Category: Sports News

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There is a 14-game slate across MLB tonight, and that means lots of opportunities for baseballs to leave the yard. 

Shohei Ohtani will start seeing better results for his efforts as he steps in against San Diego Padres starter Michael King. He joins Corbin Carroll and Drake Baldwin to round out our MLB home run predictions.

Keep reading for my MLB picks for Monday, May 18. 

Best MLB home run props today

Player to hit a HR	Odds
Corbin Carroll	+620
Drake Baldwin	+434
Shohei Ohtani	+304
💲Today's HR parlay	+15432

Home run pick: Corbin Carroll (+620)

Corbin Carroll has been red-hot lately. He's batting .421 over the last seven days, and he just smoked two home runs in the series finale against the Colorado Rockies on Sunday. While Carroll only has seven bombs overall this season, he's clubbed three this month, and tonight's matchup is an intriguing one for the outfielder.

The San Francisco Giants send Robbie Ray to the hill, who is HR-prone at times. He's already given up 10 long balls in 2026. Although he only has one homer versus southpaws, Carroll is batting .414 vs left-handed hurlers. 

• Time: 9:40 p.m. ET
• Where to watch: NBCSBA, DBACKS.TV

Home run pick: Drake Baldwin (+434)

Drake Baldwin is emerging as one of the top power-hitting catchers in the big leagues. The 25-year-old is hitting .301 with 13 home runs, which ranks eighth overall across the Majors. Baldwin has smacked three bombs across his previous five games, and he also has four hits in his last three appearances. 

The Atlanta Braves are on the road tonight to take on the Miami Marlins, and Baldwin has cracked seven HRs away from home. He's just 1-for-5 lifetime against Max Meyer, but the righty just gave up two long balls in his last outing. 

• Time: 6:40 p.m. ET
• Where to watch: Braves.Vision, Marlins.TV

Home run pick: Shohei Ohtani (+304)

Shohei Ohtani is off to a bit of a slow start at the plate, hitting only .258 with seven home runs. But there are signs of him heating up. Ohtani has five hits and seven RBI across his last two games, finishing 3-for-5 on Sunday, and 2-for-4 on Saturday with a double and a triple. He's jumping on everything at the moment. 

Ohtani will be licking his chops ahead of tonight's matchup. The Los Angeles Dodgers take on the San Diego Padres, who hand Michael King the ball. That's a welcome sight for Ohtani, who is 6-for-14 lifetime against him with three bombs. 

And in spite of the underwhelming results (for him), Ohtani ranks in the 90th percentile or better in barrel rate, average exit velocity, and expected slugging.

• Time: 9:40 p.m. ET
• Where to watch: SportsNet LA, PadresTV

Today’s HR parlay

Corbin Carroll	Bet Now +15432
Drake Baldwin
Shohei Ohtani

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In the last eight days, three different pitchers made their Dodgers debut.

On May 10, Wyatt Mills appeared in his first major league game since 2022, and pitched thrice more since. Charlie Barnes was called up Friday, pitched in two games in his two days, then was optioned to Triple-A on Sunday. Chayce McDermott closed out the ninth inning of Sunday’s blowout win in Anaheim in his first game wearing Dodgers blue.

The Dodgers are up to 23 pitchers used this year, and that’s before newcomer Eric Lauer, who was acquired from the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday and will be activated at some point in the next couple of days.

Twenty-three pitchers is a lot through 47 games, but it’s part of a trend in baseball in recent years, with roster churn at an all-time high. Five major league teams have used more than the Dodgers this year, for instance.

The Dodgers in 2021 set a franchise record with 39 different pitchers used, then matched it two years later. They got to 40 pitchers in 2024, and used exactly 40 pitchers in 2025 as well. Here’s how many pitchers those teams used through 47 games:

• 2021: 22 pitchers (remember Mike Kickham?)
• 2022: 26 pitchers (en route to using only 31 pitchers for the year)
• 2023: 22 pitchers (Tyler Cyr, hello)
• 2024: 25 pitchers (Connor Brogdon, anyone?)
• 2025: 27 pitchers (Lou Trivino had only just begun)
• 2026: 23 pitchers

With over 70 percent of the season remaining, let’s get some predictions: How many pitchers will the Dodgers use during the 2026 season?

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The Detroit Tigers look for just their third win in 13 games when they host the Cleveland Guardians on Monday night.

Cleveland leads the AL Central thanks to picking up five wins in a six-game span. However, my Guardians vs. Tigers predictions and MLB picks are fading the visitors withSlade Cecconi taking the bump.

Who will win Guardians vs Tigers today: Tigers moneyline (-145)

Slade Cecconi is getting pummeled by opposing hitters. His 5.60 ERA and 5.05 FIP rank among the worst in the majors for pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched.

Opponents have posted a .595 xSLG vs. Cecconi's fastball this year. He’s also performed far worse on the road, with a 6.60 ERA vs. a 3.60 home ERA. 

Framber Valdez has put up quality numbers in seven of nine starts. He’s facing a Cleveland Guardians lineup ranked 21st in hard-hit rate and eighth in ground-ball rate vs. RHP over the past two weeks.   

COVERS INTEL: Slade Ceconi has posted an astronomical 19.96 ERA against hitters facing him a third time this season.

Guardians vs Tigers Over/Under pick: Under 8.5 (-128)

Once the starters give way to the bullpens, scoring will get much more difficult. 

Over the past two weeks, the Detroit Tigers rank 29th in hard-hit rate, and dead last in HR/FB rate and wRC+. Cleveland’s pen ranks second in K-rate in that span.

Detroit’s pen has forced a league-high 55.2% GB rate during that timeframe. That’ll come in handy, seeing as the Guardians have posted the fourth-highest GB/FB rate while ranking 25th in BABIP. 

Cleveland punished the poor-pitching Reds this weekend, but will regress to the mean today for another Under. 

Guardians vs Tigers odds

• Moneyline: Guardians +138 | Tigers -144
• Run line: Guardians +1.5 (-156) | Tigers -1.5 (+150)
• Over/Under: Over 8.5 (+117) | Under 8.5 (-122)

Guardians vs Tigers trend

The Tigers have cashed the Under in seven of their last 10 games for +3.70 units and a 34% ROI. Find more MLB betting trends for Guardians vs. Tigers.

How to watch Guardians vs Tigers and game info

Guardians vs Tigers latest injuries

Guardians vs Tigers weather

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Great news: Gavin Sheets is not (any longer) on the White Sox. He can’t hurt you anymore. 

Bad news: If you’re reading this, you’re probably going to be watching some more Mariners baseball.

If you told me in January that the Mariners would be one game out of the Wild Card and just two games back of the division in mid-May, I would have been a little disappointed but still feeling pretty decent. It has, instead, been a remarkable case of horrific process and exceptionally weird results. There has been very little pleasure in this season and the most consistent thing they have to offer is their baffling inconsistency. Fresh off a truly brutal sweep at the hands of their most fearsome rivals, Seattle welcomes the plucky White Sox into T-Mobile Park. The chance to rise to .500 will have to wait, but as we’ve learned over these past 50 years, there is always the possibility of new horrors. 

These are not your 2025 White Sox. Nor your 2024 White Sox. Nor your 2023 White Sox. Would you call them “good”? Well, that’s entirely up to you. But they do have higher upside and much more interest than they have for the vast majority of this decade. You saw that when they wriggled their way into a series win against the M’s barely a week and a half ago. They’re coming off of a walk-off win against the Cubs to secure the Windy Winsome Cup or whatever they pitched the Chicago rivalry to be called (it’s the Crosstown Classic), are one game back in their division and would be leading in the West. Something, something, no religion. 

There’s Munetaka Murakami, of course. Transcendent Surf’s Up penguin that he is. Their 2021 first rounder, Colson Montgomery has been playing like how you’d hope a first rounder would. Miguel Vargas has found his stride and may be the platonic ideal of the White Sox aesthetic. Sam Antonacci is running with that Team Italy energy and is on base constantamente. Tristan Peters is having a career year (it’s all relative), Andrew Benintendi is there for a millennial jump scare, and I will not address Chase Meidroth, because it’s important to have a for-no-good-reason nemesis. 

As you’ll see below, it’s the offense that continues to be a primary driver, and drive they will. I’m just hoping they don’t run over Seattle’s bedraggled pitching corps. 

Probable Pitchers

Updated Stuff+ Explainer 

• Stuff+ scores for Mariners starters

Noah Schultz entered the season as the White Sox top pitching prospect. The organization had handled him pretty carefully after drafting him out of high school in the first round of the 2022 draft. He’s also dealt with shoulder, forearm, and knee injuries over the last few years that have stunted his development a bit. The scouting report is impressive, however. He throws from a low slot and gets a ton of horizontal movement on all of his pitches. That doesn’t help his fastball, which grades out merely average, but his sweeper has flashed plus plus potential. All those injuries have taken a toll on his ability to command his repertoire, but the raw stuff looks promising and he’s got a very high ceiling if he can put everything together.

From a previous series preview:

After a few years of riding the Triple-A shuttle for the Blue Jays, Anthony Kay signed a two-year deal with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of NBP. He excelled in Japan and returned to the US this offseason, signing a two-year deal with Chicago. He developed a sinker and a sweeper overseas, giving him a much deeper repertoire to keep batters off balance. Unfortunately, that revamped arsenal hasn’t helped him find much success against batters this year. The stuff models really like his sinker and a few of his secondary pitches, but he’s throwing a thoroughly mediocre four-seam fastball 30% of the time right now. That pitch is getting absolutely crushed. He simply isn’t working deep enough into counts to properly utilize his secondary pitches, his strike out rate has cratered to just 14.0%, and his ERA and FIP are both approaching six.

The Mariners haven’t officially announced their starter for Tuesday’s game, but it’s expected that Luis Castillo and Bryce Miller will combine to pitch the majority of the game in piggyback fashion. I suspect Castillo will be given the “start” and work through the lineup once before handing things off to Miller.

From a previous series preview:

Sean Burke showed some flashes of promise in his first full season in the big leagues last year. His 4.22 ERA was perfectly acceptable for a rebuilding Chicago club, though his 4.92 FIP wasn’t nearly as encouraging. Still, there was a stretch in May and June where he ran a 3.33 ERA and a 4.06 FIP across nine starts. Things are looking up for Burke this year. He’s dramatically improved his command and cut his walk rate by more than half, down to 5.1%. He doesn’t strike out that many guys, but simply reducing the amount of traffic on the bases has helped him dramatically improve his topline results.

The Big Picture:

The Mariners didn’t fall too far behind the A’s and the Rangers because those two teams lost their rivalry weekend series too. Nothing really changed in the AL West standings beyond Texas gaining a single game to jump over the Mariners into second place. The Athletics will head to Anaheim to face the miserable Angels this week while the Rangers head to Colorado to face the Rockies. The Astros will look to build off their series win against their cross-state rival in a series against the Twins in Minnesota this week.

After winning the first 2 games of the series against the Orioles, the Nationals squandered their opportunity to push above the .500 mark in a 7-3 loss in the series finale. They now have another chance to accomplish that, as they’re set to square off against the New York Mets in a 4-game series.

The Nats took the last 2 games of their 3-game series against New York to end April, and will now look to replicate that result this week. Facing a Mets team that still sits 6 games below .500, Washington undoubtedly enters as the premier squad. The Mets have, however, won 5 of their last 6 games, and there’s more than enough talent on their roster to make for an intriguing mid-week matchup in the Nation’s capital.

Game 1 – Monday 6:45 PM EST

WSH: RHP Jake Irvin (1-4, 5.91 ERA)

NYM: RHP Christian Scott (0-0, 3.45 ERA)

Irvin’s subpar month of May continued in his last start, surrendering 5 earned runs over 3.0 innings against the Cincinnati Reds. His ERA has crept back up close to 6.00, and well-timed offensive explosions have been the only thing keeping him from having a worse record than 1-4. It’s odd to call this a “get-right game” when looking at the Mets’ lineup on paper, but their struggles could give him a chance to get him going in a good direction.

The young Scott hasn’t worked deep into games, with just one start eclipsing 5.0 innings so far in 2026. Run prevention has been a strength so far, however, with the most runs he’s allowed in a start being just 2 against the Tigers and Angels. He’s found a solid blend of missing bats and working around hitters’ sweet spot, with his 93rd percentile Barrel% and 84th percentile K% two pillars the Nats will have to overcome.

Game 2 – Tuesday 6:45 PM EST

WSH: LHP Foster Griffin (4-2, 3.53 ERA)

NYM: RHP Nolan McLean (2-2, 2.92 ERA)

Griffin now faces the first bounce-back chance of his MLB return after getting shelled by the Reds, in his first outing where he failed to reach 5.0 innings and gave up 9 runs. The advanced metrics certainly don’t support the southpaw, but the results have been there outside of his last start. Overall inconsistency with the Washington rotation makes his return to form even more important, making this a must-see appearance for the 30-year-old.

One of MLB’s top prospects has lived up to the hype and then some, replicating the success he showed after his call-up in late 2025. He’s racked up strikeouts, has only allowed 3 runs 3 times, and maintains an ERA below the 3.00 mark. He’s emerged as one of the best starters in baseball with a disgustingly good arsenal, and the Nats’ lineup will need to get to him early if they want a legitimate chance of winning.

Game 3 – Wednesday 6:45 PM EST

WSH: RHP Zack Littell (2-4, 6.10 ERA)

NYM: TBD

Littell was stellar against Baltimore, delivering a much-needed scoreless outing for the first time in his 2026 campaign. He let just 4 batters reach base, cruising to 5.0 shutout innings en route to his second win of May. He’s now coming off 3 consecutive starts where he’s been at least serviceable, and extending that streak to 4 would be a phenomenal sign for the rotation.

An unfortunate injury to starter Clay Holmes has the Mets’ standard rotation fully off-schedule, and they currently have no projected starter for either of the last 2 games of this series. Whether they call someone up, utilize an opener, or go to a full-on bullpen game remains to be seen, but it will be a patchwork solution for New York no matter how they approach it.

Game 4 – Thursday 4:05 PM EST

WSH: RHP Cade Cavalli (2-2, 4.05 ERA)

NYM: TBD

Cavalli’s frustrating season continued with a mixed bag against Baltimore, where he continued to flash swing-and-miss stuff but dealt with some ill-timed hits that saw his line finish with 3 earned runs in 6.0 innings. Searching for consistency has been the theme of his season, and it’s not something he has found on a regular basis. Finding results no matter how he goes about it should be the goal for Cavalli and the Nats’ coaching staff, and Thursday will be another test of his mettle.

At the start of the 1929 season, the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians innovated baseball, starting the season with numbers on the back of their players jerseys for easy identification. While numbers had been experimented with prior to the season, they were mostly smaller and located on the arms, meant primarily for umpires and the official scorers. The numbers on the back of the jersey were for fans in the stands to clearly tell who each player was, a move that scorecard salesmen had been pushing for years.

Some current baseball traditions remain from that era. The Yankees famously assigned numbers based on the lineup, with the backup catchers taking 9-10 respectively. Pitchers and bench players wore higher numbers, which is why pitchers generally don’t take single digit numbers. Blake Snell (no.4) became the first pitcher to play in the All-Star game and win a Cy Young award while wearing a single digit number in MLB history in 2018. Higher numbers were long assigned to fringe invitees to Spring Training or marginal players, although that tradition has declined sharply over the last twenty years.

0 and 00 is the least assigned player number below 50 in the history of the MLB. To date, no team has ever retired 0 or 00. The reasons are relatively simple. Youth baseball is loathe to give out 0 or 00 because it is easy to apply a derogatory connotation to it, and many MLB players chose their number based on earlier team numbers from their youth. However, that seems to be changing recently. In 2026, 10 players wore 0 or 00 at the major league level, down from 13 in 2025. In fact, more players have worn 0 or 00 since 2020 than in other 91 seasons combined.

Who is the most successful player to wear 0 or 00 as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays?

WWIB: Andrés Giménez 2025-2026 (1.3 bWAR)

Giménez was a former Mets top prospect who was traded to Cleveland as part of a package for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco in 2021. He had a breakout season in 2022, hitting .297/.371/.466 while earning a Gold Glove at second. It prompted the Guardians to sign him to a backloaded 7 yr/$106.5M contract in the offseason. He won two more Gold Gloves, but his offense significantly declined. The Jays acquired him and Nick Sandlin in December 2024 for Spencer Horwitz and Nick Mitchell. The move was highly questioned at the time, especially considering that the main issue the 2024 last place Jays suffered from was a lack of offense. Giménez’ offensive woes continued in 2025 but his defense was as good as advertised. When Bo Bichette was injured following a collision at home plate against the Yankees on Sept 6, Giménez became the primary shortstop for the remainder of the regular season and the post-season. Many Jays commentators saw the Giménez trade as a harbinger that the club was ready to move on from Bichette, and with the emergence of Ernie Clement as an elite defender and everyday starter, the Jays were able to deploy elite defense up the middle. Giménez has three more years and a club option remaining on his contract.   

Other notable Jays to wear 0 or 00 were Taijuan Walker in 2020 (1.0 bWAR), Al Oliver in 1985 (-0.6 bWAR) and Cliff Johnson also in 1985 (-0.1 bWAR).

Sal Stewart was drafted by the wrong team. He was taken by the Cincinnati Reds with the 32nd overall pick of the 2022 draft and has now graduated to become their starting first baseman

But this guy would have been an instant fan favorite in Philadelphia. First off, I have a feeling Phillies fan would love to root for a guy named Sal, even if he is of Cuban descent, and not Italian. If you recall, former backup catcher Sal Fasano had his own fan club and that was based on nothing more than his name and mustache:

And look at this guy:

There’s a face a lot of Phillies fans could get behind.

Prior to this season, he was rated as the 26th best prospect in baseball and got off to a strong start, with a .373 on-base percentage and nine home runs in April, earning him NL Rookie of the Month honors.

But May has been a different story. He’s batting .175 with just one home run so far this month. He seemed to break out of the slump a bit on Sunday with two hits, except he also helped kill a Reds rally by getting picked off second base.

Player development in baseball is rarely linear, but the Reds have to be hoping that Stewart’s line starts pointing upward again soon.

Pennant year song battle

It’s a Mistake by Men at Work wins yet another week, taking down You and I.

To celebrate the Phillies getting back to the right side of the .500 mark, this week’s contender is Right Round by Flo Rida from 2009.

Vote for the winner:

Additional thought about the series

The Reds are two games above .500, but that’s due to a blistering month of April in which they went 17-9. Since then, they’ve cooled off considerably and appear to be playing down to the level of talent on the roster.

Elly De La Cruz might have the easiest path to the All-Star Game of any player in baseball because he seems to be much better than every other offensive player on the team. JJ Bleday is hitting well after starting the season in the minor leagues, but on the other hand, it’s JJ Bleday. Maybe the former top prospect is finally putting it together, but two organizations have already given up on him.

Some Phillies fans wanted the team to sign Eugenio Suarez in the offseason, but he was underwhelming (.663 OPS) even before he went on the IL in late April.

The pitching staff has been a weakness, and the team ERA is second highest in baseball behind only the Rockies. Every starter save rookie Chase Burns has disappointed to some degree, and the bullpen has been bad. They had optimism about the relief corps headed into the season, but it’s been a complete disaster since closer Emilio Pagan went on the IL with a hamstring injury.

The Phillies took advantage of a bad Pirates bullpen in their last series, and if they find themselves down again, they should have an opportunity to make another comeback. (Although it would be preferable that they do not find themselves trailing by multiple runs to begin with.)