Category: Sports News

The long wait is almost over. After an active offseason for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Spring Training is getting ready to kick off games this coming weekend, with the Grapefruit League getting rolling on Saturday afternoon. The Bucs will play 31 Spring Training games, running all the way up until March 23. They will play 16 home games and 15 away and open up on Saturday against the Baltimore Orioles.

This is all in leadup to the regular season Opening Day, when the Bucs take on the New York Mets at Citifield on March 26 at 1:00pm eastern. They have their home opener on April 3, taking on the Orioles once again, with a 4:00pm eastern start.

The Bucs will again play live on Pittsburgh Sports Net, and they are set to televise 15 of Pittsburgh’s preseason games, including 9 home broadcasts and 6 away.  You’ll also be able to catch the Buccos on 93.7 The Fan, 100.1 FM, AM 1020 KDKA as well as the Sports Net Pittsburgh app, SNP 360.

Here’s the Pittsburgh Pirates 2026 MLB Spring Training Schedule:

Hope springs eternal this time of year, particularly if you’re a hitter in the hot, dry air of Arizona. The Royals typically perform pretty well in the Cactus League, which means absolutely nothing since the games don’t count. But you can be excused for getting a teensy bit excited about a player who seemed to figure things out in spring training. Hope is a good thing, after all!

I am usually quite dismissive of guys launching bombs in Arizona. But I couldn’t help but get a bit excited about Peter O’Brien in 2017. I had liked O’Brien as a college player at Miami, and when the Royals picked him up, I thought there was a chance he could help the team. Then he got to Surprise and started launching bombs. He smacked seven home runs – the only players in all of baseball who hit more that spring training were Greg Bird and Bryce Harper. Could O’Brien be our Bryce Harper? No. O’Brien was sent to the minors and hit .162 with three home runs in 27 games before being released.

The next year, it was Frank “The Tank” Schwindel. He tied for the most spring training home runs in baseball with seven (Salvador Perez and Jorge Soler each hit six, giving Royals fans visions of a Murderer’s Row). His line of .366/.381/.976 wasn’t enough to make the team, so he hit 24 home runs for Omaha. He made the Opening Day roster the next year, but lasted just six games before it was back to the minors. He would find some limited success in 2021, hitting 14 home runs with the Cubs.

Hunter Dozier had a terrific 2019 season, and although his pandemic-shortened 2020 season had mixed results, he was rewarded with a four-year, $25 million deal in February of 2021. That seemed to be a potential steal when he destroyed Cactus League pitching that year, smashing five home runs with a line of .289/.373/.733. But it proved to be fool’s gold as he posted a career-worst OPS+ of 76 that year, part of a rapid decline that turned that contract into a dud.

Ruben Gotay, Mike Jacobs, and Kila Kaaihue are some other Cactus League MVPs. Who was your favorite performer in Royals spring training?

Dalton Rushing got his first taste of the major leagues last season, and all of its ups and downs. Now, he heads into potentially his first full season in the majors.

As the backup to Will Smith, it’d be tough for anyone to find a rhythm at the plate playing once or twice per week behind the plate. That proved true for Rushing last year, hitting just .204/.258/.324 with a 37.4-percent strikeout rate in 155 plate appearances. His highest strikeout rate in the minors was only 21.5 percent, in Triple-A Oklahoma City before his call-up in 2025.

Dalton Rushing as a professional

• 2022: Class-A (all but two games), 134 PA, 213 wRC+
• 2023: High-A, 381 PA, 147 wRC+
• 2024: Double-A & Triple-A, 503 PA, 146 wRC+
• 2025: Triple-A, 149 PA, 143 wRC+
• 2025: MLB, 155 PA, 62 wRC+

Rushing’s calling card has always been his bat, and he found time in the minors to get more reps at the plate by playing first base, designated hitter, and sometimes left field in addition to catching. Now on the Dodgers, he joins a depth chart with those positions suitably filled, with Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman plus Kyle Tucker and Teoscar Hernández in the corners.

Katie Woo at The Athletic on Friday wrote about some spring storylines, including a bit about Rushing’s role:

Rushing is in line to be the backup catcher behind Will Smith again, but Roberts would like to find ways to get Rushing more at-bats. That could mean using Rushing at first base on days when Freeman needs a spell. The outfield, Roberts said, will not be an option for Rushing.

Ohtani started 317 of 324 games at designated hitter the last two seasons, and while Freeman has been an ironman for most of his career, his last two seasons have proven more challenging. Freeman started 147 games in 2024, and 145 games in 2025.

That still leaves some time at first base for Rushing to at least occasionally play. Last season he played eight games and 28 total innings at the position with the Dodgers, but his lone start at first came in the final weekend of the season, the day after the team clinched the division.

Today’s question is how many non-catcher starts will Dalton Rushing make in 2026?

News came out today that California prep prospect Jared Gridlinger is set to reclassify and move from the 2027 MLB Draft into the 2026 MLB Draft. Gridlinger ranked as high as No. 3 overall and No. 1 prep player in the 2027 class, and adds another premium talent into what is already a strong draft class. This move comes after the deadline to make the move, though Gridlinger was able to secure a waiver from MLB to give him access.

To give you a little more background on Gridlinger, he will be just 17 years and two months old at the time of the 2026 MLB Draft, making him especially young for the draft. As a player he is one of the most legit two-way prospects we have seen at the top of the draft since Brendan McKay back in 2017. He’s a 6’3”, 185-pound lefty at just 16-years-old presently, but is seen as a projectable pitcher with a fastball already up to 96 MPH and potentially both a plus slider and change. That goes with plenty of power and a feel for taking good at bats as a hitter. If his name sounds familiar, that would be because he is the younger brother of Tennessee freshman catcher Jared Gridlinger – a name you may remember leading up to the 2025 MLB Draft.

This impacts the Braves in a big way as it adds another premium talent to a loaded 2026 class that sees them pick twice in the first round and five times in the first 112 picks. While Gridlinger is the type of prospect capable of going in the Top 10 and pushing another guy, such as a Cam Flukey or AJ Gracia, down to the Braves at No. 9, it is more likely that as of today he has that impact with pick No. 26 instead. That is because scouts and front offices will have to play a little bit of catch up on him, and he has a long list of proven college players to push past to go Top 10.

Gridlinger is also a player who could appeal to the Braves themselves. They have taken their share of two-way guys from the likes of Austin Riley, Michael Harris, Owen Murphy, and even Cam Caminiti, and also their analytics models do like picking players who are young for the class. When you factor in that he is an arm with top of the rotation potential, or a premium bat, it’s hard to picture the Braves not at least tracking him closely.

Is the game on TV?

Yes! This is one that NESN never misses. Check it out at 1:05 PM.

What’s the lineup?

What should we watch for?

From an on-field perspective, the most interesting thing here is Kristian Campbell in centerfield, by far. But that’s not what today is about. Today is about looking away from the snow that’s still outside your window and drowning in the sounds of baseball. It’s back.

Who’s the Pack playing?

Opponent: Princeton

Mascot: Pooh’s Jumpy Friend | School Location: Eponymous, NJ | Conference: Ivy

2026 Record: 0-0 (0-0, T-1st) | 2026 RPI Rank: 285

2025 Record: 12-31 (8-13, T-5th) | 2025 RPI Rank: 270

2024 Record: 18-26 (12-9, 2nd) | 2024 RPI Rank: 182

When? Where? How do I watch?

Location: Doak Field at Dail Park (Raleigh, NC)

Game Time(s): Fri, Feb 20 @ 3:00pm | Sat, Feb 21 @ 2:00pm | Sun, Feb 22 @ 1:00pm

TV: Friday (ACCNX) | Saturday (ACCNX) | Sunday (ACCNX)

Live Stats: Stat Broadcast (Friday | Saturday | Sunday)

Tell me about this team

Last year was a rough go of it for Princeton, slogging their way to a 12-31 overall record with the underlying stats that say that record probably should have been worse. Collectively, the Tigers hit just .209/.320/.302 with a 11.7 BB% and 26.1 K%. Turns out that notching just 77 extra-base hits over 43 games is not an ideal way to score a lot of runs.

The pitching staff wasn’t any better, and was certainly hurt by the loss of staff ace Sean Episcope after just four starts (Episcope, a draft-eligible sophomore, ended up a 5th round pick of Milwaukee). That group had a combined 6.92 ERA with a 11.3 BB% and 15.8 K%, and didn’t help themselves either by plunking 94 opposing hitters.

This is a new year, though, and in the transfer portal era a team can rebuild itself quickly… except for military academies and Ivy League schools. Princeton brought in zero transfers, but does have an 8-man freshman class that looks promising. It’ll need to rely on them – as well as a couple arms that are returning from injury – if it’s going to rebound from last year’s subpar performance.

Pitching Matchups

Friday: LHP Ryan Marohn (JR) vs RHP Justin Kim (SR)

Saturday: RHP JacobDudan (JR) vs RHP Liam Kinneen (SO)

Sunday: LHP Cooper Consiglio (JR) vs RHP Brady Kaufman (FR)

Key Players:

Offense

INF Jake Koonin (SR) – .236/.385/.460, 6 2B, 8 HR, 14.5 BB%, 20.5 K%, 10-12 SB. Winston-Salem native who attended Mount Tabor HS. Had a down year in 2025 but is a bounce-back candidate based on his 2024 showing (.319/.402/.528, 22 2B, 4 HR, 7.9 BB%, 17.3 K%, 11-11 SB) in which he earned 2nd Team All-Ivy League honors.

UTIL Nick Shenefelt (SO) – .206/.308/.257, 3 2B, 0 HR, 12.1 BB%, 15.9 K%, 0-1 SB. Started 38 games as a freshman and the BB and K rates tell you he wasn’t overmatched, and the .248 BABIP last year tells you an upward regression is in the mix for 2026.

INF Jake Kernodle (JR) – .213/.333/.238, 3 2B, 0 HR, 13.1 BB%, 22.8 K%, 0-0 SB. Charlotte native has started 72 games over his Princeton career. While his 2025 was awful, like Shenefelt, he’s an upward regression candidate after posting a .286/.367/.429, 3 2B, 4 HR, 8.0 BB%, 29.3 K%, 4-6 SB line as a freshman. That 2024 triple slash with his 2025 BB% and K% would be a nice season for him.

Pitching

RHP Justin Kim (SR) – 2-5, 3 SV, 5.26 ERA, 49.2 IP, 9.6 BB%, 18.4 K%. Key reliever for Princeton during his freshman and junior years, while he also served as a starter his sophomore year but had issues with control and didn’t miss many bats (2-2, 4.66 ERA, 38.2 IP, 13.8 BB%, 8.6 K%). Will get another go at the starting rotation this year.

RHP Liam Kinneen (SO) – 3-5, 5.80 ERA, 49.2 IP, 13.4 BB%, 18.9 K%. Big 6’4, 210 lbs second year player who should make a nice sophomore jump if he can reign in the control. Spent his entire freshman year in the starting rotation and will be a mainstay again.

RHP Brady Kaufman (FR) – True freshman two-way player who will be making his college debut on Sunday, assuming he doesn’t play in the field ahead of time (he should). Solid build at 6’2, 190. The next earned run he allows will be the first against him since his junior year of high school.

RHP Elliott Eaton (JR) – 0-0, 8.71 ERA, 31.0 IP, 15.5 BB%, 16.8 K%. Good frame at 6’5, 210 lbs. Control issues are what keeps him back with 43 BB, 28 HBP, and 15 WP in 59.0 career innings.

RHP Will Sword (rJR) – Cary native who attended Thales Academy and missed all of the 2025 season due to injury. Prior to that pitched to a 2-4, 6.52 ERA, 48.1 IP, 12.3 BB%, 18.2 K% in 2024. Has made 13 starts over his 22 career appearances with the Tigers. Could be a key component to the bullpen this year.

Quick! Fun Facts!

Princeton coach Scott Bradley had that program rolling early in his tenure, taking the Tigers to five NCAA Regionals in a seven-year span from 2000 to 2006.

The Tigers have a daunting opening slate for 2026. They play three games in Raleigh this weekend, then head to Durham next weekend for a four-game series with Duke, and then head to Columbia the following weekend for a three-game set with South Carolina.

Despite having just 30 players drafted since 2000, seven Princeton baseball alums have made it to the MLB level: RHP Ross Ohlendorf, OF Will Venable, RHP Chris Young, RHP Danny Barnes, RHP David Hale, 1B Mike Ford, and RHP Matt Bowman. Each of those players had multi-year MLB careers.

Ivy League teams typically play a smaller schedule versus other D1 teams. Princeton has 42 games scheduled for this year compared to 56 for the majority of non-Ivy League schools.

The Key To A Series Win For State

Princeton doesn’t have the pitching depth to stay in this one, so a patient approach to work the pitch counts of the starters will get the Pack deep into a Tigers pitching staff that won’t be able to keep up. The key for State is simple: hunt your pitch at the plate and don’t swing at junk.

Prediction

The Wolfpack will score a bunch of runs and Princeton will not, but the Tigers will show more punch than they did in 2025.

Outcome: State sweeps

Today we look at the Cubs’ new flamethrowing reliever, a former first-round pick (#22 overall in 2013 by Baltimore), who has been in The Show since 2019.

Hunter Luke Harvey, son of former MLB reliever Bryan Harvey, came to the Cubs as a free agent, signing on New Year’s Eve, and is expected to take on a short relief/setup role, perhaps picking up save opportunities if Daniel Palencia is tired or unavailable.

In seven years split between Baltimore (where he was their No. 1 pick in 2013), Washington and Kansas City, Harvey has posted career numbers of 10-11, 3.11, with 11 saves, a 4.0 bWAR ( 3.6 fWAR) and a 1.10 WHIP. He is on a one-year, $6 million deal, with a 2027 mutual option. He’s had 201 strikeouts, 51 bases on balls, and 17 home runs in 185 innings, all of which are just fine, but he has struggled with injuries since 2024. That’s the risk, but he’s a high-reward-potential kind of arm and should serve the Cubs well with judicious use.

Keep him healthy and there will be returns. He’s a complementary arm but, as said, he brings the heat — one of his offerings was clocked at 99.8 mph, and he has consistently thrown in the 97-99 zone, with a n average of 95.7-96.1, with a very (+2000) spin rate. That’s good stuff, and a very different look for the Cubs’ bullpen, which hasn’t been very high-velocity, but seems to be turning that corner. He also throws a splitter (19.2 percent), slider (18 percent), and curve (9.6 percent).

He’s extremely likely to head north with the team after Spring Training concludes and presumably will be locking down the seventh or eighth in preparation for Palencia to step in and close the deal.

The 31-year-old will need careful handling. But high 90s with +spin is in vogue, and for good reason.

Instead of writing about Cal Raleigh’s 2025 season, I’d like to show you a few pitches that caught my attention.

April 17, bottom of the tenth

The Mariners had stormed back in the ninth inning to tie the game and send it to extras (thanks to a Cal Raleigh home run), which meant that Cal would have to wear the catcher’s gear for an extra inning.

In the 1930s, a catcher—either Muddy Ruel or Bill Dickey, depending on who you ask—referred to the mask, chest pad, and shin guards as “the tools of ignorance.” The irony was clear: anyone smart enough to play the position would be smart enough not to play it if he understood the risks.

You can see that phenomenon on display in this video as Andrés Muñoz spikes a slider that comes up and gets Cal Raleigh in the throat. The trainer comes out, but when the ump eventually asks if he needs more time, Cal just nods “nah, I’m good.”

A few days later, he hit a home run off the facing of the second deck.

May 29, top of the eighth

Here we see Cal catching a Matt Brash pitch that appears to jam his hand. He shakes it off, but one pitch after that, CJ Abrams fouls a ball back to the knob of Cal’s ankle, where there’s no protection. Former catcher Dave Valle is on the call, and you can hear the “believe me, that one hurts” tone in his voice. Cal takes a minute and grimaces, then gets back to it.

The next night, he hit a home run in the first inning. And then another one in the eighth.

June 23, bottom of the sixth

Another foul ball, this one to the inner thigh. Carlos Correa will never stop being hateable. Cal has to stand up and walk this one off, bouncing and hobbling around the plate for a moment. Three innings later, he hit his 32nd home run of the season.

July 12, bottom of the first

Detroit’s first batter tips one straight back to Cal’s wrist. But don’t worry. It’s not like you need your wrists for hitting. The umpire gives him a minute, knowing Cal’s got an entire game left of this. Two days later, Cal became the first catcher to win the Home Run Derby.

August 9, top of the ninth

In some ways, this isn’t really an article about Cal Raleigh. It’s about Andrés Muñoz’s slider, and Matt Brash’s curveball, and Logan Gilbert’s splitter, and Carlos Vargas’s entire arsenal. Cal catches a lot of pitches where the hurlers will be the first ones to tell you they’re not entirely sure where they’re going. In this clip, we get another spiked Muñoz slider, this one knocking dirt into Cal’s eye.

The next day, Cal Raleigh hit a home run.

August 20, bottom of the fifth

Alec Bohm hits a foul directly back into Cal’s mask, bouncing off his face and skull. He takes less than two seconds before reaching his glove out for the next ball. When I was in college, sometimes I would stay home from class because I “felt icky.”

That weekend, Cal hit two home runs in a game. The first traveled 448 feet and tied Salvador Perez’s record for most home runs by a catcher in a season. The second one, also over 400 feet, broke it.

August 24, top of the seventh

Later on in the game where Cal broke Salvy’s record, he catches Carlos Vargas. One of his pitches comes in wide off the plate. After 114 games behind the dish, this pinwheel is taking its toll.

Cal catches the wayward pitch awkwardly, has to drop his glove, and shake out his hand. In the first inning of the next day’s game, he hit his 50th home run.

September 16, bottom of the second inning

Logan Gilbert overthrows a curveball that bounces off the spring of home plate’s rubber and catches Cal in the throat. In the replay, you can see the flesh ripple. But four minutes later—four minutes later—Cal Raleigh hit a home run. About half an hour after that, he tied Ken Griffey Jr. for the franchise record.

ALDS Game 1, top of the 11th inning

After catching 1,072 innings in the regular season, having caught at least 1,000 in each of the last three years (the only player to do that), Cal takes a foul ball straight back into his face in the extra innings of a playoff game. 24 hours later, he doubled and scored the winning run for the Mariners’ first home playoff win in a quarter century.

You know what Cal Raleigh did last year. 60 home runs, just the fourth guy not connected to PEDs to do that. The most home runs by a catcher, as a catcher, by a switch hitter, by a Mariner. The first player to hit at least 20 home runs from both sides of the plate. And he did it while taking shot after shot while squatting with 15 extra pounds of gear in the summer heat. He’s smart enough to lead the Mariners pitching staff but too ignorant to understand why that’s a terrible idea. For Mariners fans, it’s bliss.