Category: Sports News

After an offensive explosion on Friday, the San Francisco Giants are back at it today, hoping to make it three straight games with a double-digit run total … and more importantly, four straight games with a win.

Taking the mound for San Francisco is right-hander Landen Roupp, who makes his 13th start of the season. The 27-year old is 5-6 on the year, with a 4.22 ERA, a 2.82 FIP, and 72 strikeouts to 27 walks in 64 innings. His last outing was his worst of the year, as he gave up eight runs in four innings against the Milwaukee Brewers. Roupp had back discomfort in the game and a notable dip in velocity, so it’s worth keeping an eye on him in this one.

For the Chicago Cubs, it’s right-hander Ben Brown. The 26-year old began the year as a reliever, but has transition into a starting role lately. In 17 appearances, he’s 2-2 with a 1.92 ERA, a 2.23 FIP, and and 53 strikeouts to 15 walks in 51.2 innings. In five starts, he’s been even better, going 1-1 with a 1.73 ERA, a 1.80 FIP, and 29 strikeouts against seven walks in 26 innings. He was excellent in his last start, holding the St. Louis Cardinals to just one run in seven innings.

Enjoy the game, everyone. Go Giants!

Game #65

Who: San Francisco Giants (26-38) vs. Chicago Cubs (33-31)

Where: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois

When: 11:20 a.m. PT

Regional broadcast: NBC Sports Bay Area

National broadcast: n/a

Radio: KNBR 680 AM/104.5 FM, KSFN 1510 AM

The St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds will play the second game of the weekend series Saturday afternoon at Busch Stadium. For the Cardinals, it’s Matthew Liberatore on the mound as he’ll take on Reds starter Nick Lodolo. First pitch is scheduled for 1:15pm and the TV broadcast will be available on Cardinals.tv. Still no JJ Wetherholt in the starting 9.

Something I wrote in Friday night’s recap keeps parading through my mind. This team was constructed to be a team with a high floor and enough talent to play consistently above-average, but without top-end potential outside Bobby Witt Jr. and Cole Ragans. The flaw with this build shows in road trips like the one they’re currently on. They have played 9 games, and they have gone 4-5. They could win this afternoon and have a 5-5 road trip. That would be a successful road trip for most teams, but for a team that has endured the losing the Royals have, it simply wouldn’t be enough even to begin to help them dig out of the hole they’ve fallen into.

A lot of Royals fans have expressed that this season feels worse than many of the losing seasons we have endured. Part of that is the weight of expectations. But part of it is that it’s so hard to shift your mindset from wins not mattering to individual performances mattering. If the Royals lose today but Noah Cameron throws six shutout innings, and Carter Jensen crushes a couple of extra-base hits, that’s a good day. Speaking of which.

Noah Cameron has completely turned his season around over his last four starts. Beginning with a textbook quality start in St. Louis, he has pitched 24 innings with 24 strikeouts, with only 14 hits and 3 walks, leading to 6 runs over his last 4 starts. That’s good enough for a 2.25 ERA, a 1.78 ERA, and a 2.25 FIP. That’s a 23.9% K-BB%, which would rank fifth in MLB, right behind current AL Cy Young frontrunner Cam Schlittler. Obviously, the sample size is small. But it’s growing every week, including seven one-hit innings (with the one hit being a home run), eight strikeouts, and one walk in an eventual loss to the Reds his last time out. One of the best starts of his young career.

The Twins will counter with rookie left-hander Connor Prielipp. FanGraphs ranked him ahead of the season as the Twins’ third-best prospect and said he had one of the best sliders in the sport. However, they also think he’s just a reliever long term. The 5.26 ERA through eight starts suggests they might not be far off the mark. He has never given up fewer than 2 runs in a start, and he has never gone more than 6 innings. His last 3 starts saw him allow 4, 6, and 6 runs. He has perhaps been a bit unlucky with a terrible 54.7% LOB rate – what will happen when the immovable baserunners meet the unstoppable run-giver?

He has trouble getting any of his pitches into the zone, which actually leads to him getting a decent amount of chase from hitters anxious to put their bats on the ball. He doesn’t get a lot of whiffs, though, and the contact he gives up is pretty hard. The slider, as you might imagine, is his most thrown pitch, but his most effective pitch has actually been the curveball he throws half as often. His changeup rates well, but hasn’t produced positive results as of yet. The four-seamer and sinker are both very hittable, so those are the pitches Royals hitters should be looking for.

Lineups

Salvador Perez is out for the second day in a row, which should certainly raise some questions as to his availability after taking a foul ball off his hand in Friday night’s contest. If you were wondering, Elias Díaz moved on to the Rangers organization which leaves Luke Maile and Luca Tresh as the guys the Royals could consider adding to the roster if Sal needs an IL stint.

Maikel Garcia made his return to the lineup as a DH yesterday, and even though it looked like he was often swinging without his lower half, he’s in there playing the field today. Jac Caglianone left early in yesterday’s contest with shoulder soreness after crashing into a wall Friday night. He’s still out today, but against a left-handed pitcher, it’s unclear if he would have played anyway.

Honestly, both of these lineups are looking pretty thin. So expect some fireworks, I guess.

The Royals dropped last night’s contest 5-3 to the Twins after a disastrous, 4-run bottom of the 6th inning. It evens the four-game series at a game apiece, with the Royals taking Thursday’s contest 8-6. On the season, the Royals are 3-2 against the Twins. They are 3-5 on the current 10-game road trip.

Luinder Avila takes the ball this afternoon to try and get the Royals back in the win column. Avila is coming off his best start as a major leaguer on Monday in Cincinnati. Avila went 5 innings, allowing 2 hits, 1 run, and walking 4, but striking out 5. In his career against the Twins, Avila has thrown 2 scoreless innings, striking out 4 batters.

It’ll be a different lineup than usual behind Avila, Salvador Perez, who has been struggling is out of the starting lineup, and Maikel Garcia, who has pinch hit the last two games after pulling his hamstring, will start as the designated hitter today and bat cleanup. Josh Rojas, Thursday’s hero, starts at 3rd today.

As for the Twins, Joe Ryan toes the slab today. Historically, he’s basically Nolan Ryan against the Royals, but the last two times the Royals have hit the ball really well against him. However, both of those games were in Kansas City. In his last start, Ryan gave up 4 runs over 6 innings to the White Sox but struck out 9 batters. Yesterday, Ryan turned 30 years old.

Royce Lewis was recalled this morning from Triple-A after a rough start with the club; however, he’s always mashed against the Royals, and he was mashing in the minors too. Outfielder James Outman, who started in centerfield on Thursday was designated for assignment as the corresponding move. Byron Buxton is not in the starting lineup this afternoon after leaving the game last night in the 3rd inning after crashing into the wall.

Here is the Twins full starting lineup behind Ryan.

First pitch is set for 1:10 p.m. CT and the game can be watched on Royals.TV.

First Pitch: 1:10 pm CDT

TV: Twins.TV

Radio: TIBN / WCCO 830 / The Wolf 102.9 FM / Audacy

Avila. Ryan. Titans of the game.

With the series split, the Twins will try to grab the inside track towards a weekend victory, and close the gap on their 30-35 record as they attempt to keep .500 within fighting distance.

They’ll do so with Royce Lewis returned to the roster after an inarguable tear at Triple-A St. Paul. He is finally the player to bump James Outman off the roster, and will get the start at second base in what might be the beginning of his last chance as a Twin.

GO TWINS GO!

The Atlanta Braves and their offense kept rolling last night as they defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates. They will attempt to do it again as Spencer Strider takes on Braxton Ashcraft. The one area that was concerning is that Michael Harris was removed near the end of the game last night with it being in question if he will play today.

It looked like he was slated to play today, but we did not know until the lineup was officially announced.

The last two days Walt Weiss had a lineup that was almost the same but just flipped a few spots, so today it was interesting to see if he would take the same approach, or possibly have Harris DH to give him a little extra rest to be safe. In the case of Harris DHing or not starting at all, we could assume that Eli White would possibly get the nod for CF. In a bit of sad news, Harris was not getting the start today after all.

One thing is for certain, Mauricio Dubón needed to stay in the lineup with his clutch hitting. So far this season he is hitting .358/.414/.623 with runners in scoring position. Prior to seeing the lineup card we could assume that if Harris was the DH or not in the lineup at all, where Dubón plays would be in the air. CF was on the table with White struggling, and that is the route that Weiss went to allow Yastrzemski to get the start.

Austin Wynns will be making his first start as a Brave today which makes sense since Kim is getting the start at SS and Harris is out. The Braves will need the offensive boost.

The Pirates and their offense have been surprising to say the least. They have scored the fourth most runs in MLB. To put that in perspective, they have scored ten more runs than the fifth best Yankees. The offense has been heavily aided by offseason pickups Brandon Lowe and Ryan O’Hearn. Lowe has fifteen HRs and an OPS of .864 while O’Hearn has nine HRs and an OPS of .852.

Oneil Cruz is also having his best year offensively as well with fourteen HRs and an OPS of .818.

It was great to see the standing ovation for Marcell Ozuna yesterday, but he will not get the start this afternoon.

First pitch is at 4:10 EDT

By any measure, Bill Dickey is an all-time great in both Yankees’ and baseball history. He was an 11-time All-Star, helping the Yankees to eight World Series titles, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. However, he doesn’t quite get the recognition that you might expect someone with those accolades to get.

That’s probably because during his time with the Yankees, he was teammates with the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at the beginning of his career, and then the likes of Joe DiMaggio at the end. Also, while he deservedly has his number retired by the team, he’s not even the most famous Yankee catcher to wear No. 8, as protégé Yogi Berra also wore that number before the team retired it for both of them.

However, today is a day for him, as Dickey was born 119 years ago today. In honor of that, let’s look back at the life and times of “The Man Nobody Knows,” who we once named the ninth-best Yankee in franchise history.

William Malcom “Bill” Dickey
Born: June 6, 1907 (Bastrop, AL)
Died: November 12, 1993 (Little Rock, AR)
Yankees Tenure: 1928-43 (player), 1946 (player/manager)

One of seven children of John and Laura Dickey, William Dickey was born in Louisiana in 1906. However, he primarily grew up in Arkansas, where the family moved to so John could work as a railroad brakeman.

From a young age, Bill was involved in baseball. His father had played semi-professional baseball, as did his older brother, Gus. Bill wouldn’t even be the only major leaguer to come out of his family, as a younger brother, George, would play six MLB seasons for the Red Sox and White Sox.

Dickey played second base and pitched in his youth, but his big break came when a friend suggested he fill in at catcher for a semipro team in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Despite some initial hesitancy, Dickey quickly took to it, and soon caught the eye of the minor league Little Rock Travelers, who inked a deal with the 18-year-old in 1925. He worked his way to the Jackson Generals in 1927. Despite having a good year there, Jackson waived their rights to Dickey after that season, which would up being very fortuitous for the Yankees. The Generals had an affiliation with the White Sox, but Jackson’s declining Jackson allowed Yankee scout Johnny Nee to swoop in. Nee told GM Ed Barrow that he would “quit scouting if (Dickey) did not make good.”

That review led the Yankees making that bet and signing the catcher for $12,000.

After starting the 1928 season back in Little Rock, the Yankees moved Dickey to a brief pit stop with the Buffalo Bisons before calling him up in August. He made his MLB debut as a late-inning replacement for Benny Bengough, going 0-for-2. He stayed in a bench role for the remainder of that season, recording his first hit on August 24th against the St. Louis Browns. While he didn’t appear in the Yankees’ sweep of the Cardinals in the 1928 World Series, Dickey was on the roster for the first of his many championships.

While he started the 1929 season in a reserve role, the catching job for the Yankees was there for the taking, and Dickey took it and didn’t let it go for a very long time. His first full saw in ‘29 saw Dickey post a 117 OPS+, but those totals would only keep rising from there. Over 11 years from 1929-39, Dickey hit .320/.386/.510 (131 OPS+), with 178 home runs and over 1,500 hits. In 1936 in particular, Dickey hit .362, which stood for 73 years as a record batting average for catchers until fellow Hall of Famer Joe Mauer surpassed him during his MVP-winning 2009 with the Twins. Those are some remarkable hitting figures considering Dickey was also a catcher, and a pretty good one at that.

In a lot of those seasons, Dickey was the third-best Yankee position player behind Ruth and Gehrig, and then later behind Gehrig and DiMaggio. Besides that, the Yankees added another five World Series titles in that period, including four in a row from 1936-39. Dickey had a particularly good moment in the last one, when he walked off the Reds in Game 1 en route to a sweep.

As the years turned to the 1940s, the wear and tear of catching all those games started to catch up to Dickey. While he still had a couple good hitting seasons after the turn of the decade, he began to split playing time with his backups more and more. Even after that, he still helped the Yankees to two more championships in 1941 and ‘43. In the latter of those, his two-run home run ended up providing the only offense in a series-clinching Game 5 victory over the Cardinals.

Following the victory in ‘43, Dickey was drafted into the military and spent the next two seasons away from the Yankees. He returned for 1946 and resumed his role behind the plate. However, 35 games into the season, Joe McCarthy left and resigned from the team after continued quarrels with the front office. The team decided to elevate Dickey into a player-manager role. He led the team to a 57-48 record and a third-place finish, but he gave up the role after the team wouldn’t guarantee that Dickey would continue on as manager. Instead, Bucky Harris got the job and was the man behind the dugout for the 1947 championship team that bore a strong resemblance to Dickey’s 1946 squad.

Dickey hung up his playing spikes after 1946, eventually earning Cooperstown enshrinement in 1954.

After some time coaching and managing in the minors, Dickey eventually returned to the Yankees as a coach on Casey Stengel’s staff. One of his duties over the years was mentoring the team’s up-and-coming young catchers, and a couple of them — Yogi Berra and Elston Howard — ended up becoming quite good themselves. Both catchers gave a lot of credit for their successful careers to the tutelage of Dickey; Yogi of course had his own way of saying it: “He learned me all his experience.”

Dickey also passed down the No. 8 to Berra, and the team would later jointly retire the number for the both of them in 1972; they were also awarded plaques in Monument Park 16 years later. Following his long life in baseball, Dickey returned to his native Arkansas, where he resided until he passed away in 1993 at age 86. He was survived by his wife and three children.

When you’re naming the all-time greats in Yankee history, Dickey might be a name forgotten about by the more casual fans. However if you know ball, you know that he was a crucial part of the most successful era in franchise history.

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

Young Yankees hurler Cam Schlittler took a swing at some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.

Q: What is your definition of an ace?

A: I think an ace is someone who has had a lot of experience, has been very successful, stayed consistent and healthy for a long period of time. An ace is someone that is a battle-proven. … Consistency through the season, has success in the postseason whether they win a championship or not, they’ve shown that they can play at the highest level.

Q: Do you aspire to be an ace? Do you see yourself now as an ace?

A: Think the goal for any starting pitcher, right? is to have ace-like qualities. It’s not the minors where you’re kind of competing against your other starters, right? At the end of the day you’re just trying to win games, and if you can get five guys that can do that, that’s really all that matters. When I look at this team, I see three aces between Gerrit [Cole], Carlos [Rodón] and Max [Fried], and then you have some of the younger guys like me, Will [Warren] and Ryan [Weathers] who are trying to make a name for ourselves but also trying to be consistent enough to stay in the rotation and help the team win games. You do want to be an ave, but that also depends how everything shapes up, the team and the guys that are next to me.

Q: What would winning a Cy Young mean to you?

A: You have these goals at the beginning of the year. For me, it was kind of more of getting back to the postseason, staying consistent, healthy all season long, making all my starts, having a full season in the major leagues, and then turning that over to the postseason and continuing to build off the success I had last year. Again, that’s something that’s not controllable right now, but you build up good starts and I keep pitching the way I am, that’s something that could definitely be a possibility.

Q: How would you describe your mentality on the mound?

A: The mentality’s always kind of been that underdog mindset of competing and trying to kind of prove everyone wrong. I don’t think I really came from much, wasn’t really a highly touted prospect, king of under the radar, fans didn’t know about me. Obviously I make my way up, people that are really into it start to kind of see the success I’ve had in the minors, but you come up kind of in the brightest spotlight of kind of any sport, and they’re looking for success right away. For me it’s kind of just being calm and collected out there, but also having that kind of F-you mentality of, “I’m going to prove these guys wrong and make sure they know who I am when the game’s over.”

Q: That F-you mentality was obvious last October against the Red Sox, wasn’t it?

A: For sure.

Q: What is that like when you have that F-you mentality on steroids that night?

A: I feel like I’ve handled things pretty well when it comes to being on the big leagues and then to take care of myself on and off the field. Social media has never really been a distraction before that. They kind of brought that out in me. Not the players, I have nothing against the players, I know some of these guys, I played with some of them in the minors that are here now, it was really nothing towards them, but some of the things the fans did before the game kind of brought that out on me.

In terms of being locked in, I was so locked in because I was giving my hometown team, and I know my friends are going to give me s–t or whatever it is if I lose, and I go home [Walpole, Mass.] in the offseason I probably hear that for three months straight, and I was like, “I can’t let that happen.” But just in terms of how they were treating me and my family before the game it just kind of made it a lot easier to go out there and just kind of like … stare into a dark hole. … I wasn’t thinking about anything, I was just going out there and I was pitching and I was so confident in myself and the guys behind me that the success level was a lot higher than I thought it could have been.

Q: Could you elaborate on staring into a dark hole?

A: You get into these places, like these mindsets before starts, or out there on the mound that you’re not really … it’s kind of like a blank space. For me, when I perform at the highest level, I’m not thinking about anything. When I’m out there and I’m pissed, it’s just a hole that like there’s no end to it. There’s nothing that can possibly make it better when you’re out there. It didn’t matter how successful I was that game, in the fifth inning, I could care less what’s happening, by the fifth inning I was like, “I’m going to go back out there and do the same thing again, over and over until” — obviously I was done after the eighth inning, but like there was no success, even after the game really, that could like put me in a better state of mind.

Q: The idea I would guess is to recapture that mentality for every start.

A: Yeah, I’m not going to lie, I don’t think I had that last start, and I had my worst start in four months in the bigs dating back to like last August. You have a team like Cleveland that comes in here, now they hate us. Now I don’t know anything about that rivalry because I wasn’t on the team in ’24 when they beat ’em in the playoffs. They’re chirping me from the dugout, they’re locked in, they’re excited to face me, be in New York, beat this team, and I didn’t really know that going into the series. I wish I was facing them next week, so I can kind have that extra edge that I didn’t have Tuesday, and it can be frustrating. But again, you take those outings with a grain of salt and you learn from them and something now, I already have extra motivation for this weekend because it’s Boston, but just based off how my last start went, it should be a little but easier to get in that stage of mind.

Q: When you’re in that state of mind, is the best adjective fearlessness? Meanness? Defiance?

A: Fearless is a good one … defiance is good. I feel like it can be a mix of a couple of things. I think fearless is probably the easiest way to put it in terms of like, I’m in New York, the fans are loud, right?, and there’s so much pressure for success that it does not bother me at all when I walk out there. Even though they’re all expecting greatness, that’s not an issue for me. I feel the most comfortable I ever feel when I’m out on that mound in terms of my career and then how things are going.

Q: Why don’t you feel pressure?

A: I feel like I’ve always been able to block things out pretty well. But I also expect greatness out of myself, so when other people expect excellence, whether their opinions are good or bad it’s not going to matter because I’m so hard on myself that it’s like I go out there, I expect to have quality starts and dominate lineups, so for me the outside noise doesn’t matter because I’m so on myself … not on myself in a way that I can be too hard on myself where that could be a negative output. … It doesn’t matter, when the game’s going on and there’s 40,000 fans there, I don’t even hear them. I’m out there and again, it’s just a blank space and I can just go pitch and I’m confident and comfortable in myself because I was born to do this.

Q: You were born to do this.

A: For sure. You grow up, you’re playing sports whatever, baseball I could tell when I was younger, and even my parents, they could tell that was kind of the sport for me. I wasn’t that good in high school. I had so much to learn and really needed to still develop on college [Northeastern], still developed in the minor leagues, and I knew at those levels that I was nowhere near my full potential. I just had to continue to work hard to find that. … I’ve been able to get the success while developing, but to even get the success now at the highest level is really the most important thing.

Q: What drives you?

A: When I first got drafted, I think proving to the front office that I belong was something that kind of pushed me a little bit. Being a seventh-rounder, which really isn’t even that bad, but not a prospect, not really highly-viewed in the system yet. I had to prove to them that I was willing to put the work in to put weight on and fix the mechanics and continue to improve at that stuff every day. I showed them that I was willing to listen to them and put their trust in them to help me succeed on the field. That’s exactly what I did. … There’s things about being an athlete in New York that you see with [Derek] Jeter, CC [Sabathia] or any of the other guys that have made an impact and won championships. … They kind of treat you like a god … when you do things in a way that you earn their respect, right? Now Aaron Judge obviously has done that, now obviously the end goal is to win a championship. That’s going to cement him as probably one of the greatest Yankees of all time. The motivation to succeed in New York and be on the right side of history is really kind of the one thing I’m looking at when I’m out there and I’m building good starts every five or six days. That’s the goal, is to play your whole career in New York for … 13 years, win championships, and kind of earn the trust of the people of this city.

Q: What is the biggest obstacle you had to overcome?

A: I think the noise is something that you have to learn to ignore. I would say I probably put myself in that position at the end of last year with Boston fans, Toronto fans, whatever it is. At the end of the day that stuff doesn’t bother me. You have to kind of block that stuff out.

Is it immature slightly? Yes for sure. Could I have handled it better? Definitely. Did I really care at the time? No. As you come to realize now, you don’t want to be known as the guy that’s going to go talk s–t on the Internet, and cause scenes and make the front office not trust you and have that become distractions for your teammates — not saying that’s what I did. But if you continued to head down that path, those are the obstacles that you can face.

Yeah there’s a lot of noise. There’s a lot of people that want me to fail, if I have one slipup on the mound, I’m going to hear it for a week straight. It’s funny that it’s taken people almost three months now to do that, but that’s something that you gotta overcome, even though I dug myself a little bit of a hole, I’m comfortable being in that hole, and it’s not something that’s going to frustrate or bother me, but being able to handle the adversity of people that literally want the worst for you to just kind of go out there and block it out and trust in your teammates and the fans of this city to have your back.

Q: What one pitch do you hope to improve?

A: I’d say the cutter’s probably the pitch I’ve made the most improvement on. I’m not really too worried about my arsenal right now, I’m kind of really happy where it’s at.

Q: Why are you so fond of Gerrit?

A: I’m fond of all our starters, but Gerrit’s been “the guy.” You get drafted at 22, you don’t notice it back then as much, but when you get up here you realize that you’ve had conversations with your buddies, “Oh man, how cool would it be to be in a rotation with Gerrit Cole?” I’m like, “Well, I just got drafted, I might be waiting a couple of years, it’s hard to get up in the Yankee system.” I didn’t get to see him pitch last year, I saw him pitch for the first time two weeks ago — he did exactly what I thought he was going to do.

He’s very knowledgeable, he knows the game very well, he’s serious when it comes to preparing for his starts, but he’s also looking out for the other guys in here. When I’m throwing or Will’s throwing, he’s not on us, but he’s watching closely and he’s seeing if there’s anything that he has recommendations, I’m always open to that criticism whether it’s good or bad to make adjustments in a game and I think that’s something he really handles well.

Q: Describe the New York Yankee Way.

A: A championship mindset … leaders in the clubhouse. And you got to push yourself every day to get better and succeed you gotta do the little things right. When I got drafted those are kind of the pillars they had in terms of what it takes to be a Yankee.

Q: You live in Manhattan.

A: I like the peace and quiet there, I don’t really get bothered much.

Q: If you keep winning games you’ll be getting marriage proposals.

A: Yeah I don’t know. I just turned 25. I’m single, living in the best city in the world. I think every off day we’ve had I’ve been at the field that day playing batch or getting some type of work in. I’m really just focused on winning a championship and staying healthy, so probably going to have to hold off for a couple of years (smile).

Q: If you could go back in time and face one MLB hitter, who would it be?

A: Probably Barry Bonds on the ’roids. I want to see how that would look.

Q: You could duel one pitcher …

A: Maybe Andy Pettitte because I know him really well, and he is a stud.

Q: The Yankees drafted you one spot after the Red Sox.

A: The Red Sox don’t draft out of New England, that’s just not their thing. The regional scout there, he’s always with the regional scout of the Yankees, but I’ve never (laugh) seen him draft a New England guy, and that’s not really a shot at then, that’s just not what they do. The Yankees don’t do it either, but once or twice a year, they’re going to grab a New England guy, especially a pitcher, they love that, they love the late bloomers that they can develop into like perennial arms or whatever it is, that’s something they’re known for. I could care less really that the Sox had the pick before, like I never really had that relationship with them because that’s not something they’ve ever done.

Q: You were at the Garden for the Knicks first playoff win against the Hawks.

A: They’re 2-0 when I’ve been there, which is a great feeling. I’ve heard always good things about MSG, growing up obviously I’d never been there before. It’s a really good experience, the environment’s great, playoff basketball is something special here. I was able to talk to Josh Hart as well after the game, so that was a nice conversation. He’s a great guy, I know he loves baseball as well. They’re on a roll right now so I hope they can finish it off.

Q: What do you think of Jalen Brunson?

A: Yeah, he’s great, he’s a superstar, and it’s really fun to watch.

Q: You expect the Knicks to finish it off?

A: Yeah, kind of bummed that there’s not going to be an opportunity for me to get to a game.

Q: Your tattoos of your maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather.

A: My Mimi, she’s on my right arm, I was super close with her. She’d be the one that would pick me up from school or at the doctor’s office. I felt the best way to kind of keep her with me — she didn’t get to see my chase my dreams. Being able to have her on the most important of my body is kind of a way I can do that. I had a great relationship with him. He [John or Papa] didn’t get to see me chase my dreams. Mimi’s on the right, Papa’s on the left. For me to have them on there, and the days they passed, is definitely special to me and my family.

Q: Your father is the Needham Chief of Police.

A: He’s always kind of been that blue-collar, he always worked hard. He carried that down to me and my brother and my sister, he’s kind of showed us how to act, to be humble, and that’s something I try to live by. He’s tough on me, he’s always pushed me to be better. You’re not going to see the benefits of that when you’re 10-, 15-, 18-years old, you kind of just get annoyed by it, but as you grow up you realize that if he didn’t push me the way he did, I probably wouldn’t be in this situation.

Q: You have a cat.

A: Right now she’s still in Boston. I kind of feel bad leaving her alone in New York because I don’t have anyone to watch her. Right now I’m entrusting her to my parents, but she likes it there.

Q: What’s her name?

A: Arya from “Game of Thrones.”

Q: Three dinner guests?

A: Hayden Christensen, Adam Sandler, Margot Robbie.

Q: Favorite movie?

A: “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.”

Q: Favorite meal?

A: Strip steak.

Q: On a scale of 1-10, please rate these: Schlitti Field.

A: I’d give it an 8.

Q: New York Schlitti.

A: That’s a 9.

Q: Schlitt happens.

A: I hear that one a lot. I’ll give it an 8.

Q: Holy Schlitt!

A: Yeah, I hear that one probably the most, I’ll give that a 9.

Q: Describe pitching in October for the New York Yankees.

A: Every two-strike count everyone’s standing up, they’re screaming, it’s electric. That’s the stuff you kind of dream of as a kid.

Q: How do you compensate for the loss of Judge?

A: It’s frustrating. … I call him Cap, that’s the only thing I call him. I think he’s in a good place, and we got others on this team they are going to be able to step up. You can’t fill the hole, but we have a really good lineup of guys that are going to be able to try to and put us in positions to win games. At the end of the day, you just got to have faith in the training staff and the coaches and the front office that whatever is going on with him, they’re going to handle it the right way, and hopefully he’s back before we make a deep playoff run.

Q: Is this a championship team when Judge gets back?

A: For sure. Again, it’s hard to say it’s a championship team without Judge, but I’m very confident in the guys we have right now to take it to the playoffs. The whole run-it-back thing, I think it’s funny because I thought we had a really good team last year, and I think we had some additions this year, whether guys leaving or whatever it was. I think the team that we came into this season is a great roster and I expect a lot of success out of these guys, and I know they expect the same lot of me. Very close-knit group, the energy and the vibes in the locker room are excellent, and we have a lot of faith in each other. Be nice to get Judge back, a month or two or whatever it is, and go on a run and finish the job we couldn’t finish last year.

Q: So don’t count out the Yankees.

A: No you can’t. You never can. You never can.

Detroit Tigers (26-38) vs. Seattle Mariners (33-31)

Time/Place: 1:10 p.m., Comerica Park
SB Nation Site: Lookout Landing
Media: Detroit SportsNet, MLB.TV, Tigers Radio Network
Pitching Matchup: RHP Keider Montero (2-3, 3.69 ERA) vs. RHP Bryce Miller (1-0, 1.71 ERA)

Does anyone reading this need any reminders about how the NLDS ended in 2025? Didn’t think so.

Orion Kerkering’s 2025 season was disappointing after a very good 2024 where he seemed primed for a future late-inning role. The Phillies let Jeff Hoffman walk for Jordan Romano with the idea that Kerkering would fill a bigger role.

Kerkering struggled to with throwing quality strikes and getting consistent chase. He has always had a knack for generating weak contact but he walked more hitters and struggled to keep the ball on the ground as he did so well before.

There were greater concerns with the overall profile. He backed off throwing his patented sweeper because it wasn’t as good of a shape. He lost three inches of drop and a few more inches of horizontal break in an attempt to throw the pitch a little harder.

Velocity gain is generally a good thing, even on pitches like sweepers that require more movement but it just didn’t play as well. Opponents slugged 81 points better against the offering than they did in 2024 and he was not getting as much chase. The trade off just wasn’t worth it.

He also probably needed another secondary pitch to lefties, even if it was just for show. Left handed hitters had a .738 OPS against him which forced Rob Thomson to utilize him differently. Since Kerkering wasn’t a great option to trust for three hitters, they asked him to pitch dirty innings against certain matchups.

After all of that, Kerkering needed to do at least two things for a better 2026: get the sweeper back to it’s 2024 shape and to develop a second off-speed pitch.

The sweeper profile is now much closer to 2024 with roughly the same amount of vertical drop and only slightly less horizontal movement. Kerkering’s outlier sweeper movement worked not just for getting whiffs but for generating soft contact because hitters don’t often see a pitch like it.

He then developed a splitter. It’s not a great pitch since it has well below average drop but it’s another look for left handed hitters and he can locate it.

With a four-pitch mix, the Phillies now have the flexibility to use his arsenal differently than in the past.

Kerkering’s best strike pitch is without question his sweeper, so he is now throwing it more over the plate to get ahead in counts. Given the movement profile, it’s not as risky a bet because hitters generally don’t hit the pitch hard. Despite the middle-middle location, opponents have a hard hit rate of only 17.9% against his sweeper

(image from BaseballSavant)

With the pitch ending over the middle of the plate a lot, the fastballs should be higher in the zone to stay within the sequence tunnel he is working.

It’s risky, especially since Kerkering does not possess a plus fastball but he throws it at 97.4 mph and hitters will be late when it’s sequenced with the sweeper.

The sinker is more fascinating He is landing the pitch on the inner third of the plate to right handed hitters like he has in the past but it’s higher in the zone. Instead of working a traditional east-west approach, throwing the sinker high and in works off the tunnel.

(image from BaseballSavant)

Finally, there is the splitter that can work below the zone to keep hitters honest. He is throwing it 14% of the time to lefties and it forces them to stay honest on the outside part of the plate.

There are some indicators that a 2.49 ERA is probably on the high end of outcomes. He is not getting the groundballs he once generated in 2024 and is riding the highest strand rate of his career. But this is a pitcher figuring out who he is in real time and getting results in the process.