Category: Baseball

Last year, we attempted to do a “monthly” reader mailbag series to give fans the chance to guide the discussion. That seemed to be a bit over the top. So, this season, we’re going to try every OTHER month instead. This way, enough time builds up between iterations that fans can develop new curiosities about the team, the minor leagues, the organization, or its philosophies.

We are going to make a run at our first of the season this week! So, get those questions in and the fellas will answer them on the next episode of the Viva El Birdos Podcast!

“Early Season Samples”

A tradition that goes back to Doubleday himself, overreacting to early-season performances or lack thereof, is something every fan of every fan base willfully participates in, and at a certain point, the realization around game 10-15 that this is a marathon and you have to try your best not to ride the rollercoaster too much. That’s not telling you how to fan; that’s me trying to work hand in hand with your cardiologist to keep you from “taking the dive” from a managerial decision or poor performance in April that likely the team wouldnt be as patient with in August or September. That being said, here are some early-season trends through the first 4 games that should have some fans optimistic:

Jordan Walker leads the team in OPS with a 1.269 through his first 16 PA and has 3 BB to his 1 K. Jordan seems to be controlling the strike zone, taking his walks, and impacting the baseball when he gets good pitches to hit. I’m not calling for a statue to be built for Walker, but he seems to be stacking wins at the plate in both results and process, and that will only further confidence and internal belief as he dials in on what could be his last real chance in St. Louis as the everyday RF.

Ho-HUM, Alec Burleson leads the team in Hits and RBI’s and is posting an OPS of 1.111. For an offense starved for production, one player Cardinals fans can count on watching produce all season long will be Burly.

JJ Wetherholt looks the part immediately, and we had heard about his poise and maturity, and I’m personally happy that Manager Oliver Marmol decided to insert JJ in that spot. My hope, if nothing else, is that even when Nootbaar returns, JJ continues to lead off. “When faced with a decision between the short term and long term, we will choose the long term every time.” If there were any player on this team I would want taking the most PA’s in 2026 its Wetherholt. He will be someone who gains the most from seeing the most opportunities and gets him to his ceiling quicker.

On the pitching side, Michael McGreevy pitched 6 no-hit innings against the Rays, with diminished velo on his fastball. I was highly skeptical that McGreevy was going to be effective early this season. To his credit, he mixed his pitches well and kept the Rays offense off balance all game long. I will be eager to see how he handles a more potent offense like Detroit in his 2nd start of the season.

George Soriano, at the time of his acquisition, was a bit curious. Cardinals fans seemed to be really excited about Andre Granillo, but Chaim Bloom and his staff seemed to have identified a potential diamond in the rough. 9 scoreless innings in spring and has pitched 3 more scoreless to begin the year. The FB velo is up from 95.7 to 96.6 on average this year, and he is throwing his Changeup as his primary offering, which produces a whacky 7.6 inches above average in drop compared to league-average measured changeups. I expect by the end of April, Soriano will find himself in setup duty and high-leverage opportunities frequently.

Who have you been most impressed by early in the season? Let me know in the comments below, and don’t forget to submit your questions as well! We want to make sure we are covering content that you care about most, and this is your opportunity to guide the discussion!

-Thanks for reading

The Yankees’ hopes of going 162-0 were quashed on Monday, as the Mariners won in walk-off fashion 2-1 to open up a three-game set with the Bombers. New York was getting shut down against Luis Castillo, a common occurrence at this point against the Mariner ace, but managed to tie the game shortly after he exited only to have the bullpen get stretched too thin in relief of Ryan Weathers. Paul Blackburn was the choice to pitch the eighth and ninth innings, and while he handled the former things quickly got out of hand in the latter leading to Cal Raleigh’s RBI single to end it.

The underlying story of the game, however, was the Yankees challenging early and often against home plate umpire Mike Estabrook’s strike zone, succeeding each and every time. They converted five strikes into balls on successful challenges, including two in a José Caballero at-bat that turned a strikeout into a walk and a Giancarlo Stanton would-be strikeout that kept him alive long enough to hit a single. Aaron Boone even felt the need to chirp at Estabrook after the Stanton challenge to get the calls right, proving that even with the ability to overturn calls Boone will still find a way to continue his beef with umpires and potentially grow his record pace of getting tossed from games.

All of this is leadup to ask the question that many are asking themselves already: why not let ABS be the law of the land for every ball and strike? There’s been dozens of converted calls already as teams have figured out that the catcher and hitter stand the best chance of recognizing a bad call, and the Yankees have benefitted tremendously from Austin Wells’ recognition of the strike zone behind the plate as he’s been the best in the early-going at getting strikes back for his pitchers. He’s far from the only one, as players around the league have already made umpires look quite silly for some of the calls they make. Surely getting the calls right has proven to be essential after so many have already been shown to be off on a consistent basis.

There’s a logistical and cultural pushback to that response, to be fair. The umpire’s union will fight tooth and nail to keep umps relevant in the game, and they likely don’t want to cede control of the strike zone over completely just because of a few games-worth of hype for a new system. But there’s also a healthy portion of the audience that wouldn’t want them to do that anyway — the purists who have always argued in favor of the human element in the game wouldn’t want the umpires thrown to the side either. And there’s a point to be made that the ABS challenge system we have right now is a skill to utilize that rewards players who confidently know the strike zone, which is fun to watch in its own right. Sure, getting an egregious call overturned here and there is an easy call to make, but all of the Yankees’ challenges last night were on pitches that strayed only an inch or so away from the strike zone — those are calls that New York is making because they have players with elite understanding of the zone, and some other teams wouldn’t make those challenges in the same position. It’s exciting to see a batter call his shot or a catcher claim that his pitcher hit the mark, and I’m personally quite content with where ABS has landed at the moment. But where do you fall, are you satisfied with ABS functioning as a show of skill or do you want it to be freely administered?

Today on the site, Michael leads off with a recap of what Triple-A Scranton got up to in their first week of play as the minor leagues get underway. Peter follows up with the first At-Bat of the Week featuring Aaron Judge’s first bomb of the year (and his first ABS challenge), and Jonathan wishes Chien-Ming Wang a happy birthday as he reflects on his Yankees career. Matt creates the Yankees’ All-March Birthday Team to continue his year-long quest to round out each month’s roster, and Jeff reacts to the Yankees’ low placement in The Athletic’s recent “Hope O’Meter” poll.

Today’s Matchup

New York Yankees at Seattle Mariners

Time: 9:40 p.m. EST

Video: YES Network, Mariners.tv, TBS (out-of-market, only)

Venue: T-Mobile Park, Seattle, WA

Conflict resolution specialists will tell you that solutions to major disagreements are usually found in complicating the root issue and finding common ground. The worst disputes, then, are the extraordinarily simple ones. 

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association may be digging trenches for one of these quite-simple but quite-destructive disagreements: should Major League Baseball have a salary cap? The MLB owners, represented by Commissioner Rob Manfred, seem to think it’s non-negotiable for baseball’s continued growth, while the players seem to think that would be the worst thing ever. Good start.

The two sides cannot just get divorced and go their separate ways — they are chained together by billions of dollars that nobody gets if they don’t work together. If they can’t agree (“you never do the dishes”) there will be a lockout, and because of the depth of this lovers’ quarrel (it’s not really about the dishes), there is a legitimate chance the 2027 MLB season is simply cancelled. Then nobody will do the dishes.

Can the two sides avoid a lockout? No. There will be “a lockout” of some length, but whether its explosive yield is measured in July 4th sparklers or in megatons of TNT is yet to be determined. How can the two sides avoid cancelling most or all of the 2027 season? Can they just hug it out?

The reason this is a big story is that there is a big problem: this is not a sports disagreement, though it is about baseball. This is not a financial disagreement, though it is about money. This is, in reality, a philosophical disagreement about the meaning of life—er, Major League Baseball, and the first one that threatens the very fabric of the sport since the last time the owners really tried to get a salary cap in 1994. 

Come this offseason, this will go from a somewhat-threatening idea to one of the biggest stories in the world overnight. Describing the sticking point in detail could reasonably fill up a 4000-word legal brief. But remember: this is a simple issue, not a complicated one, so I will describe it simply: 

The MLB currently has no mechanism to control team spending on contracts and players, known as a salary cap, which exists in each of the other three major men’s leagues in the United States. This is a very pro-player arrangement, creating uninhibited bidding wars for elite players which, for the super-elite Juan Soto, ended at a preposterous $765 million. Owners would like to end this situation and place some controls on this spending because they believe it will fix baseball’s competitive balance problem, which has allowed the Los Angeles Dodgers to sign most of the best free agents in the past three offseasons and win the last two World Series. The Players Association, understandably, thinks the owners just want to spend less money and would like to keep the lucrative status quo.

I, for one, am generally inclined to support the labor side of labor vs. billionaire showdowns, as are probably most people on planet earth. However, what makes this issue so fascinating is that the owners believe they have broad public support for a salary cap; and they do, per a poll after the World Series that showed both casual and avid MLB fans overwhelmingly support the introduction of a salary cap. I do too.

Some writers and industry experts will tell you that all this saber-rattling is simply pointless hot air, and that the owners will ultimately back down when the small-market teams realize that a salary floor, which must exist with any salary cap to maintain competitiveness, will cost them too much money. The Miami Marlins, for example, have a total team payrolljust above Shohei Ohtani’s individual salary. That will not be allowed to continue if the owners get what they want, and it is possible the MLBPA will be able to leverage a fifth column of small-market owners to preserve their criminally low spending. 

Key word: criminal. The embarrassment that is the MLB’s payroll disparity has gotten bad enough that I do not believe this arrangement will be tolerated unto eternity, and it is why I am perhaps more willing than others to imagine a legitimately apocalyptic future in which we lose a full season for the first time ever. 

Frankly, small market owners categorically refusing to spend money on their baseball teams and the MLBPA’s vicious, decades-long opposition to any and all pushes for a salary cap can no longer survive baseball’s brush with the most disruptive of concepts: modernity. 

Baseball is, more than ever, swept up by modernizing forces. The pitch clock, extra-inning ghost runners and challenging balls and strikes would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Now, innovations are flying off the factory line like bags of candy in the last week of October. And the public has greeted these innovations with open arms. Baseball is more popular than ever, and 79 percent of avid fans support a salary cap. It looks like that final dam is ready to break.

We shall see how much this public support survives the impending cancellation of actual baseball games next winter. I contend that the support for a salary cap should continue. Anachronisms like totally free-market sports leagues do not hold up with how Major League Baseball is actually financed these days. Local control over revenue has collapsed with the regional sports network model. MLB owners understand this; when they renegotiate their media rights deal in 2028, it will be a defining moment for the sport and how much money it can make in the future.

A salary cap could thus be the difference of billions of dollars in the long term for the MLB if they can successfully argue that enforced competition will command higher prices for media buyers. That will certainly be their argument to the players, though the MLBPA cares far less about long-term revenue boosts, which may or may not increase salaries 10 years from now. Many players in the league today will not be in said league in 10 years, so what do they care about all that? The players will clap back by saying, “can you just relax until we renew media rights in 2028? We have such a good thing going, let’s sell that to ESPN and Fox, not your new thing!”

That tension is what makes this such a philosophical disagreement, and one that could actually torpedo an entire MLB season. Unlike the 2021 MLB lockout, which saw the owners push for a salary floor (side note: this 2021 push is one of the reasons I don’t buy the anti-salary floor fifth column idea above) and expanded playoffs, everyone is dealing with much starker media rights realities than last time. Baseball will have to radically change itself to keep up in the modern sports market, and I do believe the owners will have a high level of patience to ensure that. There is too much money at stake long-term.

So how can we avoid a disaster that I have just spent 1000 entire words describing the severity of? You could bet on the inherent goodness of human beings, and the owners and players ultimately love each other; love is always stronger than hate, right? Maybe, but let me tell you what’s stronger than both: fear.

As we get closer to this throwdown actually throwing-down, long-winded position papers and carefully crafted press releases will quickly turn to widespread fear of how bad cancelling the 2027 season would be for both of them. And it would be a calamity, with baseball riding a wave of public momentum that they simply cannot afford to squander. Players would lose a year of their physical prime, owners a year of revenue. Broadcast and merchandising partners may distrust both groups if they cannot figure this out, as will investors and fans, the most important consumer of their shared product. All of this will create tremendous fear in both camps, and they might have to run into each other’s arms for comfort — that will probably mean just small adjustments to the luxury tax and perhaps some more league regulation on spending and player control of contracts.

The benefits of a salary cap for owners are potentially massive, but the risk associated with cancelling a season is colossal and could make things significantly worse instead of better. Avoiding that outcome may be the players’ silver bullet, as they just want to keep the hype train going. When you took a wrong turn and are now careening toward a precipice, the one who wanted to make the turn is at fault. 

But something big should happen. Much opining about the looming lockout centers on whether or not baseball actually has a competitive balance problem. It all depends on how you define “competitive balance” and how far back you push the definition. To keep things short, you can come up with any statistic (World Series wins, team records, division titles) and any time frame to argue that there is or is not a problem. I will pick secret option C: it feels like there is a problem, and that means there is.

Competitive balance is a perception, not an outcome. Whether or not smaller markets have actually succeeded is inconsequential next to how impossible their chances feel. The Dodgers winning the last two World Series is not the thing that annoys me. It’s that they have done so on the backs of signing basically every exciting free agent on the market in recent years. Kyle Tucker, Edwin Diaz, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Teoscar Hernandez… the list goes on. When there is a big free agent (everybody get ready for Tarik Skubal hooooo boy) they are now expected to sign with the Dodgers. If they don’t, then they go to the Mets. Everyone else, including the once-Dodgers-esque New York Yankees, feels like a surprise.

For fans of smaller-market teams, having a good player like Skubal in Detroit or Paul Skenes in Pittsburgh, two of the best pitchers of the last 20 years, is a total bummer. They cannot keep that player because they cannot pay him. That is the worst, and that is the great crime of baseball’s salary cap-less system. When a team decides they are not going to pay the luxury tax, like my Boston Red Sox did in 2020, it costs their fans everything. It cost me my favorite player of all time: Mookie Betts. And then Xander Bogaerts. And then Rafael Devers. 

How much of my desire for a salary cap is based on hatred for a system that the Red Sox ownership group has exploited for maximum profits and minimum baseball enjoyment? A… bit, but a salary cap would ultimately damage teams like the Red Sox more than it would help them. For all my griping, Boston is still one of the biggest markets in the sport. I have no idea the actual plight of a Pittsburgh Pirates fan who just has to count down the days until Paul Skenes is traded or leaves for nothing.

All of the above is stupid. Some of the above are fixable with a salary cap. Fear about what would happen to baseball’s resurgence if this death match goes the distance will probably stop any push for a true cap short… for now. But in five years, we will be having this same conversation with 20 times the fervor, as another half decade of modernity bludgeons baseball’s anachronistic systems into submission. We will eventually have an MLB salary cap; we just might not get it now. Because while we are currently in a generation-defining staring contest, both sides will probably realize it is in their shared interest to blink. A compromise is the only way out. But it is not in my interest, and not in my kids’ interests, who I want to share my love of baseball with, even if I live in Pittsburgh. Eventually, we’re going to have to get uncomfortable so we can get something done.

New York Daily News | Gary Phillips: Ben Rice didn’t exactly raise eyebrows with his first base defense last year, and when he did it wasn’t in a good way. The young Yankee cost his team some outs down the stretch and in the playoffs, especially when it came to his footwork around the bag and tracking popups. It’s only been two games, but Mr. Arroz seems to be handling himself much better at the cold corner, making three plays at first on Sunday that it would be hard to imagine him pulling off in 2025. The Yankees see this as a strong step forward in his development, and proof that his work ethic and coachability can be a major asset.

FanGraphs | David Laurila: I’m writing this ahead of Ryan Weathers’ first start of the season, coming Monday night against the Mariners. The offseason acquisition went deep on the sharp, splitter-like changeup he developed in the Marlins’ bullpen last year, and effective use of the offspeed offering will likely be a big part of whether the southpaw sticks in the Yankee rotation this season. By the time you read this, you’ll already have seen how MLB hitters react to Weathers’ repertoire, and hopefully it’s “poorly.”

New York Post | Dan Martin: It’s been quite the 12 months for David Bednar. The Yankee closer was demoted to Triple-A while still with the Pirates last year, a wakeup call and chance for adjustment that he wasn’t going to get while facing big-league pitching. The right-hander needed just five outings with Pittsburgh’s Indianapolis affiliate to get himself back on track, and he almost immediately re-asserted himself as one of the best relievers in baseball. After two clean saves to start the year with the Yankees, Bednar credits that reset for a major piece of his success since.

The Associated Press: A melancholy happy trails to Ken Clay, who passed away last week at the age of 71. Clay spent five seasons in the majors, peaking with two World Series rings with the 1977 & ‘78 Yankee teams (despite George Steinbrenner’s criticisms). Our best to his family and loved ones.

How Andrew Painter is learning to get ahead with the big league ball originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Andrew Painter learned something last year that does not show up in a box score.

The baseball itself can change your whole season.

“The ball is different,” he said.

That is key to understanding part of what happened to Painter in 2025 — and everything the Phillies are expecting from him when he makes his Major League debut Tuesday night against the Nationals.

He is 22, the club’s top-ranked pitching prospect, and after years of anticipation, hype, injury and rehab, the more interesting part of his story is not the date on the calendar.

It is what he figured out in the year leading up to it.

“The minor league balls usually have a little higher seam, and the spin is usually a little higher,” Painter said. “So with fastballs, that’s why in the Minors you’ll sometimes see some of these weird ones with great vertical break, whereas you won’t really see that with the big league ball.”

That doesn’t mean one ball is better and one is worse. It means they reward different things. Painter says fastballs and breaking balls tend to play better with the minor league ball. Something like a splitter can benefit from the big league ball because you are trying to kill spin.

The difference is real, especially for a pitcher trying to recapture a feel he had before a torn UCL took two years away from him.

In 2022, Painter was one of the most dominant arms in the minor leagues. He opened that season at Clearwater and ended the year at Double-A Reading. He posted a 1.56 ERA and a 0.89 WHIP across three levels of the system. 

The 19-year-old Painter steamrolled through the lower levels of the minors with a minor league ball.

When he returned to action at Triple-A last season — his first full year back from Tommy John surgery, and his first full season throwing the Major League ball against advanced competition — he ran into something he had never encountered before.

Painter was not just returning from one of the worst injuries a pitcher can endure. He was attempting to regain feel for a fastball with a different baseball in his hand, against better competition, while building himself back physically. 

The result was a season where he allowed 119 hits in 106 2/3 innings, gave up 18 home runs and saw his WHIP jump to 1.55, fourth-highest in the International League. His ERA landed at 5.40.

And he didn’t fully realize why his command was not as sharp in the moment.

“Looking back, especially when I’m trying to chase what the fastball was pre-TJ, all those fastballs — everything I was throwing before and through TJ — were with a Minor League ball,” Painter said. “So it’s kind of hard to compare. You’re comparing apples to oranges there.”

In 2025, Painter looked like two different pitchers at once.

Last year at Triple-A, Painter’s first-pitch strike rate was only 47.2 percent. If that number had qualified in the Majors (minimum 110 innings), it would have been the lowest at the big-league level since 2004.

Meanwhile, his zone percentage — the share of total pitches that actually crossed the strike zone — was a staggering 49.2. That would have led the Majors in 2025, ahead of Tarik Skubal’s 48.3. Over the last 10 seasons, only 10 pitchers have posted a higher single-season zone rate.

That combination does not usually happen. The pitchers who live in the zone tend to get ahead. Skubal led the majors in both categories last season. George Kirby did the same in 2023, and Miles Mikolas followed suit in 2024. 

Painter lived in the zone while pitching from behind more than half of the time, and that begins to explain the problem.

Painter’s struggles began midseason at Triple-A. Lehigh Valley pitching coach Phil Cundari and Painter were working on expanding his repertoire during that time. 

“Before last year, his arsenal didn’t include the changeup, and that came at the beginning of the year,” Cundari said. “Along the way, we also moved toward developing a sinker, a two-seamer, and the sweeper as well. So now you’re talking about three essentially new pitches being incorporated in the middle of a season.” 

All with a different ball and different level of hitter.

Those additions even affected Painter’s fastball control, especially early in counts.

“I feel like last year I kind of got into a habit where some of those [first pitch] fastballs would just fly up and away, especially to lefties,” Painter said.

While Painter would commonly fight back into the zone, he predictably kept going back to the fastball — and got beat.

“It wasn’t that there weren’t as many strikes,” Cundari said. “There weren’t as many good strikes.”

“One of the biggest things is confidence in the zone,” Painter said. “You have to realize how much easier it is to pitch when you’re ahead in the count, and I think the results themselves kind of push you to say, ‘Alright, I need to get ahead of this guy.”

That is where the reset comes in.

Painter does not talk much about his heater, which reached 99 mph in Grapefruit League action, as the main solution. He likes to talk about his slider.

“That’s my best in-zone pitch,” he said. “It’s the pitch I throw for a strike at the highest clip. I think there were times last year where I’d fall behind, then I’d try to go back to [the fastball] and the miss would be consistent. 

It’s realizing that cue and that feel for the hard slider kind of gets me back in the zone. It’s kind of swallowing your pride a little bit and not being afraid to flip something in there — whatever pitch you feel most confident throwing for a strike.”

Working closely with Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham and catcher J.T. Realmuto this spring, the adjustment showed up in the numbers. His first-pitch strike rate climbed nearly three percentage points. His zone rate stayed extremely high at 49.4. But it was his slider usage that jumped from 11.6 percent in 2025 to 29.5 percent this spring.

Once Painter gets strike one, everything opens up — he can change shapes and utilize his full five-pitch mix to put hitters away.

“What stood out on a start-by-start basis [last year] was that he wasn’t leaving the zone,” Cundari said of Painter. “The toughness and resilience he showed during that time were impressive … that speaks to the level of competitiveness he has.”

Having spent a full year throwing the big league ball and a spring camp behind him, Painter now possesses a more thorough understanding of his pitches, their purpose and what strike one unlocks.

The minor league education is done. The debut is on tap.

Record: 1-3. Pace: 40-122. Change on 2025: -1.

If there was ever the need for a palette cleanser, after the disappointing sweep in Los Angeles, it was in tonight’s home opener at Chase. Early on, the D-backs delivered in no uncertain fashion. The offense matched the entire run production of the opening series in the first five innings. Meanwhile, Michael Soroka’s Diamondbacks debut was one of the best ever. He threw five shutout innings, striking out ten, which tied a career high. Soroka finished things off in the fifth by throwing the fourth immaculate innings – nine pitches, nine strikes, three strikeouts – in franchise history, and the first for the D-backs since Wade Miley in 2012.

Of course, the bullpen, in the form of Joe Ross and Ryan Thompson, did their best – with the help of the umpires – to throw an 8-0 lead away. Coincidentally, that score looks like the emoji for the face most of us were pulling over the course of the seventh inning, where the Tigers scored six runs. But disaster was averted, with Juan Morillo, Taylor Clarke, and Paul Sewald retiring the final seven batters up, for what, in the end, turned out to be a drama-free first save for Sewald. The Diamondbacks won their home opener in front of a sold-out Chase Field, and got into the win column for the first time this year.

Let’s start with Soroka, who only really had one black mark against him, and that comes in the area of efficiency. He needed 25 pitches to get through the first inning, which included two strikeouts, but also a walk and a hit. That set the tone for the evening, with our starter being at eighty pitched after four, and it felt about 50/50 whether he would be able to get through the fifth inning and qualify for the decision [speaking of which, the 50/50 raffle set a home opener record, finishing north of $330,000] His slurve – a slider/curve hybrid was working well, but there had been a lot of full counts, driving up the pitch count. And then the fifth inning happened:

As documented above, an immaculate inning is something recorded far less often than a no-hitter [though this is in part due to incomplete records from the early days] There had been only three previously by the team: Randy Johnson (August 23, 2001 vs. Pirates), Byung-Hyun Kim (May 11, 2002 vs. Phillies), and Wade Miley (October 1, 2012 vs. Rockies). The last-named was only the third rookie at the time to do so. Michael Soroka now joins the list, and also became just the third pitcher in baseball history to record an immaculate inning in his first start of the season. The three K’s gave him ten on the night. That tied his career high and was the most ever by a D-back in their first game, breaking the Big Unit’s mark of nine in his 1999 debut. Oddly, RJ was at the ballpark tonight.

Of course, we all expected Eduardo Rodriguez and Michael Soroka to be our most effective starting pitchers, the first time through the rotation, didn’t we? On the other side, we were facing Justin Verlander, a triple Cy Young winner. And we had to do so without Pavin Smith: he homered three times off Verlander in 2024, but went on the IL earlier today. We needn’t have worried. Father Time remains undefeated, and 43-year-old Verlander is a shadow of the nine-time All-Star. He was hit and hit hard by Arizona from the very start. Ketel Marte had a 107.5 mph single, and Corbin Carroll followed with a 107.4 mph RBI triple, then scored on a Gabriel Moreno ground0ut.

The Diamondbacks then posted another crooked number in the second, courtesy of Carroll’s first home-run of the year (above). That three-run shot made it 5-0: it was 107.8 mph, and came on the heels of singles by Ildemaro Vargas and Jordan Lawlar, both in three digits. [Though the hardest-hit ball off Verlander tonight, was a screamer just foul by Moreno, clocked at an amazing 115.6 mph] The Detroit starter was yanked in the fourth, and Arizona added three more runs in the fifth, driven in by an Alek Thomas double, a Lawlar walk, and an Allen Campbell challenge, which turned a Marte groundout into an RBI single. That’s the 8-0 mentioned earlier, and I figured I was safe to start work on the recap.

The Arizona bullpen laughs in the face of such hubris. Though as I mentioned in the GDT, if you’re going to discover that Joe Ross is who you thought he was, doing so with an eight-run lead is the best time to do so. After Soroka, Kevin Ginkel worked a clean sixth. But in the seventh inning, Ross allowed five hits and a walk, all six runners coming round to score. That forced Torey Lovullo to go to Ryan Thompson. Unfortunately, Joe West decided Ryan Thompson’s mechanics now constituted a balk, for failing to come set. After that was called twice, Thompson (probably understandably) lost composure, allowed a double, then walked consecutive batters on four straight balls.

Suddenly, it was only 8-6 to the D-backs, with the Tigers having the bases loaded. Fortunately, Juan Morillo got arguably the biggest out of his young Arizona career, ending the top of the seventh. Ildemaro Vargas, DHing in place of Smith, then added a welcome insurance run in the bottom of the inning, making the score 9-6. Lovullo turned to Taylor Clarke, who had been swatted around in Los Angeles. But he was fine here, retiring all three batters faced. This set the stage for Paul Sewald’s return to the closer’s role and that was refreshingly drama-free. He, too, posted a 1-2-3 inning, notching save #1. Worth noting, he was consistently hitting 92 mph, reproducing the improved velocity he showed in spring.

Click here for details, at Fangraphs.com
Immaculate Conception: Corbin Carroll, +27.9%
Immaculate Reception: Soroka, +17.5%; Morillo, +11.8%
Soiled: Ryan Thompson, -15.2%

It’s interesting to note that Thompson’s negative WP was more than twice as bad as Ross’s -7.5%. Also, even at the worst point of that seventh inning, the Arizona probability of victory never dipped lower than 76.9%. Not that you’d know it from the dooming on Twitter, of course. And I must admit, it didn’t feel like we were better than 3-1 on favorites! An awesome Gameday Thread, with 378 comments. Comment of the Night to gzimmerm, with an honorory assist to ChefAZ:

Same two teams tomorrow, as Arizona seek to establish a winning streak. We complete our initial turn around the rotation with Brandon Pfaadt, and it is a slightly more civilized game time, with a 6:40 pm first pitch.

My dad used to always tell me that you only get one chance to make a good first impression. He’s right, though thankfully in baseball, the playoff teams aren’t chosen based on their first impressions.

For their first series of the season — a putrid, feckless, and deeply uncompetitive sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees — the San Francisco Giants made a very obvious impression.

If you were to prorate that series to a full season, you would have a team with a blatant identity:

1. Basically no offense, but…
2. Intermittent flickers of offense that are met by emphatic rally killers
3. Pitching that’s pretty good, but can’t resist giving up the big hits in the crucial moments
4. The occasional late-game rally that comes up frustratingly short

The Giants have been gifted 159 games to adjust and restore their identity so that it doesn’t align with the first impression, and I like their chances, because my one bold prediction for the 2026 season is that the Giants won’t be the hands-down worst team in the history of professional baseball.

San Francisco hit the road on Monday, and took their first step towards restoring the narrative, with a move both so bold and so simple that only a new coach who hasn’t yet been hardened by the realities of Major League Baseball could think of it: the reverse Uno card. Tony Vitello witnessed the script that had led to an 0-3 start and thought, hey what if instead of doing that, we have the other team do it?

It worked. And by a margin of 3-2 over the San Diego Padres, the Giants have their first win of the season — and Vitello his first victory as an MLB manager.

While it was remarkable just how good of an impression of the Giants the Padres did, the Giants first warned you that they might reprise the role for a fourth time. Facing old frenemy Walker Buehler, the Giants had a remarkably Giantsy first inning. Vitello opted for the unconventional decision to move Willy Adames, the coldest hitter on the team, into the leadoff spot to jump start him, and Adames responded with a single to open the game. Three pitches later, Rafael Devers erased that single with a double play, and Buehler would later end the inning with just 10 pitches thrown.

It doesn’t get more Giant. Except apparently it does. The Padres are what “getting more Giant” looks like.

San Diego’s offense was useless for much of the game, which is, yes, a great bit to talk about, but mostly a testament to how awesome Landen Roupp was in his season debut. Roupp has spoken openly about his desire to go pitch for pitch with Logan Webb, and Monday’s start was one hell of an audition for the role of co-ace.

He set down the side in order in the first inning, striking out Jake Cronenworth and Manny Machado. He cruised through the second, giving up a single but striking out Gavin Sheets and Ramón Laureano. He needed just seven pitches and one magnificent bit of leather wizardry from Adames to defeat the third.

It was the fourth inning where the Padres slowly started to shift from their first bullet point of the Giants identity to the second one. Fernando Tatis Jr. led off the inning with a walk, putting a fearsome runner on the basepaths ahead of the heart of San Diego’s lineup. Machado got ahead in the count 2-1, but Roupp fired back, inducing a groundout, which moved Tatis to second. With Tatis in scoring position and just one out, Roupp faced San Diego’s wunderkind, Jackson Merrill, and got him to ground out as well, with Tatis moving to third. One more groundout — this time Xander Bogaerts — and Roupp was out of the inning.

Yep, that’s a dandy Webb impression.

The fifth was another smooth inning for Roupp, who issued a one-out walk but struck out a pair of batters to cruise through the inning. But the sixth is where the Padres really began to embody the Giants.

After striking out Cronenworth to open the frame, Roupp ceded a one-out single to Tatis. The Padres were desperately trying to get back in the game — they trailed 3-0 — and who better to help them achieve it but Machado, one of the great Giant Killers of this era?

With his night nearing an end, Roupp dug deep in a 1-1 count, and tossed a confounding curveball that darted away from the right-handed Machado, dipping below the zone and on the outside edge. Machado simply couldn’t resist, and swung with his entire body off-balance, chopping the ball right back to Roupp.

The 1-4-3 double play isn’t the easiest thing in baseball, especially in the first week of the season. But with the Padres playing like the Giants and, critically, the Giants not playing like the Giants, there was only one possible outcome: Roupp plucked the ball cleanly, spun balletically, and fired a fastball to Luis Arráez, who gracefully passed the ball onto Casey Schmitt, all while Machado could hardly be bothered to release the clutch, let alone shift out of first gear.

Roupp yelled with excitement and a touch of something else. The Padres looked uninterested, and ready to go home. The contrast between the teams was stark.

Which brings us to the other side of the ball. The Giants only scored three runs, but they did so in a way that they grew accustomed to watching the Yankees do on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.

It started with the thing that Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton did to them: a singular swing of the bat that in and of itself provides enough offense to feel like a finishing blow to a team that can’t score. For the Giants, it came in the third inning off of Buehler. After mild-mannered first and second innings, the Giants were ready for action in the third thanks to their leadoff hitter in the inning, Harrison Bader.

One could make the case that Bader will be the litmus test for the Giants offense. If he hits like he did a year ago, when he was on the Minnesota Twins and the Philadelphia Phillies, he’ll help anchor the heart of the lineup. If he hits like he did in the three prior years, he’ll be the Patrick Bailey of the outfield grass: a player who is valuable, but would be even more valuable if you could find a way to skip his turn in the batting order. It’s not hard to see a strong season from Bader representing everyone on offense clicking, or a poor season signifying disappointment across the board.

Four games is too early to tell. It’s too early to judge the first three games, in which Bader looked like he’d never swung a bat before in his life, while his teammates followed his lead. And it’s too early to judge after a fourth game, when the Giants finally put runs (plural!) on the board, after being jumpstarted by a 1-2 annihilation of a helpless Buehler curve that caught far too much strike zone.

Gorgeous. The swing of the bat, yes, but also the hair.

But while Bader’s homer — the first of the year for the Giants — was the most impactful swing of the day, it didn’t feel like the most meaningful. Instead, a pair of swings jockeyed for that distinction, and they both occurred just one inning later, in the fourth.

With one out, Matt Chapman, who is in quite a slump to start the season, ripped a single at 107.4 mph, the hardest-hit ball of the day for the Giants. That brought up Jung Hoo Lee, who is in quite a slump to start the season, and he drew a six-pitch walk, moving Chapman into scoring position.

But Bader popped up for a second out, and suddenly it felt like the Giants were back to their rally-killing ways.

If Chapman and Lee have been slumping to start the season, it’s nothing compared to the Nos. 8 and 9 hitters, Bailey and Schmitt. But sometimes it’s those players who provide just what the team needs.

And they did exactly that. With two on and two out, Bailey took a 1-0 curve off the plate outside, and did the sensible thing with it: he poked it the other way, into left field, notching his first hit of the season, and scoring Chapman.

Up came Schmitt, who worked the count to 2-1, and then ripped a high fastball through a hole in the infield, notching his first hit of the season (he would add a double later in the game), and scoring Lee.

Those were the sorts of hits the Yankees kept piling up against increasingly-frustrated Giants pitchers. It was delightful seeing the Giants turn the car around and send it scooting off in the opposite direction.

But while the Giants eschewed their 2026 first impressions in this game, they couldn’t completely shake off the identity that they’ve spent the last few decades perfectly curating. There had to be some ninth-inning torture.

And so, after Matt Gage cleanly handled the seventh inning, and Keaton Winn thoroughly dominated in the eighth, we got our first look at Ryan Walker as the 2026 closer.

It started off very grim, with the control issues that plagued him this time last year. Facing the top of the order, Walker couldn’t find the strike zone against Cronenworth, issuing a leadoff walk on just four pitches.

But Walker bit down on his mouthguard. With some help from Tatis seemingly forgetting that he could challenge pitches, he struck out San Diego’s superstar, then got Machado to ground out. Two sliders sandwiched around a fastball later, and he was up on Merrill 1-2, with the Giants a strike away from winning the game.

Merrill fought back, fouling off a pitch, and then spitting on two pitches off the corners to load the count. Finally, on a get-it-in 3-2 slider, Merrill uncorked an obscene amount of power, lifting a ball comfortably over the wall, and pulling the Padres within a run.

But as I mentioned, those occasional late-game rallies are designed to fall short, as they did for the Giants on Saturday. And so, after a brief meeting with his teammates, Walker settled in and got Bogaerts to ground out, ending the game, and giving the Giants their first win since their last win, which was, you know … last year.

The win is always the most important thing, but there were other thing to delight in. Roupp really was fantastic, giving up just two singles and two walks in his six shutout innings, while finishing with seven strikeouts. He only needed 88 pitches to get through those half-dozen innings, and likely would have stayed in for the seventh if we were a few weeks into the season.

With the Giants holding a lead for the first time this season, we got to see how Vitello would deploy the bullpen in a leverage situation. It seemed very likely that Walker would be the closer, but the setup man remained a mystery.

Enter Winn. Despite his subpar spring results, the Giants seem to have woken up to the idea that a 99-mph fastball paired with a wipeout splitter is a deeply valuable thing to have, and it was a treat seeing Winn get the opportunity to take down the eighth in a tight game.

So what did he do? He struck out Laureano on four pitches, getting him to chase a pitch that skirted the dirt for strike three. He struck out Nick Castellanos, who helplessly swung through two splitters, and then gave up and watched the third pitch of the at-bat find Bailey’s glove for a K. And he struck out former Giant Bryce Johnson, who put up a fight but never looked comfortable.

Three batters. Three strikeouts. Five swings-and-misses. Not even a single foul ball.

Pure filth from Winn. Now we wait and see if he’s the full-time setup man, or if it’s a fluid situation. It wouldn’t be surprising if Vitello turns to Erik Miller for the eighth inning when left-handers are due up. But I’d sure love to see Winn keep this role, unless he steals Walker’s at some point.

And with that, the Giants have a win, and Vitello has an everything shower … and not the enjoyable kind.

Now it finally feels like the season is underway. Beating the Padres will do that to you.

Sometimes normalcy feels great.

Even though the Mariners were winning most of the game, it still felt like they were going to have to win on a comeback, which they eventually did.

The Yankees were dominating the ABS challenge system, and the Mariners had a few defensive miscues, driving all the focus to the Yankees’ half-innings. Meanwhile, despite putting up a run in the second inning, the Mariners bats had mostly gone down quickly and quietly. So as we reached the midpoint, this was one of those games where it was easy to forget that the Mariners were winning.

But winning they were because that second-inning run was enough to hold the lead throughout Luis Castillo’s six innings of work. La Piedra came out firing for his first start of the season, hitting 96.5 mph with his fastball, something he only topped four times before May last year. He left one a little too close to middle-middle against Aaron Judge for my comfort, but he got away with it and eventually jammed him on a sinker running all the way in on his hands. You might chalk the velo spike up to first-game adrenaline, but he held it for most of his outing. With his fastball unhittable, why would he go to anything else? Well, because his slider was as about as sharp as it gets. So the first time through the order, he only threw one pitch that was anything but a four-seamer or slider—the sinker that finished off Judge.

Of course, Yankees were still reaching base. Twice, a can of corn dropped in shallow left: the first time due to an early-season miscommunication, and the second time because both Donovan and Rivas lost the ball in the lights. And for as well as Castillo was pitching, the Yankees were all over Mike Estabrook’s mistakes behind the plate, successfully challenging five calls in the fourth inning alone.

But overall, Castillo was too sharp to be beat. He surrendered just two “hits”: one on the lost-in-the-lights pop-up and the other a weakly hit groundball that Castillo himself couldn’t quite handle. But his seven strikeouts were all well earned. The most visually pleasing was when Cody Bellinger couldn’t come within a foot of either a backfoot slider or a fastball up out of the zone. But the most notable was Castillo’s final punchout of the night, the 1,500th of his career.

It didn’t have to be a strikeout. It started off on one of his worst pitches of the game—a slider left right over the heart of the plate. But just like he did in his first-inning face-off with Judge, Castillo got away with it. “[Judge] looked at me and smiled,” Castillo said after the game. He says the two of them have admired each other from a distance, leading to something like a friendship from afar. “But I think if I threw that pitch again, there’s no way he’s not going to swing, there’s no way I get to strikeout 1,500.”

Fortunately, he proceeded to throw three better sliders, the final one of which might have hit Judge if he hadn’t swung at it. Castillo laughed about that final pitch with his teammates in the dugout watching on the iPad afterwards. “I was looking at the movement of the pitch. It was so weird. It was moving like, I don’t know, like a splitter-slash-changeup? Like I don’t think I’ve ever thrown a pitch like that in my life. It’s nothing like the slider I throw.” For being both weird and contributing to a milestone, that pitch also earns Luis Castillo tonight’s Sun Hat Award, an honor I give out in my recaps to the player who made a notable individual contribution to the game.

That completes the Mariners’ first turn through the rotation for 2026, in which the five starters put up a combined 29.1 innings with 38 strikeouts to six walks, 13 hits, and six runs. After a down year last year, the early returns from the rotation suggest it will once again be one of Seattle’s strengths.

Castillo left with the lead thanks to a second-inning sequence in which Randy Arozarena led off with a single, Mitch Garver moved him to second by turning an 0-2 count into a 10-pitch walk, and Cole Young batted him in with his first of three hits on the night. But as soon as Castillo departed, the Yankees were able to tie it at 1-1 because while Jose Ferrer got the three ground balls you hope for, he couldn’t turn them into outs.

But while the Mariners left two runners on in each of the fifth and seventh, the fact that they were getting baserunners and that Gabe Speier and Matt Brash had dominant outings gave you the sense that the Mariners bats would eventually pull this one out. Letting Gabe Speier pitch to Aaron Judge was an inspired choice, speaking to the well-founded confidence the team has in him to face righties. Technically, Judge won the battle with a hit, but I’m still giving Speier the victory since it was on a 79-mph ground ball. Brash finished his inning with the nastiest slider of the season (so far) to get revenge on Amed Rosario for his earlier game-tying RBI.

Still, despite the rising feeling that a walk-off was imminent, when Leo Rivas and Brendan Donovan reached the corners to open the ninth, it brought up the ice-cold heart of the Mariners order, and suddenly it wasn’t such a foregone conclusion that the Mariners would win.

For his part, Cal Raleigh is dismissive of the cold start. “A lot of people across the league are fighting the same thing. Guys are trying to find their timing. And it’s more under a microscope, more so now than it is in the middle of a season, just because it’s the start of the season, everybody’s excited, they can keep up with certain numbers.”

He says he feels fine in the box. And tonight he was able to execute, sending a decent Paul Blackburn cutter down the right field line for the Mariners’ first walk-off win of the year. “It’ll be OK,” he said. “I think everybody’s going to be just fine.”

The San Francisco Giants ended their winless streak to start the 2026 season, collecting their first win in the Tony Vitello era after defeating the San Diego Padres, 3-2, on March 30.

Under Vitello — joined the Giants as manager in October 2025 — San Francisco had dropped all three of its games in the season-opening series against the New York Yankees. The Giants went on the road to face the Padres, their NL West divisional rivals, where they got their first victory of the season.

Harrison Bader opened the scoring in the third inning with a 408-foot bomb over left field. The Giants added a couple of runs in the fourth inning by methodically filling the bases, something they hardly did in their series against the Yankees.

San Francisco went up 3-0 in the fourth inning. Patrick Bailey singled to left, which allowed Matt Chapman to cross home plate, as Jung Hoo Lee went to second. Another run shortly followed after Casey Schmitt hit an RBI single to left field that allowed Lee to score.

"The first one's huge," Bader told NBC Sports Bay Area. "Just a matter of going out there and, you know, continuing to process, you know, throwing strikes, taking care of the baseball, getting your swing off as a hitter. You do that, I think good thing happens in the lineup. It felt good to kind of get that off out of the way. Just a good team win."

The Yankees’ bullpen had been flawless up until the ninth inning of Monday’s ballgame. 

With the group a bit shorthanded on the night, Aaron Boone decided to keep the ball in the hands of Paul Blackburn in a tie ballgame heading into the bottom of the ninth. 

Blackburn had just put together a scoreless eighth making his first appearance of the season, but the Mariners quickly created some traffic against him leading off the final frame. 

Boone was forced to make another decision after a pair of singles put the winning run 90 feet away with just one out. 

The skipper decided to have Blackburn pitch to switch-hitting AL MVP runner-up Cal Raleigh rather than walking him to load the bases for the righty Julio Rodriguez. 

Rodriguez was 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts on the night, and Raleigh had struck out in his lone at-bat off the bench, as both fight through some early season struggles. 

Still, the decision came back to cost the Yanks as the slumping backstop laced a walk-off single on the fourth pitch he saw to give the Mariners the series opener. 

Asked about it postgame, Boone said via YES Network that he never considered issuing the intentional walk. 

“Then you’re just bringing up no margin for error and a walk in play,” he said. “You got both guys that are struggling out of the gates, and Julio would be almost impossible to double-up so we’d have to bring the infield in in that situation -- we view [Blackburn] as very neutral, and even reverse, so no, there’s was no thought to that.”

In the end, the Yankees' three-game winning streak and the bullpen's 14+ inning scoreless streak were snapped.

Things finally came full circle after eight years and seven months away from home. Justin Verlander returned to the mound in regular season action as a Detroit Tiger on Monday night in Arizona. Were you nervous? I’ve rarely had the mix of excitement and nerves I felt going into this one except in September and October.

Despite making peace with the reality that Verlander is just a regular rotation arm at this point, it’s hard to see him on the mound and not just expect greatness, but there was no greatness in this one as Verlander’s command was pretty lousy all night. A wild, strange contest ultimately did not go the Tigers way. The Diamondbacks built a big lead, nearly fumbled the bag, but then held on to win their first game of the season 9-6. The Tigers fall to 2-2 on the young season.

Veteran right-hander Mike Soroka was on the mound for the Snakes. He blew Kerry Carpenter away with a 95 mph heater right down the gut to open the game, but Gleyber Torres waited him out to draw a walk. Colt Keith got into a full count, slashing a near double just foul in the left field corner, but Soroka dotted the bottom edge with a fastball and froze him. Riley Greene flared a single to right as the left-handers seemed to be looking to go opposite field. That brought up Spencer Torkelson, who bounced a ball to Nolan Arenado, and the veteran third baseman beat Torres to third base to end the top half.

Over 21 years since his major league debut with the Tigers, Justin Verlander then took the mound against a tough 1-2-3 in the D-Backs lineup. Ketel Marte had no respect for the moment, smoking a 1-1 curveball for a single back through the box. Against Corbin Carroll, Verlander worked into a 2-2 count, shook Dillon Dingler off, and bounced another slider hunting chase. The ball got away from Dingler and Marte took second, and Carroll roasted a heater to the warning track in right center field for an RBI triple. 1-0 Diamondbacks.

Verlander tried to junkball Perdomo, and it didn’t work as the shortstop took a breaking ball down in a full count to walk. Gabriel Moreno bounced out to Javy Báez at shortstop, but it was weakly hit and they couldn’t turn it over. So, Carroll scored, and it was now 2-0 D-Backs with one out as Arenado stepped into the box.

Arenado lined a 1-2 fastball right to Báez for the second out, but the shortstop uncorked a wild snap throw to first as Perdomo was leaning, and that was a two base throwing error. Fortunately it didn’t matter as Alek Thomas flew out to right to end the inning.

Not an ideal start for the Tigers in this one.

McGonigle led off the second by smoking a line drive to right at 103.4 mph, but the speedy Carroll ran it down. Dingler chased a bunch of breaking balls to strike out swinging. Parker Meadows got a changeup down and away, lining it down the left field line for a double, and that brought Báez to the dish. The shortstop worked a full count, but presumably expecting them to fish away with a breaking ball, was instead locked up by a sinker middle-in. The only bright spot was that Soroka was already 40 pitches deep.

When I think of a long-time JV killer, one of the first names that comes to mind is long-time Cleveland slugger Carlos Santana. We prefer the guitarist, but it was Santana digging in against Verlander to open the bottom of the second. An 0-2 slider was hung, but Santana lined it to Carpenter in right field. Another hanging slider was roped to right for a single by Ildemaro Vargas. A first pitch curveball to Jordan Lawler was ripped to left for a single. Quite a bit of hard contact already, and now we were back to Marte at the top of the order.

Marte lifted a dangerous pop-up into shallow left-center and Báez called off Greene and made a pretty sweet basket catch while running well out into the outfield for the second out. In a 1-1 count, yet another hanging slider was right into Carroll’s bat path and got launched for a three-run shot. 5-0 Diamondbacks.

This was not what we were looking for. The stuff looks just fine, but the slider was all over the place in the early going. The hard contact continued as Perdomo got a first pitch heater down the pipe and fortunately lined it to Meadows to end the inning.

So far the command was pretty poor from JV.

Carpenter opened the third with a line drive single to right field. Torres drove one out to the warning track in dead center but it died in Thomas’ glove for the first out. Keith did better, hammering one further to center field. It kicked off the wall just shy of the yellow line high up the wall for a double. Carpenter thought it was out and perhaps wasn’t on his horse, stopping at third, and Keith had to scramble back to second base. Tough medicine on a ball that probably carried 415 feet or more.

Greene worked a 3-2 count and then took a front hip fastball that caught the inside edge to strike out. Tork watched a pair of breaking balls away to get to 2-0, then took a sinker on the inner edge for a strike. The next sinker was right down the pipe but he fouled it off and then chased a slurve just off the plate away to strike out. TTBDNS time. Make that five baserunners stranded in three innings.

Verlander’s command was just really spotty throughout his season debut. He wasn’t getting ahead enough, and made some mistakes in hitters’ counts. Curiously, we saw no high fourseamers at all really through the first three innings, but he did settle down for a scoreless frame.

He tugged three straight fastballs to Moreno before working back to a full count. Moreno drilled a 95 mph heater at the bottom of the zone down the right field line for a double. Verlander got ahead of Arenado 0-2, then missed down with a changeup. A fastball down was lifted out to Greene near the warning track in left for the first out. Thomas was locked up by a curveball and flailed at it for Verlander’s first strikeout. He and Santana locked up in a lengthy battle as his pitch count reached 65 on the night, and eventually popped him up to McGonigle for the final out.

The bats still weren’t doing anything in the fourth. McGonigle grounded out, Dingler punched out on a slurve down and away, and Meadows flew out to center field after starting ahead 3-0.

Verlander came back out and quickly collected two outs on very routine contact. Marte stepped in with two outs, and Verlander was closing in on 80 pitches. After getting ahead, he couldn’t get the talented outfielder to chase, and Marte worked a walk. That was all for Verlander’s return start to the Tigers.

Enmanuel de Jesus took over against the tough series of lefties atop the order. Dillon Dingler had a successful challenge as de Jesus dotted the outer corner with fastballs, but in a 2-2 count de Jesus yanked a fastball and it got away from Dingler as Marte took second, but it didn’t matter as Carroll chased a cutter away and struck out. Onto the fifth.

Soroka’s day was about to end as well, but he had enough left in the tank to punch out Báez, Carpenter, and Torres on 9 pitches. The immaculate inning did not speak well for the Tigers chances of fighting back in this one.

De Jesus got Perdomo to start the bottom of the fifth, bur Moreno singled to left. Arenado came up with a nice piece of 1-2 hitting, punching a fastball through the open right side of the infield. Thomas tried to bunt first pitch but tapped it foul, and then the left-handed outfielder smoked a cutter the opposite way off the wall to make it 6-0. De Jesus was following Verlander’s example and missing way too often, and he walked Santana to load the bases. He bounced back to pop up Vargas, but after getting ahead of Lawlar, de Jesus tried high sinkers twice and then missed low with a changeup to walk in a run. 7-0 Diamondbacks. Le sigh.

Marte got tied up by de Jesus’ first two pitches and eventually grounded one to Báez at shortstop. It was a bouncer and Marte runs well, so Báez fired quickly to second to get Lawlar. He was called out, but the Diamondbacks rightly challenged, and Lawlar was safe. 8-0 Diamondbacks. The late night suffering will continue until morale improves.

That was all for de Jesus’ return to the major leagues. After painting edges all spring, his command wasn’t sharp here either, and Hinch had to go get him as well. Brant Hurter came on to retire Carroll on a bliner out to Greene to end the inning.

Right-hander Kevin Ginkel took over in the top of the seventh. He froze Keith and got a soft tapper from Greene to start the inning. An end of the bat liner to center field from Torkelson was caught on a nice sliding catch by Thomas in the seventh. The Tigers now had 11 strikeouts to one walk, and the zone was not under control.

Hurter tossed a 1-2-3 bottom half of the sixth. Moreno flew out to the warning track in left but Greene was camped under it. Arenado grounded out to McGonigle to send us to the eighth.

So far, this had been classic bad at-bat theater by the Tigers. They were largely trying to be patient, only to let pitchers back into counts taking fastballs for strikes when ahead, and then chasing once there were two strikes. Not what we are looking for.

Right-hander Joe Ross, brother of Tyson, handled the seventh for the Snakes. He walked McGonigle to start things off. Dingler ambushed a first pitch slider and hammered a one hopper off the center field wall for a double to get the Tigers on the board. 8-1 Snakes.

Parker Meadows grounded out to second, moving Dingler to third, and Báez strafed a line drive single to right field to plate the Tigers’ second run. Small victories against arguably the D-Backs worst reliever. Carpenter chased a splitter away and struck out yet again, but Torres drilled a single to center field to keep the inning alive. Colt Keith stepped into the box, and Diamondbacks called a mound meeting to discuss.

It didn’t help them. Ross fell behind 2-1, and Keith smoked an opposite field drive into the left field corner to plate both runs. 8-4 Diamondbacks, and now things were getting interesting. They got more interesting when Riley Greene dumped a single to center field. Keith raced around to make it 8-5, and that was it for Joe Ross.

Sidearmer Ryan Thompson came on and threw three straight balls, balked Greene to third, and then gave up an RBI double to Torkelson. Hmm….8-6 Tigers. McGonigle back up as the 10th batter of the inning. Thompson fell behind 2-0, and the D-Backs were in danger. Probably the right thing to do was just to walk McGonigle, and Thompson agreed, doing so on four straight pitches. And now it was Dillon Dingler’s turn. Thompson missed four more times in a row, yes that’s eight straight, and Dingler walked as well. Yeesh.

That was it for Thompson, and at this point Jason Benetti, who had pointed out all game long that the Diamondbacks bullpen was terrible last year and not particularly upgraded this offseason, was grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary. Still, the Tigers were still well short of a comeback.

Torey Lovullo came to the mound once again, looking fully fed up with the situation, and called on Juan Morillo instead. A disgusted home crowd let out a roar when Morillo floated in a first pitch strike, but he too fell behind 2-1, then 3-1. However, Meadows got a 99 mph fourseamer down in the zone, and grounded out to second to at least temporarily restore sanity to the game. 8-6 Diamondbacks.

Hurter nearly hit Alek Thomas with a sinker to start the bottom half, but instead the center fielder swung and grounded out to Báez. Carlos Santana also grounded out quickly to Torres. Unfortunately, a 1-0 sinker to Vargas was up a bit and he smashed it out to left center field for a solo shot to make it a 9-6 game. Lawlar ripped a hot grounder past McGonigle into left, and that was it for Hurter as Kyle Finnegan entered the contest.

Finnegan dotted 97 on the inner edge to start Marte off, and Dingler had to challenge, making that two successful challenges for the Tigers catcher. Finnegan heard Lawlar break for second, turned and fired high to Torkelson. The ball got away and Lawlar ended up on third, but Marte lifted a shallow fly ball to left to end the inning.

Lovullo turned to Taylor Clarke to open the eighth. Báez flew out to left off the end of the bat to start things off. Carpenter struck out again, and then Torres flew out to center field.

Tyler Holton took over in the bottom of the eighth with tough lefties to face, and Holton quickly walked Corbin Carroll on four straight pitches. The speedy Carroll is not the guy to put on base to leadoff an inning. Holton did erase him by getting Perdomo to ground to Báez, who forced Carroll at second. Tyler Holton threw a 94 mph fastball in that at-bat which is odd, but he also was missing a ton, which was even odder. Holton walked Moreno on four straight pitches as well, and Nolan Arenado stepped in with a chance to put this game to bed for good. Instead, he popped out to Torkelson in foul territory. Holton punched out Thomas, and it was last call for the Tigers’ offense.

Keith opened the inning with another well struck ball off of Paul Sewald, but flew out to Lawlar in left. Greene flew out just shy of the warning track in center, and it was up to Torkelson who struck out.

Overall, poor showings from Verlander and de Jesus. Dingler, Greene, and particularly Keith had good nights at the plate, but not enough to overcome a big deficit. The Tigers are 2-2, and now Casey Mize will make his season debut on Tuesday night against RHP Brandon Pfaadt at 9:40 p.m. ET.

SEATTLE — Aaron Boone wanted the Yankees to be aggressive in using the automated ball-strike system.

A 5-for-5 night of challenges Monday — including two in one at-bat and the other three by three consecutive batters in one inning — was right in line with those wishes, though it did not ultimately make a difference in a 2-1 loss to the Mariners at T-Mobile Park.

On a night when they struggled offensively, the Yankees at least created some better opportunities for themselves by getting called strikes turned into balls, which turned into some barking with home plate umpire Mike Estabrook along the way.

“Really good job by the guys,” Boone said. “When you have that kind of success rate, it’s not going to be like that every night, but I thought every one was obviously warranted and a couple in some key spots to give us a chance to build an inning. We just weren’t able to build much offensively tonight.”

Estabrook heard it from Boone and the Yankees dugout in the fourth inning, when Ben Rice, Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr. each successfully challenged pitches below the zone in consecutive at-bats.

“You also get a little frustrated over there, like, those are razor-thin pitches sometimes, you don’t want to always have to be challenging,” Boone said. “But good on the guys for hammering the strike zone right now.”

An inning earlier, José Caballero successfully challenged two pitches in the same at-bat. He turned a 1-1 count into a 2-0 count and then a strikeout into a walk.

The Yankees are 10-for-11 in ABS challenges through four games.

The Yankees are now 5/5 on challenges against Mike Estabrook.

Estabrook got mad because Aaron Boone started chirping him to lock in

Ridiculous Estabrook is pissed off, get the calls right… pic.twitter.com/5ARiCznrfX

— js9innings (@js9inningsmedia) March 31, 2026

For the first time since their down-to-the-wire race for the American League MVP last season, Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh squared off Monday night.

Raleigh was not in the Mariners starting lineup, entering the day 2-for-15 with 10 strikeouts, but pinch hit in the seventh inning and later delivered the game-winning hit with a walk-off single. The catcher was off to a slow start after crushing 60 home runs last season and nearly swiping the MVP from Judge, who received 17 first-place votes to Raleigh’s 13.

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“I figured it would be pretty close,” Boone said before Monday’s game. “I kind of believed Judgey would carry the day. I think [the voters] got it right. But there’s no denying the all-around season that Cal had. It was deservingly a very tight race.”

Carlos Rodón (elbow surgery) threw 50 pitches in live batting practice Sunday in Tampa, continuing his buildup toward rejoining the Yankees in April. It is possible his next outing could come on the start of a rehab assignment this weekend.

Gerrit Cole, meanwhile, is expected to throw one inning of live batting practice in a few days as he goes through a scheduled deload before building up a final time.

As for Anthony Volpe, the shortstop remains on track to begin facing live pitching Wednesday in Tampa. He has been hitting off the Trajekt pitching machine over the past few days.

Carlos Lagrange made his Triple-A debut Sunday, tossing four innings of one-run ball with no walks and three strikeouts. The 22-year-old threw 68 pitches in frigid Buffalo, but still brought the heat with his fastball, averaging 97.9 mph and topping out at 101.3.

The rest of the Yankees minor league rosters were announced Monday ahead of those affiliates beginning the season Friday. Among the notable assignments: SS George Lombard Jr., RHP Ben Hess and LHP Kyle Carr at Double-A Somerset; LHP Pico Kohn, INF Kaeden Kent and INF Core Jackson at High-A Hudson Valley; and LHP Henry Lalane, LHP Allen Facundo and OF Brando Mayea at Single-A Tampa.

At the start of Monday night, the biggest concern around the Dodgers was focused squarely on Roki Sasaki.

By the end of it, the questions had shifted to their suddenly sluggish offense.

In a 4-2 loss to the Cleveland Guardians at Dodger Stadium, Sasaki pitched surprisingly well, allowing just one run and walking only two batters in four-plus innings of solid work –– a stark reversal from the 15.58 ERA he posted in a poor spring training marred by a total lack of consistent command.

Instead, it was the Dodgers’ lineup that had the biggest problems, stumbling to a third-straight disappointing performance following its eight-run outburst on Opening Day.

Early on, they had no answers for young Guardians left-hander Parker Messick, who went six scoreless innings in what was only his eighth career start. With a funky left-handed delivery and unpredictable six-pitch arsenal, he not only struck out five batters, but also allowed just two hard-hit balls. And even one of those resulted in an inning-ending double-play.

By the time Messick was done, the Guardians (3-2) had built a four-run lead, and turned things over to their traditionally stout bullpen. The Dodgers didn’t score until the ninth, by which point their two-run rally was too little, too late.

“I thought they pitched us well tonight,” manager Dave Roberts said. “(There were) a couple at-’em balls that turned into double plays I felt could have changed the inning or the game.”

Alas, over their last three games, the Dodgers (3-1) have now totaled only 10 runs and 19 hits. They’ve struck out 17 times in that span, and drawn only six walks (including none on Monday).

It’s a small sample, of course –– especially for a club that was presented a team-wide Silver Slugger Award pregame for leading the National League in scoring in 2025.

But it has raised a few opening-week worries, nonetheless –– raising some uncomfortable similarities to the second-half and postseason slumps the team battled down the stretch last year.

What it means

The Dodgers might have the most talented roster in the majors. But that doesn’t mean they can get away with unsound fundamentals.

Monday was a reminder of that, with the team making a series of uncharacteristic mistakes.

They had two on and no outs in the third inning with Shohei Ohtani at the plate, yet came up empty after Miguel Rojas was picked off at second, Ohtani lined out chasing what would’ve been ball four and Kyle Tucker went down swinging to retire the side.

They struggled to control the running game with backup catcher Dalton Rushing behind the plate, allowing the Guardians to successfully steal a base on all three of their attempts.

And in a three-run seventh inning that allowed the Guardians to put the game away, reliever Justin Wrobleski committed several costly miscues: Failing to cleanly field a bunt to load the bases, losing Rhys Hoskins in an 0-2 count to walk in a run with two outs in the inning, then giving up a two-run double to Daniel Schneemann that put the score out of reach.

Who’s hot

Against all the odds, at least following his disastrous spring performance, how about Sasaki?

His fastball command was significantly improved, helping him throw strikes on 45 of 78 pitches even with a few wild misses mixed in. His newly added cutter gave him another weapon, accounting for two of his four strikeouts. And while he didn’t execute his trademark splitter as crisply as usual, it remained a largely unhittable pitch, generating a whiff on three of five swings.

Granted, the Guardians –– the American League’s lowest-scoring offense last year –– let him off the hook a few times, both by chasing outside the zone repeatedly and failing to punish a few mistake pitches in it.

However, the Dodgers will happily take what Sasaki gave them Monday; an outing good enough to keep them in the game early, and save the bullpen from being overworked too severely in the season’s opening week.

Who’s not

Right now, just about the entire top half of the Dodgers’ lineup (outside of Will Smith, who didn’t start Monday).

Ohtani snapped a hitless streak that extended back to his first at-bat of the season by leading the game off with a bloop single to left. After that, however, he didn’t reach base again, dropping his early batting average to .167.

Tucker and Mookie Betts also went 1-for-4, leaving them hitting just .200 through the first four games of the season.

Teoscar Hernández snapped a 10 at-bat hitless streak with a single in the seventh inning –– staying alive after originally having a called third strike overturned on an ABS challenge, one of his two successful appeals in the game –– but was also quiet otherwise, finishing the night with a .143 average.

And Freddie Freeman had a 0-for-4 performance that sunk his average to .188. 

To this point, those five now have the worst opening-week hitting numbers of all the Dodgers’ regular starters.

Roberts acknowledged some surprise about the slow starts his superstar core has gotten off to, especially after the strong springs all of them produced. But, he spun it as a positive in the big picture.

“For me, the takeaway is we’re 3-1 and the guys that we expect to swing the bats aren’t swinging the bats right now,” he said. “So that’s a good thing. They’ll hit.”

It just hasn’t happened yet.

Up next

Ohtani will make his season pitching debut on Tuesday, when the Dodgers and Guardians continue their three-game series. Despite a delayed spring pitching progression while hitting for Team Japan in the World Baseball Classic, Ohtani should be built up to go six innings. The Guardians will counter with right-hander Tanner Bibee, who was 12-11 with a 4.24 ERA last year and gave up three runs in five innings in his first start of this season last week.  

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And he didn’t even need Jose Ramirez to hit to do it!

Parker Messick beat the Dodgers 4-2 and pitched six shutout innings, with no walks, five strikeouts and allowing only five hits. This dude is a GAMER, folks:

Jose Ramirez was chasing badly all game. He got a first inning single and a stolen base… then couldn’t come through. However he did make a great play, turning a double-play on a nice pick.

The offense came on an Austin Hedges (!) double and a Steven Kwan double in the 3rd. Angel Martinez sac bunted in between those two, but it was against a RHP so I’ll reluctantly allow it.

Then, in the seventh, the Guardians finally broke through… after singles from Austin Hedges (again!), Angel Martinez and Steven Kwan. Then, Chase DeLauter and Jose Ramirez again failed to get the job done, but Rhys Hoskins (having subbed in for Kyle Manzardo) managed to take a walk off of Justin Wrobleski to force in a run.

Finally, up stepped the Guardians’ centerfielder for the night: Daniel Schneemann, the Mormon Missile. And, he rightly took four pitches, then rocketed the fifth pitch he saw into the gap in left-center for a two-run double:

Shawn Armstrong entered for the 7th, but was picked up by Erik Sabrowski who went one and a third dominant innings.

Cade Smith does not appear to be himself yet… he gave up two runs while not having control of his secondary stuff, but eventually managed to nail down the save.

This was a HUGE win. With Ohtani and Yamomoto on deck, the Guardians needed to get this one, and they did. Now, it’s time to surprise some folks and win this series.

The Guardians ruined the Dodgers’ chance for an undefeated season, be proud. And be excited because Jose and Cade Smith will be back to their usual before you know it.