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Approaching the top of the list and getting to prospects with more impact potential, we have lefty and righty high school pitchers with plus pitches, a faraway infielder with a sky high ceiling contrasted against a skills over tools outfielder on the cusp of the majors.

12. Juan Sanchez, SS, age 18 (DOB: 9/27/2007), grade: 40, 2025: unranked

Sanchez received the second largest bonus in the Blue Jays’ 2025 international class at just a hair under $1-million, so while he wasn’t one of the very top ranked prospects there was certainly some pedigree there. He more than put himself on the map last summer with a LOUD debut at .341/.439/.565, more than 50% abover league average.

Hot for average? Check. Power? Check. An idea at the plate? Check. There’s plenty he’ll have to show against much better pitching of course, but everything looks good so far. In the Spring Breakout game, Sanchez smashed a hanging slider from the Phillies 4th rounder last year off the fence with a short swing that exploded off his bat. It’s but one data point, but a heck of an impression.

Defensively, he split his time between short and third, and at 6’3” is not expected to stay a shortstop despite good athleticism. Regardless, this is about the potential for an impact bat, and it that works out it’s be no trouble to find him a home elsewhere on the infield, or even potentially in the outfield. Would he ideally rank this highly in a better system? No. There’s still an incredible amount of risk here.

11. Gage Stanifer, RHP, age 22 (DOB: 11/18/2003), grade: 40+, 2025: unranked/just missed

I really wish I had got around to publishing my just missed/pref list last year, because Stanifer was at the head of it (you’ll have to take to my word for it). The Blue Jays’ 19th rounder out of an Indianapolis high school in 2022, the Jays landed Stanifer for the $125,000 limit that doesn’t count against the draft pool. I’m always intrigued by these late round picks who clearly have a strong preference to play professionally rather than in college, and amount to essentially a free lottery ticket for the team if scouts can turn up a diamond in the rough.

So while Stanifer’s complex league debut wasn’t remarkable, I had tucked the name away and when he went up to Dunedin in the wake of several injuries to the rotation in early 2024 it was a priority follow for me. Again, while the results didn’t standout (6.34 ERA with 50 walks in 59.2 innings), there were some promising building blocks. He shows good fastball velocity, holding low-90s velocity, paired with the ability to spin a breaking ball that flashed plus. It’s just consistent strike throwing was his undoing, but nonetheless there was plenty to like.

Sometimes young pitchers never progress beyond that, and sometimes something clicks. And click it did for Stanifer in 2025. Piggybacked behind Trey Yesavage for the first half of the season, Stanifer blew away low-A hitters (0.69 ERA with 38 in 26 innings over seven starts). There were a few bumps initially at Vancouver, mostly control wobbles, but really hit his strike down the stretch in the rotation (60K in 37 IP in his last seven high-A starts) before a late season cameo up to AA.

Stanifer’s fastball was firmed up towards the mid-90s, and he misses plenty of bats with, but his best pitch is a mid-80s slider with big depth that can look like a power curve (and he mixes in either a slower variant or what is actually more of a power curve with more depth). His change-up is distinctly a third pitch, but encouragingly for a development perspective he used it plenty and would flash some good fade. Physically, he’s pretty already pretty maxxed out.

It’s going to come down to throwing enough strikes for Stanifer because the stuff is plenty good. That was an issue in his Spring Training appearances this year. Between the tenuous control and the change-up being a work in progress, my gut is he ultimately ends up in the bullpen (I’d put it at something like 75/25). He’s touched the upper 90s with his fastball and potentially could tick up to that consistently in short stints. And there’s not insignificant risk that the basic strikethrowing undermines him short of the majors.

10. Johnny King, LHP, age 19 (DOB: 7/26/2006), grade: 40+, 2025: 23th

One of the youngest players drafted in the 2024 Draft, King received a well overslot $1.25 million bonus to forgo his commitment to Miami as the Jays’ third rounder. The prototypical day two high school arm, King had a loose, whippy delivery from a low three quarters arm slot from a 6’4”/185 frame with room to add weight as he fills out.

Promoted to low-A Dunedin at midseason after bullying hitters on the complex (41K in 24 innings), King had a broadly successful 11 appearance run, with a 3.35 ERA in 37.1 innings, with a ridiculous 64 strikeouts amounting to just under 40%. The one drawback was 30 walks (18%), though it wasn’t a huge issue of not being able to throw strikes so much as running a lot of deep counts and losing hitters. A little overboard on the two true outcomes.

King did this principally with two pitches. His fastball sat in the low-90s with some run to his arm side, presenting a tough angle especially for young pitchers unfamiliar with that from the left side. He’s young enough that it could tick up as he matures and gets stronger. That’s paired with a big two-plane curve in the mid-70s that piled up swings and misses, albeit against hitters who were largely befuddled and completely eaten up by it. He used his changeup some, but more often and then he’d go away from it and rely on his others.

Though there is plenty of risk remaining, the successful debut has already somewhat derisked King’s profile in that the stuff clearly translated to full season ball. A solid athlete, he could project to have good command but it’s still well a work in progress. While he’s very young, there’s a lot of reliever traits and absent steps forward in command or to a viable third pitch, my gut would have him ultimately landing in the bullpen, with the distribution above reflecting that.

9. RJ Schreck, OF, age 25 (DOB: 7/12/2000), grade: 40+, 2025: 32nd

After four years at Duke and one season with Vanderbilt, Schreck was a priority senior sign by the Mariners in the 9th round of the 2023 Draft. After an unremarkable post draft debut, he put himself on the map at high-A Everett in the first half of 2024 with 12 home runs and .404 OBP. Traded to the Jays for Justin Turner, the power carried over to New Hampshire finishing the season at .251/.388/.462 (138 wRC+) and 17 HR.

I was the low guy on Schreck last year, skepticism stemming from both home parks having extreme short porches to right field thereby exaggerating his production (.240 home ISO, .188 road ISO). Beyond that, the production was driven by plate discipline outcomes, which for an experienced ACC/SEC hitter can be just waiting out wild young pitchers rather than true excellence (and his strikeout rate increased significantly at AA).

Schreck’s 2025 went a long way to dispelling at at least allaying that. After replicating his AA production, he moved up to Buffalo and had the profile hold up at AAA in posting a .242/.392/.435 line good for a 129 wRC+. He walked 16% while holding the strikeouts to 21%, and added 9 HR in half a season in a neutral environment.

While Schreck does not standout tools wise, added strength in the past few years has enhanced his power potential and he makes excellent swing decisions. Defensively, he’s been used in all three positions. While he doesn’t embarrass himself in CF and would be serviceable in a pinch, his future is in a corner where good reads and routes and an average arm acquit him well.

As a corner outfielder without above average power (or a standout hit tool), Schreck’s profile remains risky in terms of projecting a regular role. That said, he’s already shown improvements beyond his pre-draft profile with secondary skills that buffer shortcomings in raw tools. Until the profile and production shows signs of cracking, there’s reason to believe a late blooming diamond in the rough who could profile as an OBP-oriented everyday regular.

What comes to mind when you hear Miller Huggins’ name? The 1920s Yankees, surely. He is remembered primarily as the man who managed that legendary core of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Herb Pennock and company, capturing six AL pennants and three World Series titles during his twelve-year tenure. 

Some might point to the sheer amount of talent on those squads and claim that Huggins was simply along for the ride. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Huggins played an instrumental role in shaping those juggernaut Yankees. He deserves to be remembered not as a manager of great teams, but a great manager.

Miller James Huggins
Born: March 27, 1878 (Cincinnati, OH)
Died: September 25, 1929 (New York City, NY)
Yankees Tenure: (as manager) 1918-1929

Even before he became the manager of the New York Yankees, Huggins had already established a name for himself in the world of baseball, first and foremost as a fine second baseman. He broke into the major leagues with his hometown Reds in 1904 at the age of 26, immediately posting a 3.1 WAR season on the back of a .377 OBP and a reliable glove. Though he was quite a small man, even for his time — Baseball Reference lists him at 5-f00t-6 and 140 pounds — he used patience at the plate, speed on the bases, and guile on the field to outplay his opponents, earning him nicknames like “Mighty Mite” and “Little Everywhere”. Over a 13-year career, the first six of which he spent with the Reds and the rest with the St. Louis Cardinals, Huggins hit .265/.382/.314 over 1586 games and 6800 plate appearances, good for a 111 wRC+, and accumulated 39 WAR.

Huggins’ managerial career began while he was still a player, when Cardinals team owner Helene Hathaway Britton named him as player-manager in the 1912-13 offseason. His first season at the helm was quite inauspicious, as the Redbirds struggled to a 51-99 finish, last place in the National League by 12.5 games. However, Huggins was able to right the ship very quickly, leading the Cards to a third-place finish just the following year with a 81-72 record.

During Huggins’ St. Louis tenure, the team experienced significant financial difficulties. Britton sold the team over the 1916-17 offseason to a new ownership group, who hired some guy called Branch Rickey to be the president of the club. While Huggins remained at the helm in 1917, the last year of his contract, the Cardinals did not offer him a new one at season’s end. Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert seized this opportunity to sign Huggins to a two-year deal, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Or not. The start of Huggins’ 12-year Yankees tenure was far from smooth sailing, as he failed to lead the still-building team to a pennant in each of his first two seasons. Even after a certain Babe Ruth came over from Boston and proceeded to revolutionize baseball, it would take until 1921 for Huggins to capture his first pennant, and 1923 to win his, and the franchise’s, first World Series.

Huggins faced myriad difficulties as the Yankees’ manager. Not only was he faced with a hostile New York press, he had to handle a team that had no shortage of big personalities. And no personality was bigger than the biggest man in the game, both figuratively and literally — George Herman Ruth. Initially, Huggins took a laissez-faire approach, turning a blind eye to the slugger’s drinking and partying. However, this understandably had a negative impact on both Huggins’ leadership and team morale. Moreover, even when Huggins did try to reprimand Ruth for crossing a line, he was sabotaged by team co-owner Til Huston (full name Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston, which is probably the best name I’ve had the honor of typing), who was Ruth’s drinking buddy, and did not take Huggins’ side when he came into conflict with the Babe.

All this strife and pressure took a steep toll on Huggins’ health. After the 1920 season saw the Yankees lose a close pennant race, Huggins suffered a nervous breakdown, later revealing that he seriously considered quitting at the time. The following year, Huggins missed time to a case of blood poisoning. Later that year, when the Yankees momentarily relinquished first place following a heartbreaking September loss, Huggins submitted his letter of resignation to co-owner Ruppert. However, Ruppert refused to accept it, and his faith in Huggins would be well rewarded in the coming years.

Although 1923 was the first triumph of Huggins’ Yankees, the true turning point came in 1925. It was August 25th of that year, which saw the Yankees go 69-85 and finish 28.5 games out of first place, that Huggins finally earned the respect of Babe Ruth. That day, Huggins fined Ruth $5,000 and suspended him indefinitely for his conduct off of the field. Ruth reportedly scoffed at Huggins’ sentence, claiming that Ruppert would surely rescind it and side with him over Huggins. However, Ruppert stood by his manager, telling Ruth that he would be suspended for as long as Huggins liked. After apologizing to both Huggins and Ruppert, Ruth returned to the field on September 5th. He would never cross Huggins ever again.

This marked the beginning of a golden era for Huggins and the Yankees, as they won three pennants and two World Series in the next three years. Front and center was Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who Huggins elected to play over Wally Pipp amid the Yankees’ 1925 collapse. However, Huggins’ fingerprints were evident throughout those squads. Pitchers Herb Pennock and Waite Hoyt, who were the anchors of the pitching staff, were both players that Huggins had sought to acquire from the Red Sox despite lackluster results in their Boston tenure. Perhaps the sheer talent of his club required less of Huggins as an in-game tactician. However, by that same coin, one must give Huggins his due credit for having acquired, developed, appraised, and managed those talents.

Sadly, Huggins was not able to enjoy his accomplishments for long, if at all. In August of 1929, as the Yankees fell to second place behind the Philadelphia Athletics, Huggins began to feel ill, and players and staff noticed that he was visibly exhausted. In mid-September, he discovered a painful skin infection on his left cheek, later found to be erysipelas. On September 20th, he was checked in to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village. Five days later, he passed away due to pyaemia. He was just 51 years old.

Although he died an untimely death, at least it can be said that Huggins and his accomplishments are well recognized and commemorated. On May 30, 1932, the Yankees unveiled a monument dedicated to him in center field at the original Yankee Stadium, eventually to be joined by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

When the Stadium was remodeled in the mid-70s, his was relocated to what came to be called “Monument Park.” Huggins also received support for election to the Hall of Fame on many occasions, ultimately being voted in by the Veterans’ Committee in 1964. And as long as the Yankees exist, Miller Huggins will be remembered by fans as the man who was the first to make the team a winner.

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.

At the time of his drafting, the sentiment surrounding Luke Stevenson as a Mariner was polarized. On one hand, landing a first round catching talent with a pick they essentially received for free felt like a massive gift. On the other hand, Stevenson had an unprecedentedly low contact rate for someone getting drafted as early as he did and understandably left fans hesitant to buy in on him as a player. How would a player that struggled with his bat-to-ball skills in college fare against increasingly advanced competition?

Though it’s still incredibly early in the grand scheme of things, the start of Stevenson’s professional career has been remarkable. Through his first 100 PA’s, Stevenson has hit .280 with more walks than strikeouts, a somewhat unexpected style of offense that greatly improved his overall outlook as a prospect. Even if the contact numbers slide given a bigger sample size, the plate discipline has been unreal thus far and there should absolutely be more power on the way. His gaudy .460 OBP isn’t a realistic benchmark for him to hold over the course of a season, but if he’s anywhere near the .400 mark, Mariner fans should be thrilled.

The defense, however, surprised no one. Walking into Modesto having already caught 58 games for the Tarheels, Stevenson immediately took on the role of starting catcher for the Nuts and did so seamlessly. Playing stellar defense behind the dish and showing off an impressively accurate throwing arm, Stevenson gave us a glimpse as to why the Mariners believe in him so strongly. It’s historically atypical to call a player with his offensive skillset a “high floor” player, but in his own roundabout way, that’s exactly the label that fits him best.

The bet on Stevenson boils down to some fairly basic calculus by Scott Hunter and company: If Stevenson is able to hit even just a little bit, the path to him being a four-win player is crystal clear. Good defensive catchers make it to the big leagues, and good defensive catchers that have 25+ homer power in the big leagues make All-Star games. It’s far from a guarantee that he reaches that level of production, but the blueprint is there. A glove-first backup feels like a pretty safe fallback option for Stevenson in his current form, but if everything clicks, we’re looking at a potential starting caliber catching prospect that could take over starting catching duties if Cal Raleigh ever decides catching 200 games a season might not be best for his body. Again, no guarantees, but the limited sample is promising.

A successful 2026 for Stevenson looks a lot like his first 100 PA’s as a professional. If he can prove the contact ability he’s shown isn’t a fluke, it’s going to be tough not to move him up these ranks come mid-season. There’s little doubt he’s got the power to step on one and send it a mile out to right field, but if he’s able to avoid selling out for that and continues to work the entire scope of the field while drawing a healthy number of walks, there just won’t be a ton to his game to poke holes in. He’s a high motor, high character leader of a team that wants to “be a servant to his staff” and has enough raw talent to be just about as good as anybody in his class. Proving it on the field is the next step, but whatever his ceiling ends up looking like, his internal drive and dedication to his craft should all but assure he reaches it.

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The San Francisco Giants host the New York Yankees in MLB action today, with first pitch scheduled for 4:35 p.m. ET.

New York took Wednesday's season-opener in a 7-0 blowout, and my Yankees vs. Giants predictions expect the visitors to win again.

Here are my best free MLB picks for March 27.

Yankees vs Giants predictions

Yankees vs Giants best bet: Yankees moneyline (-130)

The San Francisco Giants have a potent lineup featuring Rafael Devers and Willy Adames. That said, they're still not on the same level as the New York Yankees. 

The Yankees had the most productive offense in the majors last year, and that lineup returns intact. They'll light up Robbie Ray, who is coming off a solid season but had worrying underlying metrics. Ray was in the Bottom 10th percentile in average exit velocity, and the bottom 20th percentile in hard-hit rate. 

Meanwhile, Yankees hurler Cam Schlittler should build on an impressive rookie campaign by mixing in more breaking pitches.

COVERS INTEL: The Yankees led the majors in barrel rate, hard-hit rate, and exit velocity last year. Ray was in the Bottom 26th percentile in all three categories.

Yankees vs Giants same-game parlay (SGP)

Schlittler fanned 11 batters in 9 2/3 frames during spring training. He averages 98 mph on his four-seamer and sinker, with his cutter now at 94.7 mph  — nearly 3 mph higher than last year. He averaged 10.4 K/9 last season and will be even more overpowering in 2026.

Aaron Judge is the best hitter in the world, and over the last two years, he's posted an incredible .457 OBP while plating 259 runs in 310 games.

Not only does Ray give up too much hard contact, but San Fran's bullpen sits near the bottom of the majors in most preseason rankings. This could be a game where the Yankees win by multiple runs, especially if Judge and Schlittler play well.

Yankees vs Giants SGP

• Cam Schlittler Over 4.5 strikeouts
• Aaron Judge Over 0.5 runs
• Yankees -1.5

Yankees vs Giants home run pick: Aaron Judge (+240)

Judge went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts on opening night. That said, the three-time AL MVP is a proven slugger who has mashed more than 50 dingers in three of the last four seasons.

He should bounce back and this is a great matchup for him. Judge has jacked three dingers in four career games at Oracle Park. The towering right-hander also has the platoon advantage against Ray and has gone 3-for-8 with three homers in his career against him.

Yankees vs Giants odds

• Moneyline: Yankees -134 | Giants +114
• Run line: Yankees -1.5 (+122) | Giants +1.5 (-146)
• Over/Under: Over 8.5 (-102) | Under 8.5 (-120)

How to watch Yankees vs Giants and game info

Yankees vs Giants latest injuries

Yankees vs Giants weather

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Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Brewers fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.

In this week’s Reacts survey, we asked fans which young pitcher they’re most looking forward to seeing play with the Brewers this season. The results were a bit more split than I honestly expected. I’m not surprised at the order, though.

Brandon Sproat finished atop the voting at 39%, followed by Kyle Harrison (27%), Logan Henderson (23%), and Robert Gasser (11%). Sproat and Harrison, two of the newest Brewers, are also the only two of the group in the majors right now. Both Henderson and Gasser are at Triple-A, though they’re certainly among the “first men up” in the event of an injury or bad performance.

While we haven’t yet gotten a glimpse at Sproat or Harrison, both are slated to pitch in the next few days; Sproat gets the start on Sunday against the White Sox, and Harrison will follow against the Rays on Monday.

In a quick cup of coffee with the Mets last year, Sproat made four starts, pitching to a 4.79 ERA, 2.80 FIP, and 17 strikeouts over 20 2/3 innings. Harrison, still only 24, is the most experienced of the group, as he’s made 42 appearances (37 starts) over three seasons with the Giants and Red Sox. In 2025, he appeared in 11 games (six starts) between the two teams, pitching to a 4.04 ERA, 3.72 FIP, and 38 strikeouts over 35 2/3 innings.

Gasser and Henderson each had cameos with Milwaukee the last two seasons, as Gasser has made seven starts with a 2.67 ERA, 3.96 FIP, and 21 strikeouts over 33 2/3 innings with a Tommy John surgery in the middle. Henderson made five starts with a 1.78 ERA, 3.02 FIP, and 33 strikeouts over 25 1/3 innings in 2025 but dealt with elbow injuries in the second half of the season. Elbow soreness lingered this spring, but the team sounds hopeful that it’ll clear up with some extra rest.

It should be a fun season with so much young talent in the rotation! Thanks for participating in our Reacts survey, and be sure to use FanDuel Sportsbook for all of your sports betting needs.

Brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, the official sportsbook partner of SB Nation.

You can’t step into the same batter’s box twice. Well, you can— the rulebook is rather stringent about what qualities a batter’s box has to have. But we’re talking in a Heraclitean sense here. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the batter’s box remains the same, but the batter himself does not.

Bryce Harper is going to try to challenge Heraclitus’ opinion in the same way that he challenged Dave Dombrowski’s (though it is doubtful that he will accompany this challenge with a custom t-shirt). Recently, Harper stated that he wanted to walk more in 2026. A lot more. He was one of MLB’s better walk-drawers in 2025, with his 12.1% rate ranking 23rd league-wide. Only 28 players had more free passes than Harper’s 70. But he wants to draw 140 to 150 in 2026. That would be a career-high for him. The closest he’s gotten is 130 in 2018, his final season as a National. Since then, he’s changed his approach at the plate to a somewhat more free-swinging style. It’s brought him success in Philadelphia. But now he’s looking to go back to the past. Can Harper find a way to return to being the Bryce of 2018?

Before we can answer that, we have to ask a different question: who was the Bryce of 2018, anyway? This pre-Philly Bryce was a superstar, albeit one who had not yet discovered the sartorial flair of a good Phanatic headband. But he was a star with a rather different approach at the plate as compared to the Harper of today. 2018-Harper swung 45.7% of the time, as compared to 2025-Harper’s 54.2%. He was significantly more patient than his older self, swinging at the first pitch of an at-bat 40.4% of the time as compared to his current self’s 54.1%. And most of that bygone reluctance to swing was concentrated on pitches outside the zone: 2018-Bryce’s 25.3% chase rate ballooned to 35.6% by 2025. Interestingly enough, the more conservative 2018 Harper was slightly more likely to whiff than the swing-happy 2025 edition (31.4% vs. 30.7%).

Harper getting back to to drawing walks like it was 2018 would take significant effort and focus, though Harper’s determination is not to be doubted. But Harper can only control what he can control. And while he can control what pitches he swings at, he can’t control what pitches he gets. The Bryce Harper of 2018 was seeing a very different pitch mix than the Harper of today. In 2018, just about a quarter of the pitches he saw were breaking balls. In 2025, it was 41.3%. How might that impact his efforts to return to the past?

Here’s Harper’s swings on pitches outside the zone (O-Swing%), by pitch type, in 2018 and 2025, using FanGraphs’ pitch definitions.

In 2018, Harper was just about as likely to chase a breaking ball as he was a heater. His chase rate on four-seamers hasn’t changed much since then. But his chase rate for breaking balls has exploded — which, of course, is why pitchers are so eager to show him more of them. That’s good news for his efforts: if his chase rates on fastballs and breaking balls were similar in 2018, then the change in the pitch mix he’s being shown shouldn’t be a problem, as long as he returns to swinging like he did in 2018.

Easier said than done, of course. And while the passes are free, pursuing more of them comes at a cost. We know what Harper stands to gain by taking more BBs. But we have to look at what he stands to lose as well.

Harper’s increased willingness to chase diminished his walk rate, but it helped him build production in some areas. Here’s his wOBA by zone in 2018 and 2025. The third image shows the difference between the two.

The 2025 version of Harper produced more on pitches inside. All that chasing generally hurt his production outside the zone, but it dramatically improved it on pitches he chased up and inside. The difference may not be as much as it seems, though— note that the gap between his expected wOBAs in 2025 and 2018 in that same quadrant was .104; less than half as much. Still, he really did produce more on those pitches with his 2025 style. He’d potentially be giving that up if he returns to his old approach.

Is that worth it? Well, nostalgia can’t be quantified, but run value can. And we can say that 2018-Harper was more productive than 2025-Harper by that measure.

2025-Harper was more productive on pitches in that upper right quadrant. But looking at the whole, he produced 37 runs in 2018, and only 24 in 2025. The gains he made with the new approach were offset by the costs. Granted, his run values in 2023 and 2024, when he was about as chase-happy as he was this past season, were quite similar to his 2018 run value. So perhaps the gap between 2018 and 2025 isn’t as much about the chasing as it was something else. The comparison between 2018 and 2025 is meaningful, but a little narrowly-sliced; there’s plenty of variance within the results of two given seasons. Still, given Harper’s underwhelming 2025, it’s not hard to see why he felt that it was time to return to the old ways.

You can’t really go home again, though. Maybe that’s an odd thing to say in the context of baseball, the sport in where the whole point is to reach home. But it’s true. Even if Harper could perfectly replicate the mentality and approach of his 2018 self, he can’t replicate the body he had 8 years ago. At 33 years old, he’s far from washed up, but certainly at the point where age is being felt. Unfortunately, we only have bat speed data dating back to 2023. But it is probably fair to assume that he cannot swing the bat in 2026 as fast as he did in 2018. That may mean that the exact same approach at the plate would produce different results. Even if he can replicate the walk rate he had in 2018, he may end up with a very different stat line overall. If swinging less doesn’t produce the change he’s hoping to see, Harper will have to look to alternate strategies for reasserting his eliteness. We don’t know exactly what form he’ll settle into by the end of the 2026. We know it won’t really be 25-year old Harper again. But we can be sure he’s hellbent on finding the best version of 33-year old Harper that can be.

After the San Diego Padres dropped Opening Day against the Detroit Tigers, 8-2, they’re not off to nearly as auspicious a start as the 2025 season, to say the least.

There’s plenty to be excited about: Xander Bogaerts’ two hits off Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, Ramón Laureano’s home run, the bullpen (more or less) locking it down and only using one high-leverage reliever.

But the starting pitching took a hit.

In a game that was already going to be difficult with Skubal on the mound for the opposition, Nick Pivetta struggled to get out of the first inning.

After striking out leadoff man Kerry Carpenter, he couldn’t find the zone and issued two walks and a single to the load the bases before walking in a run.

He ended the inning having given up four runs but was mostly solid for the rest of his outing (3 innings).

San Diego knew it wasn’t going to get much against Skubal but managed to put up two runs against a dominant Tigers pitching staff. But if they want to stay in games the pitching will need to be a lot stronger moving forward.

Taking the mound

Framber Valdez (DET) v. Michael King (SD)

Enter Michael King.

King was an ace for the Padres in 2024, pitching to a 2.95 ERA across a career-high 30 starts. But in ‘25 he suffered an injury-plagued campaign that saw him miss half the season.

If King can return to form, San Diego’s rotation will go a long way toward being as elite as it can be.

Today, the Friars will have their work cut out for them against ground ball extraordinaire Framber Valdez. After spending his whole career with the Houston Astros, he inked a three-year, $115 million deal with Detroit to serve as a co-ace with Skubal.

Batter up!

San Diego will likely use a very similar lineup as they did on Opening Day. Skubal and Valdez pitch quite similarly, with them being two of the most dominant southpaws in the game.

Despite Fernando Tatis Jr. hitting leadoff yesterday, it seems possible that manager Craig Stammen could shake things up and go back to his lineup from earlier this spring:

1. Xander Bogaerts, SS
2. Jackson Merrill, CF
3. Manny Machado, 3B
4. Fernando Tatis Jr., RF
5. Ramón Laureano, LF
6. Miguel Andujar, DH
7. Nick Castellanos, 1B
8. Freddy Fermin, C
9. Jake Cronenworth, 2B

The case for Bogaerts leading off is in large part due to the fact that he’s raked against Valdez (and went on a tear yesterday against Skubal). In 11 career at-bats against him, he has a .364 batting average and a .917 OPS.

It’s possible they use the same lineup as yesterday, putting Tatis at leadoff and bumping Bogaerts down to second again. It seems likely that Castellanos will get the start at first base after coming in to pinch-hit for Gavin Sheets in the eighth inning.

Relief corps

Stammen gave Pivetta quite the leash in spite of his difficult first inning, letting him work out of the jam. But after three innings, San Diego turned to its relievers.

Ron Marinaccio surrendered the only bullpen runs on a two-run homer in the fifth inning, but was spotless across two innings outside of that.

Top prospect Bradgley Rodriguez and David Morgan racked up four strikeouts across a combined three scoreless innings, and the Padres brought in Wandy Peralta to close out the game in the ninth.

With the game so out of hand before the seventh-inning stretch, most of the high-leverage options stayed in the ‘pen. Hopefully San Diego can get to Valdez today and they’ll get to have Mason Miller close out his first game of 2026.