Category: Sports News

Today we look at the Cubs’ right-handed sometime reliever.

Gavin Ernest Hollowell was born in Somerset, NJ, 11/04/1997. He’s a 6’7”, 215 pounder, a sixth-round pick by the Rockies in the 2019 Amateur Draft, a graduate of St. John’s.

Hollowell had some coffee in Colorado in 2022-23, appearing in 32 games during that span, throwing 40.2 innings, and garnering a single save and three holds (all in 2023, when he threw the majority of his innings). He’s gotten into eight games as a Cub and his numbers are not impressive, Overall he sports a 5.79 ERA, having given up 33 runs in 51.1 innings, allowing 49 hits and 29 walks. He does strike out a man per inning, and his stuff seems decent, but he doesn’t have it all together at this point and is probably looking at Iowa with a possibility of an injury recall. He rode the Des Moines Express in August and September, in 2025.

2025 was meh. Hollowell threw 10 K’s in 9.1 IP but allowed nine hits (one home run) and walked seven men. He throws a four-seam fastball that tops off @94.4 mph, an 85 mph sweeper, and a 95 mph sinker, and also has a cutter and changeup that he rarely uses, preferring the sweeper to be his breaking pitch.

That straight change might be handy, though. He’s a 2500+ spin rate guy. The sinker seems to be his out pitch, or at least he gets the bulk of his strikeouts using it. IIRC it darts down and can be hard to harness. HIs fastball has some lateral movement and he needs to spot it carefully or it drifts into the middle of the zone.

Maybe the Pitch Lab can fix him, and maybe keep his arm angle the same for two consecutive years, just for something to build on (Baseball Savant, linked above, shows him changing that angle every year).

I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t know if it would pay to get too familiar with him. If he doesn’t step up the out-getting. he’s another camp arm. His name sounds like it should be appended to a law firm. It’s very impressive and official.

The Royals won 82 games last year, five games out of a playoff spot and four games worse than they were in 2025. It was tantalizingly close, and the reason they fell short seemed easy enough to identify – outfield offensive production. Royals outfielders collectively hit .225/.285/.348, a 73 wRC+ mark that was easily the worst in baseball.

So the goal of the offseason seemed clear. Get some outfielders that can hit! And the Royals didn’t just sit on their hands. J.J. Picollo did make a shrewd trade to get Isaac Collins from the Brewers, a promising on-base machine who hit .263/.368/.411 in his rookie campaign. He also signed Lane Thomas to a one-year deal, hoping he can bounce back from a lousy 2025 season and return to his 2023 form, when he hit 28 home runs. The Royals also acquired Kameron Misner, a Missouri product with solid minor league numbers who has hit just .203 in 79 MLB games. Oh, and they moved in the fences!

And that’s it.

There were plenty of trade rumors. Jarren Duran. Teoscar Hernández. Jake Meyers. There were rumors that they were interested in free agents Harrison Bader and Austin Hays.

There were certainly other outfielders available. Maybe Cody Bellinger (five years, $162.5 million) was too rich for their blood. But there were plenty of options in their wheelhouse.

• Mike Yastrzemski signed a two-year, $23 million deal with the Braves
• Bader signed a two-year, $20.5 million deal with the Giants
• Willi Castro signed a two-year, $18 million deal with the Rockies
• Adolis Garcia signed a one-year, $10 million deal with the Phillies
• Rob Refsnyder signed a one-year, $6.25 million deal with the Mariners
• Cedric Mullins signed a one-year, $7.5 million deal with the Rays
• Hays signed a one-year, $6 million deal with the White Sox
• Miguel Andujar signed a one-year, $4 million deal with the Reds
• Jake Fraley signed a one-year, $3 million deal with the Rays
• Mike Tauchman signed a minor league deal with the White Sox
• Michael Conforto signed a minor league deal with the Cubs

And there were outfielders that were traded.

• The Orioles acquired Taylor Ward from the Angels for Grayson Rodriguez
• The Athletics acquired Jeff McNeil from the Mets for Jordan Rodriguez
• The Pirates acquired Jake Mangum, and the Rays acquired Jacob Melton in a three-team trade with the Astros
• The Angels acquired Josh Lowe from the Rays in a three-team trade for Brock Burke
• The Mets acquired Luis Robert Jr. from the White Sox for Truman Pauley and Luisangel Acuña
• The Blue Jays acquired Jesús Sánchez from the Astros for Joey Loperfido

The Royals were reportedly willing to deal from their surplus of pitching (which some say is the currency of baseball!), but could not find a deal to their liking.

Some restraint is understandable. The Royals passed on last year’s outfield free agent class, and those players largely turned into pumpkins in 2025. Better to make no move than panic and make an ill-advised signing that saddles the payroll for years, or a trade you end up regretting.

But perfect should not be the enemy of good. It would not take much to upgrade the Royals outfield. Of the 145 qualified hitters last year, 141 out-hit Royals outfielders. What is even more curious is the Royals have not brought in a single veteran outfielder on a minor league deal to compete for a spot. Sure, these kinds of players are the dregs of the free agent market, but sometimes they show they have something left in the tank, and the cost is negligible.

Perhaps the Royals still have a move left in them. Spring training trades are not uncommon, and if pitchers start getting hurt in camp, teams may come to the Royals desperate to build pitching depth and willing to give up an outfielder.

Perhaps the Royals are hoping to make do with what they have to start the year and explore better opportunities this summer. Last year, they were able to make substantial upgrades at the trade deadline, acquiring Yasztreski, Adam Frazier, and Randall Grichuk without giving up much of anything.

Perhaps they have tied their season to Jac Caglianone and Carter Jensen. If the offense is to improve, it will be due to the development of their two most promising young hitters, not some declining veteran who, at best, improves things at the margins.

But when you’re competing for a playoff spot, the margins matter. The Royals fell just short of the postseason last year. Could another bat earlier in the year have made a difference?

The Royals are not wrong to avoid panic. They are not wrong to protect payroll flexibility. And they are not wrong to believe in internal growth. But Dodgers executive Andrew Friedman once said, “If you’re always rational about every free agent, you’re going to finish third on every free agent.”

The Royals have a potential Hall of Famer in Bobby Witt Jr. in his prime. They have another potential Hall of Famer in Salvador Perez, still in his productive years. They have some exciting All-Star caliber hitters in Maikel Garcia and Vinnie Pasquantino. They have one of the best starting rotations in baseball. They have three shutdown relievers in Matt Strahm, Lucas Erceg, and Carlos Estévez.

The opportunity is there. The Royals need to seize it.

There have been 250 big league hitters who have logged at least 650 plate appearances since the start of the 2024 season. Orlando Arcia, who somehow could not find a way to hit with the Colorado Rockies last season, ranks dead last among that group with a meager 62 wRC+ in that time.

Ranking just behind him in second to last over that time frame is resident Cincinnati Reds 3B Ke’Bryan Hayes, a player who not only was sought out by the club as a key cog at last season’s trade deadline, but was also brought in on a contract guaranteeing him at least $36 million through the 2030 season. So, he’s not just a short-term pillar of the roster assembled by the Cincinnati Reds, he’s on the books for the long haul, and will do so as an admittedly excellent defender who, by all accounts, completely lost the plot on how to hit.

That wouldn’t be so much of an issue if, say, he could move around the diamond with that excellent glovework. However, on a roster that’s been put together to be as flexible (and mobile) as possible defensively, Hayes sits as the long player on it who plays exclusively one position and one position only, doing so at a position that typically features players who also carry a big bat.

Whether or not the Reds thought they’d found something capable of being unlocked in Hayes’ offense was a question I had late last August, nearly a month after the Reds acquired Hayes (and his entire contract) from their NL Central rivals up the road in Pittsburgh. They had clearly seen plenty of the player now manning the hot corner on the regular, and it was enough to wonder whether there was some hitch, some toe-tap they thought might quickly unleash Hayes as a much more potent offensive force than he had been for quite some time.

That’s why you go and get a guy like Hayes, right? Even with his absurdly good defense (and the value that brings), you don’t just take on an entire contract like that unless you think there’s more there that the world hasn’t yet seen. Right?

Right?

Through almost four weeks, it looked as if there was at least a little bit of change. Hayes, a notorious ground-ball heavy hitter, had begun to put the ball in the air a bit more often, and his patience at the plate was improving significantly both with his chase rate and walk rate. However, by the time the 2025 season ended, much of that improvement had evaporated into the annals of ‘small sample size,’ and one defining characteristic of his batted ball data looked just the same as it always has.

He finished with a 48.1% grounder rate with the Reds after posting a 49.5% rate with the Pirates in the first half of 2025, a mark that’s very much in-line with the 50.6% rate he’s posted overall since the start of 2024 (good for the 10th highest among those 250 hitters with 650 PA). In other words, any tweak with his swing mechanics or approach was still producing a bunch of balls hit right into the dirt.

The oddity, though, is that his hard-hit rate (per Statcast) dipped from 45.3% with the Pirates in his 2025 work there down to just 35.7% with the Reds, with his soft-contact rate rising from 15.9% with the Bucs up to 23.3% in Cincinnati. His average exit velocity in Pittsburgh in 2025 had been 90.2 mph – very much in-line with his career mark of 90.5 mph – but that dipped down to a career worst 87.1 mph in his time with the Reds. His launch angle fell, too – down from 9.1 degrees to just 7.0 – while his barrel rate dipped almost a full percent, too.

That all came with a distinct spike in his walk rate, too. After walking at just a 4.6% clip in Pittsburgh in 2025 (and at a 6.9% rate for his career), Hayes walked in 10.1% of his trips to the plate with the Reds – a mark that would’ve been a career-best for a single season. He also saw his strikeout rate drop from 20.7% (and 20.4% for his career) down to 16.9% with the Reds, a mark that would also have been a career-best in a full single season. That all coincided with a nearly 4.0% drop in his swing rate, a rate that featured drops in both his in-zone and out of zone swing rates, too.

It’s enough to begin to assume that there is something brewing here with a new approach. Though it didn’t fully pan out in that short 178 PA sample with the Reds at the end of 2025, it does look like Hayes was working on being much more patient, swinging at fewer pitches, and perhaps not swinging so hard at even the pitches he did like. His .108 ISO was double that of his .054 mark in 2025 with Pittsburgh, and up significantly over the .058 ISO he posted in a full season with the Pirates in 2024, and all of this came with a .270 BABIP in a Reds uniform that would have been a career-worst mark for a single season for him.

We are going to get ample time to see if these tweaks can materialize in the form of just slightly below average offense from Hayes. His glove is going to keep him on the field for the bulk of the innings played by the Reds next year whether he hits better (or worse) than he did as a Pirate, and his contract is going to keep him on the roster even longer. And even if the power never comes, if this modified approach can result in him boosting his on-base percentage up from his career .308 mark to, say .325 and above, that’ll be a boon to a Reds offense that could use help anywhere it can get it.

The Atlanta Braves will be continuing their spring training today as they face off against the Detroit Tigers in North Port, FL. What typically happens in these games is we get to see mostly players who are slotted to have significant playing time during the regular season.

Reynaldo López is making his long-awaited return after only pitching one game in 2025. With the Braves lacking starting pitching depth, a López return can potentially have a huge role in the success of the season.

Today we will see a lineup that we may see in the regular season on days that Drake Baldwin will get some rest (until Sean Murphy returns).

Outside of Jonah Heim, the rest of the players look to get significant playing time this season. What will be interesting to see if this is how the Braves will face LHP starters once the season starts.

This is how the Tigers will lineup:

Game Notes

Time: 1:05 ET

TV: Gray TV

Streaming: MLB.TV (free game of the day)

Radio: ESPN 103.7/WIFN 1340

If you like to have fun watching baseball, you should make a point to see some games that feature Chris Suero this year. Born in The Bronx in 2004, Suero joined the Mets as an international free agent after moving to his parents’ native Dominican Republic, and he got his professional career started as he played for the Mets’ team in the Dominican Summer League in 2022.

The short version of this story is this: Suero is a catcher who’s good at stealing bases. The vast majority of catchers in professional baseball aren’t all that fast, and even the ones who aren’t glacial on the basepaths don’t tend to attempt stolen bases.

In his age-21 season last year, Suero stole 35 bases and was caught stealing just eight times, and he hit .233/.379/.407 with 16 home runs in 475 plate appearances. And while he spends the majority of his time at catcher, he has experience in left field and at first base, as he’s logged some time at each of those positions since his move to stateside ball in Single-A Port St. Lucie and High-A Brooklyn in 2021.

Following a strong showing in Brooklyn to start the 2025 season—an .837 OPS with 13 home runs in 301 plate appearances—Suero earned a promotion to Double-A Binghamton, where he spent the remainder of the regular season. He struggled at the plate from there, as he managed to finish with just a .697 OPS in his time with the Rumble Ponies, but he fared much better in his stint in the Arizona Fall League following the season, as he hit .283/.353/.567 in the fifteen games that he played there.

Having ranked 17th on our list of the Mets’ top prospects for 2026 before the trade that sent Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat to the Brewers, there’s plenty more to read about him in Steve Sypa’s prospect list profile and in the thoughts that Lukas Vlahos and Steve shared following the publication of the full list.

While Suero is in major league camp as a non-roster invitee at the moment, he is certain to begin the year in the minors. Based on what transpired last season, it also seems incredibly likely that he’ll start the year back in Binghamton. If he shows significant improvement at the plate while continuing to be an incredibly fun player to watch, you’d have to imagine the Mets would bump him up to Triple-A Syracuse by the end of the season.

There’s no guarantee that will happen, of course, as players can stall out at either of the upper levels of the minors. Given his age and athleticism, though, it’s much more fun to buy in to Suero’s well-rounded skill set and go into this season looking forward to seeing what he can do. And if you’re able to catch a Rumble Ponies or Syracuse Mets game in person or on MiLB.tv this year, you should make a point to watch Suero play baseball.

Shamelessly stealing this question from Jacob Hausdorf in the Moose Tracks yesterday because once Star Wars comes up, that’s just like tossing a package of snausages into a kennel, but I thought this question merited some focused discussion:

Which non-Mariners pitcher and hitter are you most excited to watch this spring?

Bonus if they’re in the same division and would potentially face each other (why yes I am still in my Heated Rivalry era, why do you ask).

You can approach this question any way you like, but I specified this spring to include prospects who likely won’t make their clubs’ Opening Day rosters. I have heard so much about superprospect Konnor Griffin that I am going to deliberately subject myself to Pirates baseball in order to see some of his at-bats. I’m curious if Griffin will be sort of like Kyle Seager was in Seattle: an unbreakable talent, someone good enough to transcend whatever messed-up player development or organizational decisions or whatever has caused this long stream of futility in Pittsburgh. With Griffin and Skenes, does that feel like enough to make even the hapless Pirates a contender? (And also Bubba Chandler. And Seth Hernandez! Are the Pirates…good?)

For pitching, my homer choice is Ryan Sloan. I’d like to think that even if I weren’t a Mariners fan I’d like the guy whose teammate described him as a “centaur,” if the man part of the centaur was a fifth grader who looked like he wanted to talk to you about dinosaurs and the horse part was a Belgian Draught. But I liked Andrew Painter back in the 2021 draft, and am excited to what he can do now that he’s healthy, so he’d be a good second choice.

Also, feel free to take this as a petty pick. If you want to see how washed Verlander is as a Tiger, Round Two, this is a safe space to say that.

There are very few people who walk planet Earth who can say they played on the best baseball team in history. So, for those who were able to appear on the 1998 Yankees team, they can take pride in having been a part of arguably the greatest squad MLB has ever seen. Not only did they make it to the best baseball league across the globe, but they had the privilege of putting on pinstripes and helping the club to a record-setting year.

There are so many recognizable names that span the roster. Of course, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, and many others were the most prominent (and the guys who played the most), but even a team as stacked as that gets through a season with its fair share of names who play only a handful of games. For Mike Lowell, that season in which he only played eight games was the start of what was to be a solid and tenured MLB career.

Michael Averett Lowell
Born: February 24, 1974 (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
Yankees Tenure: 1998

Lowell was born in Puerto Rico and moved to the United States with his family when he was four years old, to Miami, Florida, to be exact. He played high school baseball and was good enough to earn a draft selection by the Chicago White Sox in the 1992 MLB draft, but he decided to go to school instead after earning a scholarship from Florida International University, where he graduated with a degree in finance following some excellent summers in the Cape Cod Baseball League and the Valley Baseball League. He was a three-time All-Conference player for the Panthers and even had his number retired at the school for his performance on the diamond. In the 1995 draft, the Yankees selected him in the 20th round, and he worked his way up through the minor leagues for the next three years before debuting in 1998.

On September 13, 1998, Lowell made his major league debut against the Toronto Blue Jays, recording his first MLB hit in his first at-bat. He was called up late in the regular season and did not play in the postseason, but he received a World Series ring for playing with the team that year. Overall, he played eight games and tallied four hits with one run scored, no RBI, and one strikeout in 15 plate appearances.

Lowell only spent that season with the Yankees in the majors, as he was shipped to the Florida Marlins in the polarizing trade that netted Mark Johnson and Ed Yarnall — one that Brian Cashman once stated was his most regretted as a GM, as he chose to ride it out with incumbent surprise World Series MVP Scott Brosius rather than gradually incorporate the Top 100 prospect Lowell at the hot corner. Before the 1999 season, Lowell underwent surgery for testicular cancer that would leave him out of the Marlins lineup for the start of the year. He returned on May 29 and played in 97 games, slashing .253/.317/.419 for an OPS+ of 90.

Following that first year in Florida, Lowell established himself as one of the best third basemen in the National League. He spent another six years with the Marlins from 2000 to 2005, posting a slash line of .273/.341/.466 for an OPS+ of 111. His best season was 2003, when he finished 11th in National League MVP voting, collected his second All-Star appearance, and won his first Silver Slugger award. However, he did have to miss some time after suffering a broken hand against the Montreal Expos. After his 32-game recovery, he came back as strong as ever with the Marlins surging toward a Wild Card berth. They breezed past Barry Bonds’ Giants in the NLDS and Lowell got them off on the right foot in what would be an infamous seven-game NLCS against the Cubs by beating them in extras with a homer at Wrigley.

During the World Series against his former team, he had five hits with excellent glovework as always, helping Florida nail down the championship at Yankee Stadium. In 2004, he earned his third All-Star appearance, and in 2005, he won his first career Gold Glove at the hot corner, despite having a miserable season at the plate.

On November 21, 2005, Lowell was traded to the Boston Red Sox. The Yankees’ archrival received Lowell, Josh Beckett, and Guillermo Mota in exchange for Hanley Ramírez, Aníbal Sánchez, Jesús Delgado, and Harvey García. At the age of 32 in his first season with Boston, he wasn’t expected to be much of anything, but Lowell delivered on expectations at the time and more. He was an above-average hitter and played solid defense, but it was his second season in 2007 when he took the reins at third base and exceeded expectations. Finishing with an .879 OPS — two points off the highest of his career — he was given his fourth and final All-Star nod. And by season’s end, he finished fifth in American League MVP voting, with Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez taking home the award and Lowell finishing one spot back of his Red Sox teammate, David Ortiz. In the 2007 World Series, Lowell’s dominance continued, as he hit .400 with a home run and four RBI’s, earning him his second World Series ring and a World Series MVP trophy. He was the second Puerto Rican player to be named the MVP of a World Series, with the only other being Roberto Clemente.

Lowell continued his career until 2010, after being marred by injury problems, and a potential deal with the Texas Rangers was cancelled after the Rangers learned that Lowell had surgery on his right thumb. Following the injury issues, he was played as a backup infielder at third and first base, with his last game coming against the Yankees, where he had two at-bats and two hits in a 6-5 New York win in extras.

After his career, Lowell went into broadcasting and now works as an analyst for MLB Network. In terms of Yankee lore, he goes down as a great Coulda-Been, a player that developed into All-Star elsewhere after being unceremoniously sent out of town. In his own right, Lowell put together a more than fine career, contributing to a couple of championship teams Yankees fans certainly hated to see coming out on top.

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

With Bryce Harper getting past Luis Garcia and Cliff Lee outgaining Nick Castellanos, we’ve reached the final four of the tournament to decide who was the best “late” free agent signing in recent Phillies history.

Here are the semi-final matchups:

1.Cliff Lee, 2011

It’s a shame that Lee spent the final year and a half of his contract not playing baseball, but in a way, his injury was a blessing in disguise because it made the Phillies finally begin a rebuilding effort in earnest. Up until that point, they could talk themselves into thinking a rotation headed by Lee and Cole Hamels could sneak into the playoffs.

4. Jeff Hoffman, 2023

I’ve bashed Jeff Hoffman enough, so I’ll say he was a very good reliever for most of his time in Philadelphia and is definitively better than Jordan Romano.

Who should advance? Vote now!

2. Bryce Harper, 2019

Not that long ago, Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, and Juan Soto were members of the Washington Nationals. The Nats didn’t offer any of those players competitive long-term deals, but they did commit to Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasburg. I realize pitching is important, but it feels like they might have miscalculated a bit.

6. Brad Miller, 2021

I figured there would have been more angst over Miller leaving the Phillies after 2021 considering he hit 20 home runs for them that season. My guess is that the offseason lockout and subsequent signing of a much better player in Kyle Schwarber helped mute most of the disconnect. It also didn’t hurt that Miller was very bad in 2022, racking up -1.7 WAR for the Rangers.

Who should advance? Vote now!