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No! What a crock! We’re all stuck at home under a foot and a half of snow and we can’t even get some spring training baseball to keep us emotionally warm. Listen to it on WEEI, sickos.
The pop of the mitt on Connelly Early’s heaters, I guess?
The Chicago Blackhawks are expected to be among the league's sellers ahead of the 2026 NHL trade deadline. Because of this, let's look at two Blackhawks whom the Montreal Canadiens should consider pursuing in this latest edition of the Habs trade targets series.
The Canadiens could use a solid two-way forward who chips in offensively in their bottom six, and Ilya Mikheyev would have the potential to provide them just that. The 31-year-old forward is in the middle of a solid season with the Blackhawks, as he has recorded 11 goals, 12 assists, and 23 points in 52 games. This is after he had 20 goals and a career-high 34 points in 80 games for Chicago this past season.
With numbers like these, Mikheyev would give the Canadiens a bit more secondary offensive production if acquired. Yet, his strong defensive play is what could benefit the Canadiens the most, as he is a very effective penalty killer.
While Jason Dickinson would not give the Canadiens an answer for their second-line center spot, he could still be a very solid addition to their bottom six. Like Mikheyev, Dickinson is well-known for being an impactful defensive forward, so he would also offer the Canadiens another option for their penalty kill if acquired.
In 43 games this season, Dickinson has six goals, seven assists, 13 points, and 45 hits. While he does not provide a ton of offense, his smart defensive play could make him a solid addition to Montreal's forward depth.
The first weekend of the Grapefruit League season for the Atlanta Braves has come and gone and now we’re starting to get into the swing of things (for lack of a better term) as routine starts to set in here in the early goings. The Braves are now in Sarasota with Garrett Baumann serving as the starting pitcher today for their clash against Cade Povich and the Baltimore Orioles.
Here’s the lineup for the Braves:
Again, this is a road game early on in spring training which means that we’re going to see more of the organizational depth rather than the guys who you’d expect to see plenty of during the regular season. Ben Gamel will be looking to build off of his impressive performance on Saturday and we’ll also be seeing familiar faces like Chadwick Tromp and Nacho Alvarez Jr. making appearances as well. Dominic Smith will be making his spring debut with the Braves after signing a minor league deal around a week ago.
Here’s Baltimore’s lineup:
This game is radio-only so if you’re going to keep track with us, turn the dial to the Braves Radio Network 680 The Fan (93.7 FM in the Atlanta area)
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How NBA world views Celtics star Jaylen Brown's MVP candidacy originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown has been a great player for a while. He has multiple All-Star appearances, a second-team All-NBA selection, an Eastern Conference Finals MVP and an NBA Finals MVP on his resume.
But this season has been different.
Brown has taken his performance to a much higher level, and it has helped the Celtics defy some of the most optimistic expectations entering the 2025-26 campaign — one that many people thought would be a gap year because of Jayson Tatum’s Achilles injury.
But this has been no gap year. The Celtics entered Monday in second place in the Eastern Conference standings with a 37-19 record after dismantling the Los Angeles Lakers on the road Sunday night.
Brown scored 32 points with eight rebounds, seven assists and three steals. It was an MVP-caliber showing for Brown.
The last Celtics player to win league MVP was Larry Bird in the 1985-86 season. It was the third of his three straight MVPs.
Could Brown end that drought and win the award this season? Oddsmakers aren’t giving him much of a chance. Some sportsbooks have Brown at +3500 (35-1) odds to win MVP, well behind favorites Nikola Jokic (+270) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (-140).
Other people in the basketball world, including rival players and the media, feel differently about Brown’s candidacy.
Let’s look at what they’re saying about Brown’s MVP chances.
James is the most notable active player to comment on Brown’s MVP case.
“This whole MVP thing, I don’t understand why his name is not getting talked about some as well,” James told reporters after losing to the Celtics on Sunday. “Like, nobody gave them a shot to start the season. And he’s averaging what, 30? Just under 30? It’s a popularity contest sometimes, I tell you.”
James added: “I think he just used the motivation of a lot of people just saying that they’re going to have a down year. The whole championship team pretty much is kind of revamped, and he used it as motivation to keep them afloat. They’re playing great basketball, and it’s because of him and the rest of those guys. He’s taken that next step.”
James is a four-time league MVP, and he probably should have won a few other times.
Brown appreciated the praise he received from James.
“It’s an honor for LeBron, who’s arguably the best player to ever play the game, giving me some high praise,” Brown said. “So, I’m just grateful.”
NBA legend Tracy McGrady, who now works for the NBA on NBC, has said recently that Jaylen Brown is his MVP.
He was asked about Brown’s MVP case by CLNS Media at All-Star Media Day.
“Well, when I look around the NBA, and for me the criteria is how productive are you for your team, how impactful are you for your team, the leadership you provide, what are you when you play against the other MVP (candidates),” McGrady said.
“What he had to go through losing Jrue Holiday, losing Al Horford, (Kristaps) Porzingis, Jayson Tatum is out, and then you bring in a new cast of guys in and try to get them acclimated with everything you guys are doing. (He’s) playing both sides of the ball and averaging 29 points, (the team is) third in the Eastern Conference.
“When I look at that landscape, look at Shai, I look at Jokic, these guys have missed time but they have their respective teams, their core guys are coming back.”
Barkley won league MVP in the 1992-93 season when he led the Phoenix Suns to the best record in the league before losing to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals.
He views Brown and Detroit Pistons point guard Cade Cunningham as the top MVP candidates right now.
“First of all, we have this stupid argument every year,” Barkley said on Inside the NBA. “Who’s the best player? The MVP never goes to the best player. It’s a dog fight right now between Jaylen Brown and Cade Cunningham. If one of them two guys don’t win MVP, it would to me it’ll be like – and I don’t have a vote – but Cade Cunningham and Jaylen Brown, them boys, they are 1 and 1A for MVP.”
Perkins, who spent eight-plus seasons with the Celtics and was the starting center on their 2007-08 championship team, would vote for Jaylen Brown if the MVP race ended today.
“If I had to pencil in an MVP, Jaylen Brown is getting my vote,” Perkins said Monday on ESPN show Get Up. “He is doing more with less. And I say that respectfully to guys like Payton Pritchard and Derrick White. What (Brown) is doing on both ends of the floor — no other person in the league is doing it at this level. He’s the best two-way player in the game. … Jaylen Brown is answering all the questions to the test. Can he lead a team? Can he be a franchise guy? He is showing you he is more than that.”
Cousins, who made four All-Star and two second-team All-NBA appearances in 11 seasons, recently put Cade Cunningham and Jaylen Brown at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in his MVP rankings. He sees those two players as a tier above the rest.
“First is Cade Cunningham, then it’s Jaylen Brown, then it’s everybody else,” Cousins said on FanDuel TV’s Run It Back show.
PORT ST. LUCIE — Darryl Strawberry can’t understand why the player who broke his Mets all-time home run record left Queens.
Pete Alonso, according to Strawberry, is going to “regret” that he departed the Mets.
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Try it free“I was really shocked that Pete would leave New York for Baltimore,” Strawberry said Monday at spring training. “Pete could have broken all the records and could have been on top of every offensive category for this organization and then sometimes when you don’t see that and realize how important that is, one day he is going to wake up just like I did and regret you didn’t stick where you are at.”
Strawberry, who left the Mets through free agency to join the Dodgers after the 1990 season, said Alonso — who received a five-year contract worth $155 million from the Orioles — should have never opted out from his contract after last season. Alonso would have received $24 million this season from the Mets if he didn’t opt out.
After his opt-out, Alonso never received an offer from the Mets. According to sources, the team was expecting him to circle back after exploring the market, but the length of the Orioles’ offer made it a moot point.
“The biggest mistake I saw was after they lost in Miami he opted out,” Strawberry said, referring to the Mets’ final game last season. “I think if he just waited and said, ‘OK, I’ll stay at that, but give me a four-year deal, something like that, they could have worked it out.’”
Strawberry was asked if the Mets should have fought harder to keep Alonso.
“I think it’s a combination,” Strawberry said. “I think they both could have fought harder in that situation.”
Alonso last season eclipsed Strawberry’s previous franchise record of 252 homers. Like Strawberry, he was a homegrown Mets player.
“He worked his way up to become the player that he was,” Strawberry said. “He deserved all the credit for that and what he accomplished. I just don’t leave New York to go to Baltimore. Don’t get me wrong, I am not getting on Baltimore. But I am saying, this is New York, come on. Baltimore is a good place, but it’s not New York.”
This Vote represents the last in our series this year, as we are into Spring Training and also now bumping right up against the Top 100 countdown. Our voters play an important role in almost half of that list, but it doesn’t make much sense to be voting on players who are already showing up in the Top 100 profiles.
And in fact, this year’s Vote went longer than any other we’ve run under “normal” circumstances. (In 2020, we ran the Vote to 50 rounds given there was no baseball being played/minors season cancelled outright, and in 2018 we ran the Vote well into the regular season as a first-time effort.)
It was a fitting, even poetic, end to the polling, as Reudis Diaz finally advanced, on his 33rd ballot. That is doubtlessly an all-time record span on the ballot for our Prospect Vote.
Diaz in fact won this round with authority, outpacing fellow long-balloter Aldrin Batista by 18 votes. Making an enormous jump of five spots on the ballot and 23 total votes, Diaz routed the rest, with 28 of 71 (39%) votes:
This was Diaz’s first time in our voting. Perhaps next year he won’t have to linger so long on the ballot.
Past No. 37s in the SSS Top Prospect Vote
2025 Voting lasted 31 rounds
2024 Voting lasted 34 rounds
2023 Voting lasted 24 rounds
2022 Voting lasted 17 rounds
2021 Voting lasted 35 rounds
2020 Lenyn Sosa (26%)
2019 Voting lasted 36 rounds
2018 Laz Rivera (27%)
Diaz also become the fourth right-handed reliever to advance, as well as the third RHRP in the last six results:
Here’s the overall breakdown of our readership winners: one catcher, three second basemen, two third basemen, four shortstops, one left fielder, three center fielders, four right fielders, seven right-handed starting pitchers, nine left-handed starting pitcher, four right-handed relievers and one left-handed relievers. There were no first basemen voted forward this year.
Overall, that’s 21 of 37 winning prospects being pitchers, and 16 of 37 winners being starting pitchers.
See ya next year!
Past South Side Sox Prospect votes
It’s been nearly two years since Jaylen Brown made some unflattering comments about Bronny James, but LeBron James made it clear Sunday he’s still not forgotten them.
Following the Los Angeles Lakers’ 111–89 loss to the Celtics at Crypto.com Arena, LeBron admitted to being irked by the way Brown spoke about his son during an NBA Summer League game back in 2024.
LeBron James told @RealBobManning he and Jaylen Brown have had a respectful relationship: “Besides the s*** he said about Bronny.”
— Celtics on CLNS (@CelticsCLNS) February 23, 2026@CLNSMediapic.twitter.com/ZY3UeugRy2
“Our relationship has been pretty respectful,” LeBron said when asked how he and the Boston superstar have gotten along over the years.
“You know, besides the s–t he said about Bronny in Summer League. But other than that, you know, we’ve been all right.”
While courtside at a July 2024 preseason matchup in Las Vegas, Brown was caught on camera appearing to tell WNBA players Kysre Gondrezick and Angel Reese that he didn’t “think Bronny is a pro.”
He later added that he believed Bronny would make the Lakers’ main roster and not be sent to the G-League during his rookie year “because of his name.”
Brown took to his X page shortly after his remarks went viral, and while he didn’t exactly apologize, he was very complimentary of LeBron James and his son.
It’s a flex to have your son alongside you in the nba it reflects greatness and longevity !Bronny has all the tools around him to be successful I look forward to watching his growth https://t.co/qO4muFSvrn
— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) July 16, 2024
“It’s a flex to have your son alongside you in the nba it reflects greatness and longevity,” Brown wrote. “Bronny has all the tools around him to be successful I look forward to watching his growth.”
LeBron James indicated the statement helped to repair the damage the video caused, but still, it wasn’t hard to tell mixed feelings still linger.
“We’ll be all right,” LeBron James said. “We’ll be all right. He went on social media and said something about it. It’s all good. But Bronny’s got a long way to go. But that’s another story.”
Bronny James was picked by the Lakers in the second round of the 2024 NBA Draft, and he went on to play 27 games for Los Angeles in his rookie season.
This season, the 21-year-old has seen minutes in 29 contests, averaging 2.2 points per game.
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There’s never a bad time to snap a four-game losing streak, but the Sixers 27-point win over the Minnesota Timberwolves felt like one of their most needed of the season.
Not only were they reeling, but with Joel Embiid suddenly missing five straight games with various sore body parts, Paul George suspended, and no additions made at the trade deadline all emphasized the fact that there was no help on the way either.
On top of all that, the All-Star break coming in the midst of this losing streak made it linger longer than a typical four-game skid would, with the Sixers going over two calendar weeks in between wins.
They looked rather helpless going into that game against Minnesota as well. Not only was it the second night of a back-to-back, but they were coming off what head coach Nick Nurse called the worst loss of the season, a second half collapse to the lowly New Orleans Pelicans.
With their backs against the wall they turned in one of their best offensive performances of the season, with their reeling backcourt leading the way. Both Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe had been showing signs of wear and tear due to their heavy workloads. They looked recharged in Minnesota, with Maxey dropping an efficient 39 points while Edgecombe put up 24 thanks to a new career-high six made three-pointers.
In the walk-off interview for NBC Sports Philadelphia, Maxey pointed out a return of positive energy. As watching the previous four games wasn’t enough, there were plenty of signs off the court that the vibes were off, from Embiid’s trade deadline plea being thoroughly rejected to Maxey voicing confusion of his role. It felt like the lowest point of the season spirit-wise as well, and its departure was noticed in the win over the Wolves.
“We got back to playing with a little bit of spirit, you seen guys smiling a bit,” he told Kate and Alaa before praising the individual performance of Quentin Grimes.
If anything this win may have showed just how tall of an order it is for the Sixers to keep themselves afloat with Embiid out of the lineup just as much as the losing streak did. They need both Maxey and Edgecombe to be unconscious to give themselves a chance.
What’s made this stretch even tougher is that they’ve had to go through that a really demoralizing trade deadline as well. Despite the best player on the team begging for a serious deadline, all they did was dump a fan favorite player and add one guard who was playing Europe on the buyout market.
The reality that there were no reinforcements on the way was intensified during the losing streak. They weren’t just losing games, but they looked hopeless in doing so. Their only way through is to power through but in Minnesota, they were able to channel that in a positive direction.
“We didn’t have a choice, we don’t got an option man,” Maxey told the broadcast when asked how the team flushed the New Orleans loss so quickly.
Embiid’s return is the only tangible on-court change this team has left up its sleeve. The losing streak has shown the flaws in this roster and the deadline to try to improve them has come and gone. They have one intangible up their sleeves though and that is a positive spirit.
They’ll certainly need to sustain for more than one game and of course nothing is as good for the spirit as winning ball games. The only other change the Sixers can make though finding good vibes again and blowing out the Timberwolves was a step in the right direction.
No Bo in the Mets’ lineup, which is normal for a road spring game. Teams tend to let veterans skip bus trips.
The Jays have set their pitching rotation for the week:
Today it is Jose Berrios’ first time on the mound since last September, before he went on the IL and then was left off the playoff roster. I’m sure he feels he has something to prove this spring.
As always, don’t read anything in a Spring Training batting lineup. Veterans progress in their own ways in spring. George Springer is planning to have his first game on Thursday
Clay Holmes – RHP
Jose Berrios – RHP
First pitch: 1:07 PM EST
TV:
Radio: Audacy Mets Radio WHSQ 880AM, Audacy App, 92.3 HD2
Let’s seize the means of production the coveted Grapefruit League title
No TV covereage today, but the game can be heard through the radio.
First pitch is 1:05 against the Boston Red Sox at Charlotte Sports Park.
Location: LECOM Park, Bradenton, FL
How to Listen: KDKA-FM 93.7, How to Watch: Sportsnet Pittsburgh
The Pittsburgh Pirates are at home today against the New York Yankees looking to grab a win.
Please remember our Game Day thread guidelines.
BD community, this is your thread for today’s game. Enjoy!
First Pitch (CT):12:05
TV: NA
Radio: Tigers – WXYT 1270
Know Yo’ Foe: Bless You Boys
We don’t normally include a lot of info on Spring Training games, but let’s try a new “what to watch” section since stats and results and ultimate don’t matter. I suppose today, “what to watch” would be more “what to look for in Statcast player tracking data” due to the game not being available.
What to watch: Can Austin Martin actually play CF? If Martin is able to be a legitimate option there, it would solve a lot of roster issues in one fell swoop.
Twins
SP: Mick Abel
OPPONENT
SP: Tarik Skubal (LHP)
Nations Championship involves 25,000-mile itinerary
England to split squad in July and leave a team to face Fiji
England have been handed a gruelling 25,000-mile travel itinerary for their inaugural Nations Championship fixtures in July and are expected to split their squad and field a weakened team against Fiji as a result.
As revealed exclusively by the Guardian, England’s match against Fiji – the week after facing South Africa in Johannesburg and the week before playing away in Argentina – will be staged at Everton’s new Dickinson Hill Stadium. Given the logistical problems that playing three matches in three continents in a fortnight entail, it is believed England will split their squad and leave a largely second-string side at home to face the Pacific Islanders.
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