Category: Sports News

The lineups are out for tonight’s series-opening showdown between the Atlanta Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies. There’s no major shakeup but there is a return to the lineup for one familiar face after he started Thursday’s contest on the bench.

Ozzie Albies is back in the starting lineup for the Braves. Here’s how the rest of Atlanta’s lineup is looking:

Ozzie has hit .249/.304/.411 so far this season with a wOBA of .311 and a wRC+ of 95. His big triple against the Rays on Thursday helped push Atlanta past Tampa Bay and gave them what could amount to being a very crucial win if all continues to go well for the Braves as far as this particular series is concerned.

Outside of that, there are no major changes from yesterday and in fact, this is the same group of nine batters that squared off against Aaron Nola last week. The bottom of the order is slightly different but the players remain the same. For what it’s worth, Ronald Acuña Jr. has an OPS of 1.076 against Nola in 56 pat-bats. Austin Riley has done a similar level of damage as well with an OPS of 1.111 over 62 ABs. Mike Yastrzemski and Drake Baldwin have both been successful as well (1.046 and 1.056 OPS, respectively) against Nola but they both have much smaller sample sizes (16 and 8 ABs, respectively) to go with. Let’s see if that turns into a factor during tonight’s contest.

Meanwhile, here’s how the Phillies are shaping up:

Alec Bohm is the main one to watch out for tonight, since he was the only Phillies hitter who had any real consistent success against Sale when these two teams squared off last week. Bohm had an RBI double and a solo homer as both of the runs that Philadelphia scored on the night came of of his bat. Of course, it’s hard to overlook the rest of the lineup but hopefully Sale will be able to get the better of Bohm this time around.

So, what do y’all think? Tonight’s game is scheduled to start at 7:15 p.m. ET. There’s some inclement weather in the area so there is a chance that this one could get delayed, so that’s why I’m mentioning the scheduled start time. Either way are y’all ready?

The success of the Yankee pitching staff has been the team’s guiding beacon this season, but to say they’ve had their depth tested would be an understatement. The rotation has seen at least one expected starter sitting on the IL the entire season, whether it be Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, or Ryan Weathers, oftentimes with two of them simultaneously getting shelved. The bullpen has had to do a lot of heavy lifting to support the starters working themselves back into shape lately, and though the team has seen the trio of David Bednar, Paul Blackburn, and Brent Headrick take over the late innings, there’s still more than enough mileage that Aaron Boone has to get out of the rest of the staff.

The team opted against paying a premium for any relievers at the Trade Deadline, instead opting to rely on the arms who they knew were set to start rehab assignments soon to fill in the gaps as they fought through the dog days of summer. One of those arms being eyed for a bullpen spot was Luis Gil, the former Rookie of the Year back in 2024 who had missed most of the last two seasons with a series of injuries. Gil worked himself back into the fold at the start of the season following one tune-up start in Triple-A and made four starts in the majors back in April before hitting the shelf again with shoulder inflammation. It took a while for Gil to get back on a mound, but he began to ramp up in August and after a couple of appearances with the High-A Hudson Valley Renegades, the organization made the decision to use him in some relief appearances while rehabbing to transition him into that role since the big-league team needed bodies.

However, since getting back to the majors Gil has appeared just twice for the Yankees, and both times in blowouts. He made his return on August 31st against the Angels and soaked up the sixth and seventh innings in a game they were losing 6-1 when he entered, before getting an opportunity last night to pitch the final two frames against Colorado with a 10-2 lead. Neither outing was clean for Gil, as he allowed a run against the Angels (though he did strike out three batters) and allowed an unearned run against the Rockies with the potential for more as he loaded the bases in the ninth inning with no one out before getting some shallow fly balls to prevent any more from scoring. It’s clear from how little he’s seen the mound that Boone doesn’t exactly have much trust in Gil at the moment, and with the Yankees in the middle of a playoff push chasing the Rays for first place in the division he’s going to opt for his better relievers in close contests, but has Gil truly fallen this far down in the eyes of the organization at this point?

Looking under the hood, the clear discrepancy in Gil’s arsenal from 2024 to now has been his fastball velocity, the right-hander dropping from a 96.6-mph four-seamer in his Rookie of the Year campaign to a 95.2-mph offering this year. Hitters have predicably been able to catch up to it with ease, slugging to a .512 mark against the heater compared to .395 a few years ago. Even more concerning has been his inability to end at-bats with the pitch, dropping from a 23.3-percent PutAway% to a 9.6-percent rate this year. Gil’s slider and changeup, while still seeing a slight uptick in the damage done against them, are nowhere near as out of whack as the four-seam has been, and Gil offers the heater 49.2 percent of the time to batters giving them plenty of opportunities to punish the pitch.

Now, Gil’s latest appearance didn’t do a lot for him in the box score to stand out, but there were some signs of improvement in this category. Gil noticeably dialed up the speed in his second inning of work, topping out at 97.9 mph in a three-pitch strikeout against Zac Veen to end the game. Gil threw just one fastball below 96 mph in that frame after largely staying in that range in the eighth inning, though two of the three singles he allowed were against that four-seamer and were smashed pretty hard coming back.

That finishing pitch against Veen is more of what Gil wants to accomplish with his heater, blowing it by hitters up in the zone. However, even though Gil was able to kick the speed up a notch on his heater to accomplish this, it did come with a considerable lack of command that went unpunished by a lowly Rockies team all but going through the motions the end of a blowout.

Consider this fastball Gil threw to TJ Rumfield to conclude the penultimate at-bat of the game:

Ali Sánchez is setting up for the pitch to come on the outer third of the plate, but Gil misses and offers Rumfield a cookie down the middle of the plate. Fortunately for Gil, the former Baby Bomber swung under this pitch and popped it up for a harmless out, but that was a mistake pitch that could’ve gotten tattooed had Rumfield timed his swing a little better. Now let’s look at the fly ball that Gil induced from Hunter Goodman for the first out of the ninth:

Another miss from Gil, Sánchez setting up up and away with Gil crossing the plate to find the inside corner of the plate instead. Goodman didn’t manage to get this ball deep enough to threaten a sacrifice fly, but that’s not good execution in a situation where the Rockies were a productive out or a base knock away from forcing Boone to use his closer in a game that Bednar never should’ve needed to warm up for.

So in total, Gil gave up two hard hits against the fastball in the ninth, collected two weak outs on pitches that he largely got away with making mistakes, and then locked in to deliver a good finishing touch in his final at-bat. It’s promising that the velocity was there to bail him out because it simply hasn’t been there previously, but if either command or velocity is going to be a question mark every time Gil steps on the mound it’s no surprise that Boone has only deployed him in mop up duty thus far.

On top of Gil’s struggles, the Yankees have collected several options who have gotten priority over Gil down the stretch. The team signed Michael Fulmer and John Schreiber at the end of last month to help eat up some innings and both have seen their fair share of work already, appearing in seven and five games respectively. Schreiber in particular looks to me like an arm that Boone and company could utilize in a postseason roster, as he has been elite in shutting down right-handers this season with a .401 OPS allowed in 113 plate appearances. On the near horizon, the team also has Clarke Schmidt putting together the finishing touches on his rehab assignment before he’ll return to the majors looking to add to the bullpen’s choice of weapons. Schmidt’s had a similarly difficult time staying healthy but has looked far more effective when on the mound than Gil has in recent memory, and then there’s the possibility of Ryan Weathers returning in time from the forearm strain he suffered to add himself into the mix as well.

If all goes according to plan, there just isn’t an avenue for Gil to get himself any further chances if the Yankees want to prioritize chasing the Rays down. They could risk working Gil into some low-to-moderate leverage situations as opposed to letting him be the guy that soaks up a couple innings every week or so, but what would they stand to gain? Gil still has a lot to work on, and it looks to be a situation where he needs time more than anything else — and there isn’t any of that left to give. Having backup options still matters at this stage and there’s always the possibility of another arm hitting the shelf, but the team also has Will Warren beginning to transition into a relief role as he looks to be the likely odd man out of the playoff rotation through no fault of his own. Looking at this roster as it stands*, Gil is in even more jeopardy than Ryan Yarbrough among pitchers on the chopping block who could be squeezed back in should a situation arise. Yarbrough has been in the ‘pen throughout the year, and while he has been mostly deployed in a low leverage long-relief role that wouldn’t see much use in October, he’s been consistent enough to be trusted over Gil.

*With Jasson Domínguez getting demoted last night, another bubble reliever is joining the active roster in Bradley Hanner.

Luis Gil’s future with the Yankees is overall extremely murky — the team passed on trading him in previous offseasons, but he’ll be arbitration-eligible for the first time after this season and he hasn’t had much to show for his last two years. This relief role was his best shot at recouping some stability with the team, but he’s been supplanted in that and the rotation seems fully out of reach for him in 2027. This could potentially be the last we see of Gil in pinstripes, but it would also be selling at rock bottom to pass on Gil right now and that’s not something Brian Cashman is fond of doing. Perhaps the likeliest outcome is Gil gets relegated to the minors to start next season and either serves as depth at Triple-A with a full offseason of rest behind him or continues to work on his evolution into a reliever with Scranton, but either way it’ll be a tough climb for Gil to make his way back into the team’s plans.

It is obligatory to include a reference to the 2023 World Series in every preview between these two teams, so let’s get that out of the way first. As we remember well, Texas prevailed in five games. But since then? Neither team has returned to the playoffs. It was the first World Series since 2006 where neither side reached the playoffs the following year – and, of course, it was considerably harder to make the post-season in 2007. Arizona narrowly missed out on tiebreakers, but Texas finished with a losing record in 2024, slumping to a 78-84 mark. The following year saw the Rangers with the better record, ending exactly even at 81-81.

This year, they’re there or thereabout again. Texas are currently 72-75. Normally, such a mediocre record would be well out of the post-season picture, but this is the American League in 2026. So the Rangers are still in the hunt for a spot, despite being below .500: they are two back of the Guardians for the last AL spot. Even winning the AL West is not out of the question. Texas are currently three games behind Houston there, and all told have a playoff percentage of 20.3%, per Fangraphs. While not as good as the Diamondbacks, I’ve no doubt the Rangers will still feel there’s a chance, and I’d expect them to play like it this weekend.

The season so far

No doubt about the star for Texas (hohoho) so far on the position player side. Ezequiel Durán’s remarkable flexibility – he has started at every position bar pitcher and catcher – combined with a 124 OPS+ has powered him to 4.6 bWAR. It’s kinda out of nowhere, considering his total over the previous four seasons and 362 games was only 1.7 bWAR. Interestingly, former Diamondback Alex Cintron, now a hitting coach for Texas, may have helped sustain Durán’s breakout campaign, with an adjustment in the player’s stance. Wyatt Langford and Corey Seager have also been having solid seasons, while Jake Burger easily leads the team in HR, RBI and strikeouts.

The Rangers lead the American League in OPS+ at 108, but that has largely been undone by the pitching side. They rank 13th among the 15 clubs there, with an ERA+ of 91. Weirdly though, only the Tigers and the Red Sox have more shutouts than the Rangers, who have blanked the opposition 13 times. One starter we won’t see is Jacob DeGrom, but nice to see him stay mostly healthy. He could post consecutive 30-start seasons for the first time since 2019, though had to leave his last start with groin tightness. We probably don’t want to be trailing going into the ninth, because Texas closer Jacob Latz has been their best pitcher by bWAR. He has a 1.85 ERA to go with 28 saves, and a FIP of 2.65 suggests he has been deservedly good.

Pitching match-ups

At time of writing, early Friday morning. MLB.com lists all six probable pitchers for this series as a thoroughly unhelpful, “TBA”. So what follows is a best guess, going off previous pitchers in each team’s rotation plus other sources online, and is subject to change. So don’t come whining to me…

Friday 11th: LHP MacKenzie Gore (8-10, 4.51) vs. RHP Merrill Kelly (9-13, 5.06)

We’ll be hoping for better this time, against the man whose name sounds like the villain in an eighties slasher film. For Arizona faced Gore on the road in May, and he tossed eight innings of one-run ball, allowing only three hits. It was his best start of the year by Game Score. But his ERA is more than two runs higher on the road: 5.63 vs. 3.36. Kelly has been showing some improvement; last outing was a quality start, and his first appearance without a walk since May 20. He’d walked 3+ each of his previous six. Merrill is 4-9 when issuing more than two BBs in a start, compared to a 5-4 record when he walks zero or one batters.

Saturday 12th: RHP Kumar Rocker (5-11, 4.61) vs. RHP Brandon Pfaadt (7-2, 3.53)

The #3 pick in the 2022 draft hasn’t lived up to expectations yet. Over his first 41 starts, he has an ERA+ of just 79. His last appearance came following an opener on September 4, and it did not go well, allowing nine hits over five innings. Though his first such “bullpen” outing, earlier this season, led to 7.2 shutout innings at Coors Field. Looks like a regular start here though. After a stellar month and a half, Pfaadt has come back to earth. He’s not missing as many bats, with only eight strikeouts over his last three starts, covering 19 innings. But he has thrown at least six innings each time, keeping Arizona in the games: all three ended up being decided by one run.

Sunday 13th: RHP Cal Quantrill (8-5, 2.89) vs. LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (15-5, 2.55)

If this does turn out to be the match-up, it’s likely the best of the series. With three – possibly four – starts remaining, ERod has 5.3 bWAR, and could end up surpassing his career high of 5.5 bWAR, back in 2019. Indeed, his total bWAR over five years and 114 starts from 2021-25 was only 5.6 bWAR. It has been a spectacular resurrection. Meanwhile, Quantrill started the year in the bullpen, but has been a revelation since returning to the Texas rotation in late June. He has a 1.70 ERA over his last six outings, with a K:BB ratio of 34:6 across 37 innings. While his FIP is somewhat higher, at 2.80, it’s hardly extravagant. This promises to be a tough one.

Prediction

When we faced the Rangers at Arlington in mid-May, we squeaked out the opener 1-0, but then lost the next two by margins of 4-7 and 5-6. With the D-backs now in a tough fight for a wild-card spot, they’ll certainly be looking to do better. Given the lack of certainty about the pitching match-ups, it’s hard to say how things might break. Saturday’s game is the only one where I feel there’s a definite edge, favoring Arizona. The others could go either way – and I’d not be surprised if that’s exactly what they do, the D-backs taking one and dropping the other. Just don’t ask me which! So, all told: the Diamondbacks win two out of three. Enough? We’ll have to ask the Giants about that…

The 2026 MLB trade deadline was almost six weeks ago, and as you may recall, the situation for the Texas Rangers was very fluid at the time. There were reports that the Rangers were saying that no one was off-limits and that they were listening on everybody after getting swept in Houston the weekend before the deadline. A complete seemed, if not likely, at least possible.

After a morning filled with angst, anxiety and uncertainty, news broke around 2 p.m. that Monday afternoon that Jacob deGrom would not be waiving his no-trade clause. A couple of days later, I did a lengthy post-mortem on the trade deadline that talked about deGrom’s decision, among other things. Everyone pretty much moved on.

The Jacob deGrom non-trade is a topic of conversation again, however, thanks to a column by Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. Feinsand, in a piece that went up yesterday entitled “An early look at 11 intriguing offseason trade candidates,” detailed, well, 11 intriguing offseason trade candidates, one of whom was Braves’ starter Spencer Strider.

This is the Spencer Strider section, in toto:

Spencer Strider, RHP, Braves

The Braves discussed sending Strider to Texas in a contract swap trade for Jacob deGrom before the Trade Deadline, and although deGrom blocked the deal with his no-trade clause, it’s clear that Atlanta is open to moving its former ace. Strider has been out since mid-June with right elbow inflammation, and while it’s unlikely that he will return this season, there is an outside chance he could be available out of the bullpen during the postseason. Strider is owed $22 million in each of the next two seasons with a $22 million club option ($5 million buyout) for 2029, so if the Braves can find a team willing to bet he can return to his previous form, they could look to move him.

127 words. A heading and three sentences about Spencer Strider, one of 11 individuals who was the subject of the story. Only one portion of one of those sentences had to do with deGrom, who was mentioned more or less in passing.

That particularly snippet on deGrom is noteworthy, and does provide for an interesting footnote on the whole Jacob deGrom trade deadline drama. But because this is used to provide background for the inclusion of Strider on Feinsand’s list, and is not a story on, you know, the Jacob deGrom and his potentially being dealt at the deadline, it is lacking in the sort of information that would provide clarity in regards to the details of the discussions between the Rangers and the Braves.

Years ago, on Twitter, I broke down what I called the “Hierarchy of rumor stage descriptions”:

This is something I put together based on, at the time, a couple of decades of obsessing over online reports of rumors in the Big Four sports, dating all the way back to the turn of the century when MLB Trade Rumors would take ButtPirate69’s post on the ESPN Yankees message board* saying that the Yankees should trade Ricky Ledee to the Expos for Vlad Guerrero and turn it into a story with a headline like “Yankees, Expos rumored to be talking Guerrero trade!” There’s an element of tea leaf reading when digesting rumors being reported, something that became even more necessary when Twitter became the preferred medium for reporters to send little tidbits out in bite-sized form, leaving room for interpretation, or, at a minimum, requiring the reader to use context clues.

* 25 years ago today, I learned that what we now colloquially refer to as “9/11” happened by logging onto my laptop and going to the ESPN Rangers board right after waking up (I was in law school and had no morning classes) and seeing the board filled with replies on posts with subjects like “Second Tower Just Fell.”

Feinsand’s “discussed sending” would seem slot in around “engaged with” in the hierarchy above, though it could also be equivalent to as high as “advanced discussions with” at the top of the hierarchy pyramid (or at the bottom of the inverted ziggurat, as I structured the tweet). Again, because this is an aside in a piece that is only 9.09% about Spencer Strider, its hard to tell exactly where this fits in.

We do know, per reporting, that the Rangers apparently told deGrom that if he wanted to be traded to the Braves, the Rangers would make that happen. We don’t know whether there was a specific trade agreed to or in place between the Rangers and the Braves, or if the Rangers were simply at a point in the discussions where they felt that a deal was doable and they were letting their future Hall of Fame pitcher who is in the twilight years of his career know that they would facilitate such a move if that’s what he wanted.

“Discussed” has a wide range of possible implications, which gets us back to the lack of clarity surrounding reporting of rumors in general. One would think that if the Braves and Rangers had a deal worked out to swap deGrom for Spencer, Feinsand would have said “agreed to” such a swap. Of course, its possible there was such an agreement, and Feinsand couldn’t get it confirmed, or his source didn’t want him to acknowledge something that definitive (which, given the fact that Strider is still a member of the Braves, and the Braves presumably don’t want Strider thinking they had agreed to get rid of him, would be understandable). It could be that there were various permutations of a deal being discussed, with Strider going to the Rangers in some scenarios but not others. There is a lot of inherent uncertainty, given we are working off of less than a sentence in Feinsand’s report.

That hasn’t, however, kept folks from re-packing Feinsand’s story in more definitive and clickbaity ways.

Go do an internet search for Jacob deGrom and Spencer Strider and one of the first things you’ll see is a New York Post article with the headline “Jacob deGrom nearly traded for Spencer Strider in failed deadline blockbuster.” The article starts off thusly:

Add this one to the long list of blockbuster baseball trades that nearly happened.

Before this year’s trade deadline, Jacob deGrom nearly became a Brave.

Instead, the ex-Met declined to waive his no-trade clause, citing his desire to remain in Texas.

The Post’s Jon Heyman reported the potential deal at the time, but the return Atlanta discussed is only now coming to light.

The headline and opening paragraphs lead one to suppose that the New York Post is breaking some news here and not just aggregating the aside in the Feinsand story, right?

Wrong:

MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand revealed Thursday that Spencer Strider was discussed as part of a possible “contract swap” for deGrom.

The article then just goes on to talk about deGrom and Strider, and what the ramifications would have been had such a deal gone down.

I probably could have figured out that there’s no new independent scoop here from the outset if I’d looked a little more closely. The byline indicates the author of the piece is Dylan Svoboda, whose New York Post page describes him as “a sports gambling editor and producer for the New York Post,” rather than someone like Jon Heyman or Joel Sherman.

You’ll also see a headline from “theScore.com” stating: “Report: Braves tried to trade Strider to Rangers for deGrom.” Here’s the lede:

The Atlanta Braves attempted to deal right-hander Spencer Strider to the Texas Rangers for two-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom before the trade deadline, according to Mark Feinsand of MLB.com.

Credit to the score for putting “Report” in their headline, indicating that they were simply relaying another journalist’s reporting, unlike the Post’s framing. Negative one million, though, for saying that “according to Mark Feinsand” “[t]he Atlanta Braves attempted to deal” Strider for deGrom.

Feinsand didn’t say that! That’s not true!

We get a similar treatment from Barstool Sports, with contributor “Big Tennessee” running a story with the headline “The Braves Were Reportedly Going To Include Spencer Strider in a Trade for Jacob deGrom.” Not that anyone expects original reporting from Barstool anyway, but if you were under the impression they were breaking a scoop, your misconceptions are put to rest immediately, since the very beginning of the story itself is an embed of a tweet from something called “SleeperBraves” with a 25 words or less summary that ends with “Per @Feinsand.”

And that’s before we get the myriad of social media aggregators that don’t even blog or do a story, but just choose to repackage whatever someone else reported in a Facebook or Twitter post with an exaggerated, misleading summary.

To be clear, there are plenty of folks who reported on this the right way. The SBN Braves blog Battery Power had a headline with “discussed” in quotes. MLB Trade Rumors used “discussed” in the headline of their story discussing the Strider, and even links to a Mark Bowman MLB.com piece from early August that said the Rangers “didn’t show initial interest in Strider,” further undermining the overly-excited “we almost had a deGrom/Strider swap” framing we see elsewhere.

But those more nuanced, and more accurate, headlines and pieces don’t catch the eyeballs that the clickbait does.

Don’t look now, but the Pirates are getting hot at the right time.

It’s been an uphill battle for the Bucs to erase a sizable deficit in the National League Wild Card race, but the team is looking to make this a September to remember. 

The Pirates have won four games in a row and their last five series after sweeping the White Sox on the south side. They are over .500 for the first time since July 29.

Pittsburgh has won eight of its last 10 games, and only the Dodgers (seven in a row) are hotter than the Bucs.

So what’s standing in their way? Shota Imanaga, who pitches like 2025 second-half Jake Arrieta against the Pirates… but better.  

In 38 career innings facing Pittsburgh, Imanaga has allowed only one run for a staggering 0.24 ERA. He is the Pirates’ version of kryptonite despite having a season ERA of 3.92.

The Pirates placed All-Star Braxton Ashcraft on the 15-day injured list on Thursday with right arm discomfort, and he won’t start against the Cubs on Friday.

Wilber Dotel will begin the game, but it will likely become a bullpen day. Khristian Curtis and recently recalled Antwone Kelly are also available to pitch in bulk roles. 

Refining Cy Young honoree Paul Skenes starts on Saturday against former Pirate Holmes, who was acquired from the Mets at the trade deadline. Holmes owns a 3.51 ERA through his first six starts with Chicago.

Bubba Chandler gets the ball, opposite Matthew Boyd, on Sunday in the series finale. All three games at Wrigley Field are at 2:20 p.m. Eastern.

The Pirates are 4.5 games back of the San Diego Padres for the final wild card with only 15 games left. It still feels like a nearly impossible feat for the Pirates to accomplish, and they dug themselves too deep a hole after being six games under .500 on both August 13th and 23rd.

Oneil Cruz drove in both runs on Thursday, including a solo home run hit 117.4 MPH as the hardest-hit home run of the season.

Since returning to the team on August 18 after missing two months with a hand injury, Cruz is batting .315 with a .404 slugging percentage, four homers, and 18 runs batted in. 

Konnor Griffin returned last weekend, and first baseman/right fielder Ryan O’Hearn may be back this weekend.

The arrow is pointing up for the Pirates, but the rival Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers are waiting for them. It may be too little, too late for the Pirates as their race to the postseason continues to take full shape.

The Pirates do have a chance.