had time to process the most important news, which was the 80-game suspension for Alvarado, who tested positive for Testosterone that entered his body through a weight loss supplement taken during the offseason.

At some point, the Phillies will likely address the back end of the bullpen via trade. But the deadline is 10 weeks away so in the meantime, others need to step up.

“Just do your thing and try not to do more than who you are because I truly believe that we have enough stuff in our ‘pen, we do,” manager Rob Thomson said of his message to the relievers. “Just don’t try to do too much. Throw strikes, just be yourselves and we’ll get it done.”

Matt Strahm will shift into the role previously held by Alvarado. Strahm and Jordan Romano will make up the closing tandem, with Strahm called on in the eighth inning if it’s a left-handed section of the lineup and Romano used if there are righties due up. The other guy would get the ninth.

It also means that Tanner Banks will move up a role. He’s now the second-most important lefty in the bullpen like Strahm previously was. And when Strahm is unavailable — as he most likely is Monday night after pitching in back-to-back games — Banks will see late-game leverage work. More eighth innings. Maybe even a ninth inning, occasionally.

“We’ll figure out who falls where,” Banks said Monday. “Ultimately, it’s be ready whenever whether it’s up one, down one or up or down five. The job doesn’t change.”

The Phillies called up right-handed reliever Max Lazar from Triple A and he’ll be in the bullpen for the series opener at Coors Field, taking Abel’s roster spot. Jose Ruiz is also back after missing a couple of weeks with a neck injury. Orion Kerkering and those two would be the right-handers the Phillies feel most comfortable using against lefties in Banks’ previous role as the third lefty.

“The number one goal is to find another guy or two that can go into leverage,” Thomson said. “I think managing the leverage guys is pretty easy because I have certain rules and I stick with ’em and I’m not gonna move away from that because it’s all about keeping them healthy.”

One of those rules is not using a reliever three days in a row. Tempting as it might be without Alvarado, Thomson won’t overuse Strahm and Romano.

“We’ve got to find out about some other guys, too,” he said. “Joe Ross hasn’t pitched in eight days so he’s got to pitch tonight. That might be a leverage spot. Same thing with Ruiz. We’ve had Banks in some leverage spots lately and he’s done a fine job.”

He’ll find himself in another if the Phillies have a narrow late lead over the 8-38 Rockies on Monday night.

Watching Aaron Judge carry a .401 average through the first 46 games of this season can’t help but bring back memories for Paul O’Neill. Thirty-one years ago, O’Neill authored the most torrid start in Yankees history, batting .456 over the same time frame. He didn’t drop below baseball’s hallowed .400 mark until June 17, and his sizzling bat prompted scrutiny that O’Neill hadn’t experienced before. 

“It was just something that I didn’t want to process mentally,” O’Neill said before a recent Subway Series game. “I just wanted to go out and play. And the easiest thing to do when you’re playing well is put your uniform on, hang around the guys you’re with and play the game. 

“When you have to start talking about it to the press and to people, it just gets too many things going on in your head and that gets you away from what you were doing.” 

But O’Neill thinks Judge might have an edge going forward should the megastar continue to chase batting average history. Judge, O’Neill noted, has pursued much-hyped milestones before, since he set the American League home run record by belting 62 in 2022. The kind of attention Judge would generate if he made a long run at .400 wouldn’t be unfamiliar to him, the way it was to O’Neill. 

“If you look at Aaron Judge, he’s comfortable wherever he is,” O’Neill said. “Numbers-wise, whether he hit 80 home runs, he’d be comfortable, because he’s done things that have put him above everybody. I hadn’t, to that point, done anything like that.” 

O’Neill, of course, is not predicting anything for Judge this season, just pointing out a potential positive should Judge stay above .400. It’s an incredibly difficult feat, obviously, over a long, tiring season. 

No one has ever batted .400 or better over the course of a 162-game schedule, and the last player to do it over a 154-game slate was Ted Williams, who hit .406 in 1941. That’s 84 years ago. Tony Gwynn of the Padres finished at .394 in 110 games in the same, strike-shortened season in which O’Neill enjoyed his early burst. The Yankees’ single-season record for batting average is held by Babe Ruth, who batted .393 in 1923. 

“You never want to put yourself, as a player, in a position where you feel like you didn’t have the year you wanted to have because you dropped below .400,” O’Neill said. “I mean, come on.” 

O’Neill was hitting .405 when play began on June 17, 1994, but he went 0-for-4 against the Brewers and fell to .397. He finished the strike-shortened season at .359 and won his first AL batting title.

“Looking back, believe me, it’s a fun time in your life,” O’Neill said. “It’s a great time.” He smiled as he recounted how he’d just gotten a text message reminding him how far above .400 he’d been. 

“In my mind, that’s nuts,” O’Nell said. “But I was just so into my routine at the time. And I truly didn’t see that it was going to end until I had to start talking about it. And I was like, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t play baseball and then talk about every little nuance that’s going on.’ 

“Because then nothing’s natural, right?”

In his duties as an analyst for the YES Network, O’Neill has seen Judge grow as a hitter over his career. Judge’s ability to hit the ball hard – he’s currently third in average exit velocity, according to MLB’s Statcast – is enhanced by how he’s evolved, particularly in pitch selection.

“If you look at the pitches he swings at now and the pitches he swung at right when he got to the Major Leagues, he’s a totally different hitter,” O’Neill said. “The power has always been there, but he’s a much better hitter as far as strikes, swinging at strikes. I always stress being in the same position all the time and, if you watch, nine out of 10 swings, he’s in the same spot. 

“His probably greatest asset is that he doesn’t have to try to pull the ball. He can hit it out anywhere. If he sees the ball, he can hit every pitch because of the length of his arms and he’s quick enough to get the ball inside. And to hit for a high average, you have to be willing to walk. And he’s willing to walk.”

That willingness has helped Judge reach base 103 times this season; only Ruth and Mickey Mantle had seasons in which they reached base more through the first 46 games of a season. Judge has reached base in 43 of 46 games this year -- 93.5 percent.

Judge is excelling in multiple categories beyond average, too. He leads MLB in on-base percentage, slugging, OPS, hits, total bases, and intentional walks, among other stats. He’s currently on pace for 468 total bases, which would eclipse the single-season MLB record of 457 set by Ruth in 1921. Judge is also on pace for 250 hits; there have been only seven 250-hit seasons in MLB history. 

Will Judge make a long run at .400? Based on baseball history, probably not. Few have. It’s fun to think about that, though, and about the place Judge has carved for himself among baseball’s greats. 

“Every graphic we put up, he’s our Mickey Mantle,” O’Neill said. “He’s our Lou Gehrig. He’s our Babe Ruth. I mean, he’s doing it all and you’re doing it at a time where average hitters are hitting .240, right? (The MLB average entering play Monday was .243). 

“He’s at (.401), so it just shows you how much better he is than everybody.” 

Who's the No. 2? Red Sox' rotation has been a major disappointment originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

For the Boston Red Sox to bounce back from their subpar start to the 2025 season, their starting pitching must take a giant step forward.

While offseason acquisition Garrett Crochet has lived up to his ace expectations, he hasn’t had much help behind him in the rotation. Tanner Houck entered the season as the No. 2 starter, but he was one of the league’s worst pitchers before being placed on the injured list. Brayan Bello hasn’t impressed since returning from injury, and Lucas Giolito has been shelled in two of his four outings.

Walker Buehler — another key offseason addition — hasn’t pitched since April 26 due to a shoulder issue. Richard Fitts has been on the IL since mid-April with a pectoral strain. Kutter Crawford hasn’t pitched at all due to a knee injury that landed him on the 60-day IL.

Boston’s rotation has been among the club’s biggest disappointments over the first two months of the campaign. The group ranks 24th in MLB with a 4.45 ERA and 25th with a 1.41 WHIP.

Those struggles have reached a new level since the calendar flipped to May. The Red Sox are 6-10 with Houck and Giolito combining for an 8.65 ERA in their six appearances this month.

“They need to step up,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said of his starting pitchers, per Rob Bradford of WEEI. “That’s the bottom line. We have to step up as a rotation. It’s not only Garrett, it’s everybody. We have to do a better job as a group.”

Hunter Dobbins, Boston’s No. 13 ranked prospect who entered the season at Triple-A Worcester, has been the team’s most reliable starter after Crochet. The 25-year-old right-hander has a 3.90 ERA and 1.30 WHIP through five starts.

As promising as Dobbins has looked to start his big-league career — minus his worst outing thus far last Wednesday — the Red Sox are in trouble if he’s their No. 2 starter. The veterans have to figure it out in the coming months, otherwise, it’ll be the same old story for a club that has reached the postseason just once since its 2018 World Series title.

It’s worth noting that Buehler is expected to return on Tuesday, and he looked like a strong candidate for that No. 2 role before his IL stint. Fitts, who was rock-solid in his three starts, also could be back in the mix soon. But if they can’t return to form, the following starters must turn it around to keep Boston’s playoff hopes alive:

Tanner Houck

Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images

Coming off an All-Star season, Houck was expected to form a 1-2 punch atop the rotation with Crochet. Now, the Red Sox simply hope to get any semblance of value out of the 28-year-old after his disastrous start to the season.

Houck last pitched on May 12 against the Detroit Tigers, allowing 11 runs on nine hits and three walks over just 2.1 innings. He became the first pitcher in MLB history to allow 11 or more runs in a start of fewer than three innings twice in the same season.

The Red Sox subsequently placed Houck on the 15-day IL with a right flexor strain, and it’s unclear if he’ll get another opportunity to start on the mound this season. If he does, he’ll have a short leash, and that’s tremendously disappointing given what we saw from him in the first half of 2024.

Brayan Bello

Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images

Bello missed the start of the season due to a right shoulder strain. He debuted against the Seattle Mariners on April 22 and was solid, allowing one earned run on four hits and three walks across five innings.

The 26-year-old entered Sunday’s start vs. Atlanta with a 2.33 ERA over five outings. The Braves lit him up for seven runs on 10 hits and five walks in his 4.1 innings of work.

Bello’s ERA ballooned to 4.02, which is closer to what Red Sox fans have come to expect out of the young righty. The organization’s former top pitching prospect has a career 4.39 ERA.

The biggest issue for Bello has been his command, as he has walked 19 batters in 31.1 innings this season. He also continues to underwhelm in the strikeout department, with his 14.1 K percentage in the fifth percentile among big-leaguers and his swing-and-miss percentage (19.0) in the 12th percentile.

With Houck’s status uncertain, Giolito looking more like a No. 4 or 5 in his first season back from Tommy John, and both Buehler and Fitts already battling injuries, Bello may have the best chance to emerge as Boston’s No. 2 starter. For that to happen, his command and consistency have to improve.

Lucas Giolito

Giolito missed all of 2024 recovering from Tommy John surgery and had a delayed start to 2025 due to a hamstring strain. The good news is he finally looks healthy, but the bad news is the Red Sox can’t count on him to be anything more than a back-end rotation arm.

The 30-year-old has a 7.08 ERA over his first four starts with the club. In his latest outing Saturday against Atlanta, he allowed six runs on eight hits and two walks across four innings.

Giolito has alternated encouraging and abysmal starts since debuting on April 30, so it’s unclear which version of him we should expect for the remainder of the season. Nonetheless, the Red Sox need more consistency out of the veteran righty with so many glaring question marks on the pitching staff.

Four years later, the memory remains uncomfortably fresh.

The last time the Dodgers tried to defend a World Series title, they racked up 106 victories. They matched the best winning percentage in the franchise’s Los Angeles history. They had seven All-Stars and three Cy Young vote-getters.

And it still wasn’t enough to win them the National League West.

The San Francisco Giants, the Dodgers still well remember, won 107 games in the 2021 season, marking the only time in the last dozen years someone else has claimed the division crown. The Dodgers eventually knocked the Giants out of the playoffs that October, but their elongated path through the postseason as a wild card team left them gassed in the NL Championship Series. They were eliminated six wins shy of a repeat title.

Read more:Dodgers fall to Arizona as pitching and fielding woes lead to fourth straight loss

For president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, the experience underscored an all-important truth.

“Our primary goal during the regular season is to win the division,” Friedman said. “That is what we feel like puts us in the best position to accomplish our ultimate goal.”

Thus, with another tight division race looming this year, the Dodgers didn’t wait to act aggressively this week.

Austin Barnes and Chris Taylor were struggling. Dalton Rushing and Hyeseong Kim looked like intriguing big-league options. And in two moves that were made in an effort to “win as many games as we can” in this season’s World Series title defense, Friedman said, the longtime veterans were released to make room for the rookies. Sentimentality lost out to the odds of even slightly better regular-season success.

"This has been a very emotional week for all of us,” Friedman said, addressing reporters hours after Taylor was released on Sunday. Barnes was designated for assignment earlier in the week. “Barnsey and CT have been in the middle of some huge moments for this organization. Both guys have left an indelible mark on our culture and where we're at this point. So the decisions were incredibly difficult. The conversations were tough.”

“But,” Friedman countered, “with where we are, the division race, the composition of roster, everything — we felt like this was in the Dodgers' best interest … [to] put us in a position to best win the World Series this year.”

Read more:Dodgers release Chris Taylor, parting ways with another veteran

Note the first factor Friedman mentioned in his answer.

Though the Dodgers are tied for the best record in the National League at 29-18, they continue to nurse the slimmest of NL West leads, entering Monday just one game up on the rival San Diego Padres (27-18) and upstart San Francisco Giants (28-19), and only four games clear of even the fourth-place Arizona Diamondbacks (25-22).

With their pitching staff already in tatters, at least temporarily, because of a wave of early-season injuries, the importance of consistent offense has also suddenly heightened; the Dodgers needing to maximize the production of their lineup to help offset a 4.18 team ERA that ranks 21st in the majors.

In a world where the Dodgers were running away with the division, or pitching the way they expected after two offseasons of spending heavily on the mound, maybe they could have tolerated Barnes’ and Taylor’s combined .208 batting average. They might have been more comfortable giving two longtime cornerstones of the franchise a longer leash to turn things around.

Instead, as club brass surveyed this year’s competitive division landscape, they recognized that — this season more than most — every single victory could matter come the end of the campaign. That every single loss would make the challenge of winning another World Series incrementally tougher.

So, as Rushing crushed triple-A pitching and Kim excelled in what was initially planned to be only a brief big-league call-up, the Dodgers did what they felt like they must. Rushing replaced Barnes as backup catcher. Taylor was cut loose so Kim wouldn’t be sent back to the minors. And a roster that once seemed too top-heavy now has, at least in theory, more potential impact options to bring off the bench.

“We didn't feel like coming into the season this was something that we would necessarily be doing in May,” Friedman said. “But with where we were, all things factored in, while not easy, we felt like it was the right thing to do."

There were other reasons, of course, the Dodgers felt motivated to make such emotionally conflicting decisions now.

Manager Dave Roberts noted that Rushing (who was batting .308 in the minors this year, and has started his big-league career an impressive four-for-10) and Kim (who has hit .452 since arriving in the majors, and has impacted games with his versatile glove and lightning-quick speed) deserved opportunities for more prominent roles.

With most of the team’s core players on the wrong side of 30, there are longer-term considerations about developing younger talent as well.

Read more:Clayton Kershaw shaky in his season debut as Angels take series win over Dodgers

“I think some of it is the [division] race,” Roberts said. “Some of it is, you still want to continue to develop young players and give them opportunities with a veteran ball club.”

Eventually, it was always likely that Rushing would force his way to the majors, and that Kim would carve out a niche with his well-rounded skill set.

But the early pressure being applied by the team’s NL West rivals still sped up that timeline. The Dodgers remember what happened in 2021. And, wary of having that reality repeat itself, they didn’t wait to begin acting with urgency this year.

“We saw it in 2021, winning 106 games and not winning the division,” Friedman said. “We have a tough division [again this year]. We've got some really good teams in our division who are playing well. And so for us, it's about doing everything we can each night to try to win a game."

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.