Category: Sports News

Stott hyperextends right elbow in Phillies' win originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Bryson Stott hyperextended his right elbow on his second-to-last swing of Monday’s 5-2 Phillies win over the Marlins and it sounds like he will be out of the lineup Tuesday.

Stott twisted himself onto a knee swinging hard at an 85 mph, low-and-in Cade Gibson slider and needed a few minutes, walking around in circles trying to shake the discomfort out of the arm. He was visited by manager Rob Thomson and a trainer but stayed in the game, grounding out on the next pitch and playing the final half-inning in the field.

Edmundo Sosa will likely start at second base Tuesday against Marlins right-hander Cal Quantrill.

Stott dealt with a nagging nerve injury in his right elbow throughout 2024. He suffered that injury last May, also in Miami, and felt it hindered his performance the rest of the season. Manager Rob Thomson told reporters postgame he was unsure if the hyperextension was related to that issue, which hadn’t visibly affected Stott so far this season.

The 27-year-old is still playing elite defense at second base but is the Phillies’ coldest hitter. Stott is at .236/.300/.329, numbers even lower than last year’s disappointing .245/.315/.356. In 2023, his best season, he hit .280/.329/.419, and that is the range where Stott needs to be. His selectivity and ability to work a count are positives but he has a .313 career on-base percentage in 1,948 plate appearances, slightly below the league average of .315 over that four-year period.

Sosa, too, has slumped over the last month. He was hitting .386 through May 20 but is 4-for-38 (.105) without an extra-base hit since.

These are three more highly winnable games in Miami even if the Phillies have to play a man short for a couple of days. The Phils have their three lefties — Jesus Luzardo, Ranger Suarez and Cristopher Sanchez — going Thursday through Sunday against a Marlins team that has homered just once every 66 plate appearances vs. southpaws.

The Phillies have won five in a row since losing 10 of 12, scoring nearly seven runs a night during the streak.

Giants made difficult decision to part with Harrison in Devers trade originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

LOS ANGELES — Buster Posey has made no secret of the fact that he believes there’s a way to win consistently at Oracle Park. He grew up in this game with Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, and he has talked repeatedly in recent months about the depth of young starting pitching that the Giants once again have.

On a seven-minute call with beat reporters on Sunday night, Posey brought it up again. He believes in building around pitching, and he believed in left-hander Kyle Harrison. But he also saw an opportunity that was too good to pass up. 

It was going to hurt in some way to acquire Rafael Devers, and the Giants had to part with a 23-year-old who is about 15 months removed from being widely considered the best left-handed pitching prospect in the game.

“Kyle Harrison is a guy that has tremendous upside,” Posey said. “He’s shown this year that he’s 95-98 (mph). I’ve been very outspoken about what I believe the foundation of success is for an organization: It’s pitching and defense, so to give up a guy like that is not an easy thing for us. Obviously, the Red Sox and (lead executive) Craig Breslow value that type of arm, as well.”

Harrison was pulled off the field just minutes before what would have been his fifth start in place of the injured Justin Verlander. The right-hander will be back from pec discomfort on Wednesday, but there was no guarantee that it would have been Harrison who would have returned to the bullpen. Behind closed doors, the Giants were discussing whether he should stick in the rotation and another young starter should be removed. 

The discussion now will be about how to get through the second half, when Landen Roupp likely will hit an innings limit. The Giants figure to lean on left-hander Carson Whisenhunt, and his strong year in Triple-A made it easier to pull the trigger on parting with Harrison. 

Whisenhunt is a top-100 prospect as well, but few Giants in recent memory have reached the level of hype that accompanied Harrison. He was a top-25 prospect in the minors and twice pitched in the Futures Game, and for a while, the Giants thought he would be the long-term partner for Logan Webb. 

Webb and Harrison are close, with the ace becoming a mentor for the young lefty. On Sunday, Webb said he was excited to add a top-10 hitter to the lineup, but admitted the trade was bittersweet. He spoke with Harrison in the clubhouse and later said he relayed a simple message: “Go be a star over there.”

“You guys have heard me talk about Kyle before. I’m the biggest believer in him,” Webb said. “He gets to go learn from some really good pitchers. You’ve got (Walker) Buehler over there, (Garrett) Crochet, (Brayan) Bello. You’ve got (pitching coach) Andrew Bailey over there.

“I think it’s a good landing spot for him and I think he’s going to be great. I told him I’ll be a friend for life.”

As Harrison departed, Webb asked if he would still be a neighbor in the Scottsdale area. Harrison moved there as a prospect so he could train near the team’s facility all winter, but his future now is up in the air. He told Webb he wasn’t sure what’s ahead of him, but the immediate move from the Red Sox was to option him to Triple-A, which will prevent him from facing the Giants this weekend at Oracle Park. 

At some point soon, though, the Red Sox will slide him into their rotation. Harrison was said by those close to him to be happy with the opportunity to grow with a young core of talented position players, and short-term, the trade will come with an unexpected perk. His younger brother, Bear, is a talented Texas A&M catcher who will spend the summer in the Cape Cod League, playing only about 90 minutes from Fenway Park.

It’s been a chaotic few months for Harrison, who got a late start to camp, but the Red Sox are hopeful he can build off his recent success. He had a 4.56 ERA for the Giants, but there were flashes of his past dominance in May, and his fastball was back into the mid-to-upper nineties. 

If Harrison can develop a consistent breaking ball, that part of the trade might come back to sting the Giants. They based just about their entire 2020 draft around Harrison, a De La Salle alum who was taken in the third round but signed well over slot as a way to keep him in the Bay Area and away from UCLA. 

Farhan Zaidi thought Harrison would be a star, and it was easy to see that path when he debuted as a 22-year-old in 2023 and struck out 11 Cincinnati Reds in his first start at Oracle Park. The Red Sox had been eyeing Harrison for a while, too, and while the Giants didn’t want to part with him, there was no way to acquire Devers without including a marquee young pitcher along with Jordan Hicks, prospect Jose Bello and 2024 first-rounder James Tibbs III.

The deal brings a franchise cornerstone back to San Francisco, but leaves the Giants without much hitting depth in the minors behind top prospect Bryce Eldridge. And it leaves them without Harrison, who had hoped to partner with Webb, Hayden Birdsong, Roupp, Whisenhunt and others for years to come.

“I think there was a shock factor to it,” Webb said. “He grew up in the Bay Area and it sucks when you’re with a team for your entire career, close to family, and you’re getting ready to go face the best team in baseball, the best lineup in baseball, and you get pulled off the mound right before. But he handled it well.”

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast

The Yankees' bats continued to come up short Monday night in a 1-0, 11-inning loss to the Los Angeles Angels, as they were shutout for the second straight game.

They've now lost four straight games after being swept by the Red Sox in Boston over the weekend and have scored just five runs over the last five games. Manager Aaron Boone was asked after Monday's loss what's preventing the team from scoring, saying there's multiple factors while acknowledging the team's struggles to come through with a big hit.

"Yeah, a little bit of everything," Boone. "I mean, right now, when you're not scoring runs, they're keeping us in the ballpark. Tonight was a little bit of both, you know, where I thought we had a number of balls on the screws, even there late. Cody [Bellinger] just misses a couple to right, Goldie [Paul Goldschmidt] stepped on that ball to left center, so we were barreling some balls up.

"But then, but that said, we're not punching any across, not hitting the home run, you know. And we had a couple situations where we could have produced a run there late and weren't able to take advantage of it."

New York has gone 1-for-18 with runners in scoring position and have left 12 men on base during this losing streak. Their last run came in the top of the ninth inning of Saturday's 4-3 loss with Anthony Volpe driving in one on a groundout.

Boone went on to credit Angels starter Jose Soriano and his "bowling ball sinker", as the right-hander allowed six hits over seven scoreless innings. Although, he knows the team needed to "take advantage of situational things that come up" when they can't rely on the home run.

The Yanks had a scoring chance in the 11th with the bases loaded, but Volpe swung on the first pitch and grounded into the force out at third base for the game's final out. Boone defended the choice to not take a pitch against the new reliever Hunter Strickland, saying the hitter needs "to be ready to go" in those types of situations.

"Not necessarily, first pitch is the best one to hit sometimes," Boone said. "I didn't see if it was off the plate, not a good pitch to go after, that might be the case, but we got to be ready to go there."

New York is now 42-29 on the season and holds only a 2.5 game lead in the AL East over the Tampa Bay Rays, who've won 19 of their last 25 games. They'll look to get back on track Tuesday when Will Warren takes the mound against the Angels.

Aaron Boone was asked if he would've preferred for Anthony Volpe to take a pitch in the 11th inning (he grounded out on one pitch with the bases loaded)

"Not necessarily. The first pitch is the best one to hit sometimes" pic.twitter.com/23K0Mx0QfR

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) June 17, 2025

Out since spring training due to tendinitis in both elbows, Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton made his season debut Monday night, going 2-for-4 with a double in the team's 1-0 loss to the Los Angeles Angels.

The five-time All-Star told reporters after the loss that he felt good at the plate and will need to continue working on his swing timing.

"Great to be back,” Stanton said. "Obviously wanted to win. But yeah, it’s good to be back out there. Thought I saw the ball pretty well besides one at-bat. So we just working on that, making sure my timing’s geared up. Get rolling."

Stanton came up to bat for the first time with two outs and two runners on base, but hit a hard groundout to third base (101.5 mph exit velocity). He singled in the bottom of the fourth, ripping a grounder 111.1 mph past the shortstop into left field. Stanton later struck out his third time at bat on three straight knuckle curves from Jose Soriano.

He bounced back leading off the bottom of the ninth, doubling to left field on a sharply hit grounder off veteran reliever Kenley Jansen. Jasson Domínguez

came in to pinch-run for him, but the Yanks couldn't capitalize and failed to score.

“Thought he was great,” manager Aaron Boone said of Stanton. “First at-bat too, first and second there, again off Soriano, who’s tough to get the ball in the air, especially for righties. He smokes that ball to third. You watch [Luis] Rengifo play it, that thing’s gaining on him in a hurry.

"Then two more, gets the base it and smokes the double to get us going there in the ninth. Yeah, I thought he looked really good.”

Overall, Boone was pleased with what he saw from the former MVP.

“I thought he moved well on his double," Boone said. "Where I’ve seen, it seems like as he’s been getting his live ABs and then the rehab stint, I feel like his timing with the fastball has been good. Now it’s just about continuing to do it over and over and seeing how he bounces back every day. I thought he looked sharp.”

Stanton agreed that the four games with Double-A Somerset, including three straight, were "important" for his comeback and checked off some boxes. As for how he'll prepare for more games, it'll be an emphasis on seeing the ball.

“Make sure I’m ready, make sure I’m ready for 100 mph," Stanton said. "With not as many at-bats under my belt, that’s gonna be the most important, see the ball early. Normal things you would say mid-season, but emphasize it a little more now.”

Now with Stanton back, Boone will have to figure out the playing time rotation with him, Ben Rice, and Paul Goldschmidt. Stanton will DH, with the other two DH-ing and splitting time at first base. Rice has 12 homers, 11 doubles, and 26 RBI over 63 games, while Goldschmidt is hitting .309 with 31 RBI over 71 games. Stanton was asked about his role and made it clear he's willing to help the team however he can, especially while the Yankees have scored just five runs in the last 49 innings and dropped four straight games.

“Whatever’s best for us to win, that’s the most important," Stanton said. "And the guys that aren’t going to be starting are gonna be coming in in huge pinch-hit spots. In that opportunity, it’s usually a spot a chance to win the game anyway. Yeah, we’ll work with it.”

All eyes are on Shohei Ohtani, as he made his long-awaited return to the pitching mound and delivered his first pitches as a member of the Dodgers on Monday night in a 6-3 win over the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium. Ohtani last pitched on Aug. 23, 2023, while with the Angels. He underwent his second Tommy John surgery the following month.

Ohtani is 38-19 with 3.01 earned-run average over 86 starts in his MLB career entering Monday's game and finished fourth in the AL Cy Young Award voting in 2022, when he went 15-9 with a 2.33 ERA. He is expected to help bolster a depleted Dodgers starting rotation that has been missing Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, among others, for extended stretches this season.

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.