Category: Sports News

Many factors have contributed to the strong start, but what have we actually learned that we didn’t already expect entering the season?

Pitching

The Rays entered the season with a much stronger pitching outlook than they had in 2025 thanks to the additions of Martinez and Matz, along with the return to the pitcher-friendly Trop. McClanahan’s return from injury has also gone about as well as the organization could have hoped – especially when considering he hasn’t pitched in a Major League game since 2023. Rasmussen continues to be as reliable as they come, and Jax’s much-anticipated transition to the rotation has gone well so far. Pepiot’s injury was surprising and disappointing, but the depth has held up and we haven’t really learned anything new about the rotation.

We also knew the bullpen had plenty depth, and that depth has already been tested with Uceta and Wilson on the 60-day IL to begin the season. IL stints from Cleavinger and now Sulser have further tested that depth. Despite those injury concerns, the bullpen has performed relatively well. They’re roughly league average in earned runs per batter faced — a useful bullpen metric because it accounts for workload — and middle of the pack in save-plus-hold conversion rate. Ben Williamson (a position player who has pitched 1 inning), Yoendrys Gomez, Chase Solesky, and Aaron Brooks have combined for a 7.48 ERA in 21.2 IP this season and are skewing the bullpen performance quite a bit.

One thing we’ve learned: the Rays have a closer, and his name is Bryan Baker. All offseason the idea was there would be a “closer by committee” approach, but that hasn’t happened, although Cash will use Baker to pitch the eighth inning if that’s when the heart of the opposing lineup is batting. There are still four relievers with multiple saves and I expect that to continue to some extent, but Baker has made the most of the opportunity given to him.

Position Players

We knew the catching group would be better on both sides of the ball compared to 2025. It has been a bit of a surprise to see Nick Fortes get so much playing time – he has appeared in 42 of the team’s 51 games so far while Feduccia has played in 29. The Rays currently have the 12th best wRC+ from their catching group and are 3rd in framing strike rate. The duo we have right now is looking good, and Dom Keegan could see some reps in the majors at some point later in the summer.

The infield (plus DH) is still the strongest group of players on this team. Aranda, Caminero, and Yandy lead the way while Williamson and Palacios have made solid contributions so far. Taylor Walls surprised everyone with a quick return from an early IL stint, and it was good timing too as the game appeared to be a little too quick for Carson Williams. The infield has converted ground balls into outs at roughly a league-average rate, but I expect that to improve a bit as Caminero continues to find his groove defensively and Williamson gets more comfortable with his transition to second base.

The outfield has been better, but that was expected. The improvement has been driven by a shift towards more plate discipline and contact profiles on the offensive side while year-over-year improvements from Cedric Mullins and Chandler Simpson have helped make this unit one of the better defensive groups in the league. The Rays convert fly balls and line drives into outs 61.8% of the time – the third highest rate in the league and well above the average of 57.7%. Unsurprisingly to some, Ryan Vilade has been impactful on both sides of the ball with his 140 wRC+ and three defensive runs saved in the outfield.

The main thing we’ve learned is that the new Rays offense works. The run environment is different than it was a few years ago, and the Rays have put together an offense that is built for it. I expected them to be a playoff team, but I didn’t expect a 108-win pace. This pace is unlikely to hold for any club over a full season, but this looks like a legitimate playoff team. It’ll be interesting to see how aggressively the Rays approach the deadline as they try to improve the roster while also managing the coming Rule 5 crunch.

This has been a rough year when it comes to notable names in Atlanta Braves history passing away. There was the double blow of losing both Ted Turner and Bobby Cox within the same week and now a former player has passed on. The Braves somberly shared the news that former star Bob Horner has passed away at the age of 68.

As the post shared, Horner left an indelible mark on the franchise while he donned the Atlanta uniform. He was picked first overall in 1978, he didn’t play a single game in the minors before making his big league debut and just to show that he belonged, he clubbed a homer in his first game as well and eventually earned the National League Rookie of the Year honors for that season.

Horner went on to spend nine seasons with the Braves where he earned an All-Star spot in 1982, hit four homers in a game in 1986 and he finished his Braves career with a slash line of .277/.340/.499 with an OPS of .839 and a OPS+ of 127. After becoming a free agent, he spent one season with the Yakult Swallows in Japan (which ended up being the best spot for him after it came out that the owners were colluding against free agents at the time) before joining the St. Louis Cardinals for the season after that. A shoulder injury derailed Horner’s time in St. Louis and he eventually called it a career once spring training rolled around the next season.

There wasn’t a ton for Braves fans to cheer about during the 1980s but if there was something to cheer about, there was a decent chance that it involved either Dale Murphy or Bob Horner. He remained a popular figure among Braves fans who had been fans during that time and he’s still a name that comes up whenever fans from that era reminisce about those days. He’ll be missed among fans across Braves Country. May he rest in peace.

Three keys: Creativity can help Aaron Nola right ship in San Diego originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

SAN DIEGO — The Phillies’ top three starters have been lights out lately.

Since Zack Wheeler returned to the rotation on April 25, Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez and Jesús Luzardo have combined to go 10-1 in 17 starts with a 1.46 ERA and 0.88 WHIP. Opponents are slashing .192/.243/.269 against them.

Outstanding.

That kind of production has helped mask some of the inconsistency from the back end of the rotation.

The Phillies have recently gotten more from rookie right-hander Andrew Painter, who has a 2.60 ERA and 0.98 WHIP over his last three starts. The 23-year-old has made adjustments to his pitch mix and usage, which has helped him hit his stride as the Phillies continue to do the same under interim manager Don Mattingly.

The one rotation constant during their 18-8 stretch under Mattingly has been Aaron Nola’s struggles.

Nola will take the ball Tuesday night against the Padres at Petco Park. Through his first 10 starts, the Phillies’ longest-tenured player has a 6.01 ERA. He has allowed 61 hits in 50 2/3 innings. Only three of his outings have been quality starts — against the Rockies, Giants and Marlins.

Those three teams have a combined .415 winning percentage and .688 OPS this season.

San Diego may look like a tougher task at 31-22, good for the top Wild Card spot in the National League. But the Padres have produced a .657 OPS, the second worst mark in the Majors.

So, how can Nola bounce back?

THE SEQUENCE

The pitch that has hamstrung Nola in his 12th big league season has been his four-seam fastball.

Opponents are hitting .417 against it with an astronomical .958 slugging percentage. That opponent slug would be close to double his career high against the pitch.

Left-handed hitters have done the most damage, hitting .484 with a 1.065 slugging percentage and 97.2 mph average exit velocity.

It has not been a competitive pitch.

Luckily for Nola, he will face a Padres lineup with just two left-handed hitters, the fewest he has faced in a start this season. Gavin Sheets has posted a .902 OPS against righties. Jackson Merrill is batting just .194 against right-handers.

That could allow Nola to lean more heavily on his knuckle curve, which has been his most reliable weapon this year. Opponents have struggled against it from both sides. Right-handed hitters are batting .189 against the pitch. Lefties are at .229.

Nola threw the pitch on the first pitch seven times in his last start, six of them for strikes. He threw it for a strike at an 85 percent rate, a season high. If there was a positive from that outing, it was that.

The ability to throw the knuckle curve in any count helps him pitch backward. It can also open up more creativity with his changeup. Nola throws it only five percent of the time against righties, but it could become a strikeout pitch if he is ahead with two strikes.

LIMIT THE HEATER?

Nola is going to have to get creative if he moves away from the four-seamer.

It is a pitch this Padres lineup can damage.

Nola’s four-seamer averages 92.1 mph. San Diego’s hitters have slashed .289/.418/.467 against four-seamers at 92.1 mph or lower this season. Their average drops to .266 against four-seamers at 93 mph or lower and .236 at 94 mph or lower.

One pitch right-handed hitters have handled against Nola is the sinker. But the Padres have posted just a .715 OPS against sinkers and two-seamers.

Boring that pitch in on the hands of San Diego’s right-handed bats could help Nola induce softer contact, something he has struggled to do this year. According to Statcast, he is in the 32nd percentile among pitchers with a 41.9 percent hard-hit rate.

Tunneling the knuckle curve with the sinker against a mostly right-handed Padres lineup could be a key to a bounce-back outing.

STAY AHEAD

This can be said about any pitcher, but Nola’s numbers show a stark difference between pitching ahead and pitching behind.

When Nola gets ahead 0-1, hitters have a .314 on-base percentage. If the season ended today, that would still be a career high, but it has at least limited opposing bats.

When he falls behind 1-0, that OBP jumps to .388 with a .903 OPS.

And Nola cannot simply steal a first-pitch strike by catching too much plate.

Of the 25 balls put in play against Nola’s first pitch this season, he has allowed 11 hits, a .440 average and two homers. He carries a 7.71 ERA on the first pitch. That ERA has been north of seven in first-pitch situations over the past four seasons.

That circles back to pitch diversity.

Nola does not need to reinvent himself Tuesday night. But against a Padres lineup that has struggled overall and will not be stacked with left-handed bats, there is a path. It likely starts with fewer predictable four-seamers, more early-count curveballs and enough sinkers to keep righties from leaning out over the plate.

NOTES

Mattingly will go with Kyle Schwarber in the leadoff spot Tuesday. Trea Turner will bat second. The Phillies’ interim skipper will give Adolis García “a day” and play Edmundo Sosa out in left field, with Brandon Marsh in right.

Turner is batting .115 over his last seven games with three hits in 26 at-bats. Schwarber, meanwhile, has a 1.204 OPS over his last 15 games. As Mattingly put it, moving him to leadoff gives the Phillies “boom out of the gate.”

The argument against Schwarber in the leadoff spot in the past has been that it can clog the basepaths for Turner. But right now, the Phillies’ shortstop is not getting on base enough to use his legs.

Until he does, giving the club’s hottest hitter a chance to provide thump at the top of the lineup makes sense. Schwarber’s big swings have been the difference plenty of times lately, especially working hand-in-hand with their dominant pitching performances.

The starting rotation has been the strength of the Yankees in the season’s first third, even as it’s dealt with its own share of chaos. Luis Gil didn’t last long in the starting five, Elmer Rodríguez has shown that he’s not quite ready for MLB, the team has had to manage the returns of Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón, and of course Max Fried has been placed on the IL. Somehow the player we had the least information on at the start of the year has had a remarkable stabilizing effect as pitchers move in and out around him, and Ryan Weathers has already surpassed his preseason fWAR projection.

Everyone pitches backwards these days — well, everyone but Cam Schlittler — with fastball usage at the lowest level it’s been in 20 years. Truth be told it’s probably at the lowest level that we have pitch tracking data for, I just went back 20 years because it was a nice round number. Pitchers have accepted that the bendy stuff is harder to hit than the straight stuff, and that’s been key to Weathers’ strong start.

Offering his four-seam just 30 percent of the time, bang on league average, Weathers mixes a pair of breaking balls and a changeup alongside a sinker, and he’s probably best off to drop the four-seam fastball entirely. It boasts an ugly .641 xSLG, nearly double the same metric for each of his “secondary” offerings. The sinker is slightly more effective, mostly against right-handed hitters with traffic. The slider, sweeper and offspeed though, all run whiff rates north of 30 percent — all while he has also been able to pitch reasonably deep into ballgames.

Normally we see a tradeoff with this kind of stuff; batters swing and miss a lot but that drives up pitch count. Weathers runs those whiff rates while making it into the sixth inning in 40 percent of his starts so far. Yes, there’s a collection of folks who will scoff at that being an impressive rate, but Weathers’ 5.71 innings per start is a step above the MLB average, 5.12.

It’s this combination that has made me rethink the perpetual discussion around which pitcher in the rotation is destined for some bullpen time. Weathers’ experience as a swingman and the power of those breaking pitches has had me thinking about an Andrew Miller-esque role out of the rotation, but then again when Andrew Miller was Andrew Miller he simply had a better fastball than Weathers boasts. Will Warren has a much better fastball, and through his 11 starts, Memorial Day inclusive, goes 5.27 innings per start.

Of course these problems eventually work themselves out — a week or so ago we were hemming and hawing about this exact dilemma, only for Max Fried to bump his elbow and need an IL stint. When Fried is ready to come back, unfortunately someone will likely have an ache or pain of their own, or performance will make the decision an obvious one. In the season’s first third though, the Ryan Weathers trade has to be considered a remarkable success. Maintenance of this pace now becomes the goal, rather than raw improvement.

Talk about a ruff day at the ballpark.

One of the Dodgers’ top prospects suffered an injury on Monday during a freak encounter with his team’s bat dog.

The bizarre scene unfolded during the second inning of the Tulsa Drillers’ matchup with Northwest Arkansas at ONEOK Field in Oklahoma.

Kendall George, the No. 13 prospect in the Dodgers’ farm system and the Drillers’ starting center fielder, scored on a line drive to right field. As he was jogging to his dugout, a Tulsa bat-retrieving dog suddenly bolted toward home plate.

Dodgers prospect Kendall George was visibly frustrated because he got hurt avoiding the bat dog pic.twitter.com/yBaFf7jYYh

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) May 26, 2026

In an effort to avoid a collision with the pup, George jumped into the air. But as he came down, he tweaked something.

The 21-year-old looked visibly frustrated as he was forced to leave the game.

The extent of George’s injury is not yet known, though his loss would be a big one for the Drillers. In 43 games this season, he batted .333 with 16 RBI and 52 runs scored. A first-round pick in the 2023 MLB draft, George also had 26 steals in 29 attempts.

According to MLB Pipeline, it’s anticipated the 5-foot-9, 170-pound outfielder will make his Big League debut in 2027.

Fans of the Dodgers weren’t pleased when news of George’s issue reached their computers on Tuesday, with many racing to X to call for Tulsa to ban bat dogs moving forward.

“Dogs don’t belong on the baseball field,” one app user wrote. “This is such a stupid gimmick.”

“I’m all for bat dogs,” another added, “but man, teams gotta hold them until the play is entirely over. Keep both the players and the pups safe.”

Others, however, blamed George for the situation.

“Buddy learn how to slow down,” an X user said. “Practically run into the the stands after crossing home without any pressure.”

The Drillers — who boasted about their lineup of bat dogs on Facebook before the season — haven’t yet publicly commented on the situation.

Introduction

Instead of talking about the named and better known prospect in the Arizona Diamondbacks farm system, today I thought I’d take a quick look at three lesser known prospects.

Jose Mejia 2B/3B

Fangraphs | Baseball-Reference

The Baltimore Orioles signed the then 17 year old Jose Mejia as international amateur free agent back in 2023, who then proceed to clobber the Dominican Summer League for 54 games across his 2023 and 2024 season with a triple slash of .307/.425/.409, a 136 wRC+ while walking (14.2 BB%) more than he was striking out (9.0%). In 2025, the Orioles had him play stateside in the complex league, where he’d play in 47 games and put up a triple slash of .274/.418/.411 with a .416 wOBA and a 132 wRC+. More importantly, he’d improve his walk percentage (16.5 BB%) while his strikeout percentage (10k%) saw only a slightly uptick. Mejia would then get a two game cup of coffee in A ball, where he’d go 1 for 5 with a pair of stolen bases thanks to the walk and hit by pitch.

The Dbacks would acquire Mejia (along with two pitchers) from the Orioles in the Blaze Alexander trade, the 20 year old Mejia was assigned to the Visalia Rawhide to begin the 2026 season. In 33 games for Visalia, Mejia hit .299/.449/.486 with a 144 wRC+, a .434 wOBA. His walk percentage an improvement to 19.9%, but he did also see his strikeout percentage jump up to 15 4%. Regardless his hot hitting earned him a promotion to Hillsboro on May 15th. In his seven games in Hillsboro, Mejia is 3 for 25 with 5 walks and two stolen bases, though he has struck out eight times and been caught stealing twice. Considering the lowest wRC+ Mejia has posted prior to his promotion to Hillsboro is a 121 wRC+, I’d expect his current 29 wRC+ not to last very long.

Unless Mejia goes on another month long hot streak, I would expect him to finish his year out at the High A level, though if he’s successful enough the Dbacks could promote him once again to the AA level Amarillo Sod Poodles finish out the last few games of the season. The Diamondbacks are absolutely stacked at second base, so Mejia will likely have to settle on another position for an easier path to the majors

Alberto Barriga C

Fangraphs | Baseball-Reference

The Diamondbacks signed Barriga as a 17 year old amateur free agent out of Mexico back in january of 2022. Barriga would put up impressive numbers in his pro debut in the DSL in 2022 (253/.342/.361, 120 wRC+) and even more eye popping numbers in the complex in 2023 (.414/.457/.586, 158 WRC+) and above average numbers in 2024 (276/.362/.432 105 wRC+), but he’d struggle after being promoted to A ball to end his 2024. In 2025, Barriga returned to A ball and put up the worst numbers of his career, hitting .199/.326/.296 with a well below average 83 wRC+ and insane 28.8 SO%. The one bright spot by far was his above average 12.9 BB%, the highest of his career since his debut.

Barriga was promoted to A+ Level Hillsboro for 2026, where he’s completely rebounded offensively, and arguably has been the team’s best hitter. Through his first 28 games, the 21 year old catcher is hitting .296/.391/.541 with a 144 wRC+. He’s improved upon his BB% to 13%, while he’s cut the strikout percent back down to an acceptable 22.6%.

The player I like to compare Barriga to is Daulton Varsho, or at least who he was as a prospect. Barriga isn’t quite as undersized as Varsho was, but they’re both undersized surprisingly nimble catchers, though Barriga in my opinion is much more likely to stick at catcher.

Manuel Pena 1B/2B/3B/LF

Fangraphs | Baseball-Reference

Manuel Pena was signed as an international amateur free agent out of the Dominican Republic by the Diamondbacks all the way back in January of 2021. He has a solid enough debut as a 17 year old in 57 games played in the Dominican Summer League, putting up a 253/.342/.361 with a .349wOBA and a 105 wRC+, with a solid 11.7 BB% and acceptable 20.7 K%. The following year, he’d come stateside and play in 32 games in the Complex, hitting 284/336/.466 with .364 wOBA and 120 wRC+, though his BB% fell to 7.8% while his K% jumped to 23.4%. Pena would spend the remaining 36 games of his 2022 season in A ball, which began a stretch of four season in a row where he’d fail to put up above average numbers as a hitter. We’ll skip ahead a few seasons, as Pena was okay enough that he did work his way up to AA by the 2025 season. In 143 games last year in Amarillo, Pena hit .288/.326/.460 with a 99 wRC+, a .356 wOBA, 5.1 BB% and 22.3 K%.

In his second go around, Pena is hitting much better. In 43 games this year Pena has 18 homeruns, compared to the 14 he hit the entire season the previous year. He’s hitting .284/.328/.634 with 123 wRc+ and a .406 wOBA. Although his 23.2 K% is a tick higher than the year before, his 6.6 BB% is as well. Interestingly, Pena has the lowest BABIP of his career at .281, which is much lower than next lowest at .310. Pena is still only 22 years old despite being in the system for so long.