Category: Sports News

Red Sox 1 Blue Jays 8

That turned into a surprisingly comfortable win.

I didn’t think Eric Lauer looked great today, lots of deep fly balls finding gloves, but he only allowed one run in his 4.1 innings, on a Willson (who puts two L’s in Wilson?) Contreras home run. He gave up 5 hits, with 1 walk and 1 strikeout.

He came out in the fifth, after giving up three one-out singles. He wasn’t happy coming out, I could read his lips and he said ‘bull’ something when coming off the mound. I was on John’s side. Eric seemed to be getting a lot of fly balls, we didn’t need one to become a grand slam, and make a game out of this.

Braydon Fisher came in and got a line out to short that became a double play with a throw to second. The runner on second did come off the bag too far, but I don’t think it would have mattered if he stayed closer. Fisher pitched the sixth as well, getting five outs, with just one hit against and a strikeout.

Tommy Nance got the first two outs of the seventh, giving up a single and John took him out to have Joe Mantiply come in to face the lefty Roman Anthony. I guess we have to use our quota of relievers in every game, but, up six, I’d have left Nance in.

Spencer Miles pitched the eighth and loaded the bases with one out, but got out of it with the help of a pretty nice play by Okamoto. He came back out for the ninth (good job, John) and had a cleaning inning.

We had a pretty good game with the bats. We scored:

• Three in the third: Singles from Brandon Valenzuela, Jesús Sánchez and Vladimir Guerrero loaded the bases with singles. Kazuma Okomoto singled home two. A walk to Daulton Varsho loaded the bases again. Yohendrick Pinango singled home Vlad. Okamoto tried to score but was out at the plate. I was ok with the send with two outs. It was pretty close, but Kazuma isn’t fast.
• Two in the fourth: Valenzuela walked and Ernie Clement hit his first home run of the season.
• Two in the fifth: Vlad started it off with a single. An out later, Varsho was hit by pitch. And then George Springer, pinch-hitting, singled in Vlad. Myles Straw followed with a sac fly.
• One in the eighth: Valenzuela homered.

Vlad had another good day with the bat, going 3 for 3 with a walk, raising his average to .358. More homers would be nice, but that seems like nit picking. Valenzuela had two hits, single and homer, with a walk.

Clement, Sánchez, Okomoto, Varsho, Pinango, Springer, and Valenzuela had a hit each.

Ernie Clement made an excellent play, in the fourth inning, making a nice pickup of a ball on the third base side of second and then made very nice one hop throw to first, ending the inning. And Valenzuela challenged three pitches, called balls, and got them overturned. One was just at the time of the zone, the other was easily inside the zone. Good job Brandon. Valenzuela also had a nice play on a ‘swinging bunt’ that ended up just in front of getting to the ball and not rushing the throw to first. He looked very relaxed. He impressed me, I’d rather he get most of the playing time until Alejandro Kirk comes back.

Jays of the Day go to: Okamoto (.17 WPA) and Fisher (.13). I’ll give honourable mention to Clement (homer and nice defensive play), Valenzuela (single, homer, walk and three successful challenges) and Vlad (for the 3 for 3).

No one had the number for the ‘Other Award’. Giménez had the low mark at -0.4.

Speaking of not being happy about being taken out, Brayan Bello came out of the game with 2 out in the fourth after giving up a walk and Bello was not happy to be pulled. When Clement homered a few seconds later, he was even less happy. But he really didn’t pitch great, 3.2 innings, 6 hits, 4 earned (one after he left the game), 2 walks and 2 strikeouts.

Tomorrow the Jays are in Minnesota to play the Twins. Kevin Gausman (2.57) vs. Bailey Ober (3.94).

The Red Sox have lost the quick-flash momentum of the managerial change already. 

Chad Tracy fell to 2-2 as the interim after another poor starting pitching outing and insufficient run production. Boston failed to lock up a pair of series wins against division opponents, as the Blue Jays earned the advantage of this three-game set. 

Here are three takeaways from Wednesday’s series finale.

BAD BELLO (AGAIN) 

The right-hander looked refreshed through two innings before another early unraveling. The Blue Jays sent eight hitters to the plate in the third inning as Bello allowed three runs on five hits and zipped a wild pitch. 

Bello failed to finish four innings and disagreed with Tracy’s early hook with visible frustration on the mound. 

When the rotation gets healthy, the status of Bello’s spot will be a real conversation for the Red Sox. 

SOLO POWER

The Red Sox as a team still don’t hit enough home runs as a team. Luckily, Willson Contreras doesn’t subscribe to that MO. 

Boston’s first baseman tattooed a solo shot off Eric Lauer in the first inning in a fast start for the lineup. 

The rest of the group failed to follow his lead. Not to say they didn’t have chances. The Red Sox tallied nine hits, but left an incomprehensible 19 RUNNERS on base. 

The offense isn’t good enough to overcome that level of missed opportunity. 

SPLITS AGAIN

The Red Sox fell to 7-11 on the road, though they went .500 on each of the last six-game trips.

The San Francisco Giants continue this three-game road series against the Philadelphia Phillies this afternoon.

Taking the mound for the Giants will be right-hander Logan Webb, who enters today’s game with a 4.86 ERA, 3.32 FIP, with 32 strikeouts to 13 walks in 37 innings pitched. His last start was in the Giants’ 3-0 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers last Thursday, in which he allowed three runs on seven hits with five strikeouts and two walks in seven innings.

He’ll be facing off against Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez, who enters today’s game with a 2.94 ERA, 2.62 FIP, with 43 strikeouts to 10 walks in 33.2 innings pitched. His last start was in the Phillies’ 8-7 loss to the Chicago Cubs on Thursday, in which he allowed six runs on 12 hits with four strikeouts and two walks in five and a third innings.

Game #30

Who: San Francisco Giants (13-16) vs. Philadelphia Phillies (10-19)

Where: Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

When: 3:10 p.m. PT

Regional broadcast: NBC Sports Bay Area

National broadcast: MLB Network

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

MLB debuts aren’t always sunshine and rainbows, and expectations should always be tempered when a young player is suddenly donning a major league uniform. Cam Schlittler’s electric debut last season is a rarity, not an expectation.

Elmer Rodríguez held the Texas Rangers off the scoreboard for the first four innings, but his inability to throw enough strikes eventually bit him in the fifth, resulting in the Rangers taking a lead they would not relinquish. It didn’t help that the offense was shut out for just the second time this season, allowing Nathan Eovaldi to throw his best start of the year in a 3-0 defeat to close out a 7-2 road trip.

It was a clean start for Eovaldi, who pitched around a one-out single by Ben Rice to sit down the top of the order in the first. For Rodríguez, he struggled with command, walking a pair, but perfectly located a 3-2 pitch to Josh Jung for what turned into a strike-em-out-throw-em-out for his first MLB strikeout in a scoreless first.

A weird throwing error by Jake Burger (which should’ve been charged to Eovaldi) allowed Jasson Domínguez to reach in the second, but he was stranded. Rodríguez gave up a two-out single to Kyle Higashioka, walked Alejandro Osuna, and allowed a single to Ezequiel Duran to suddenly load the bags in a long second inning, but he survived by getting Brandon Nimmo to fly out.

The two pitchers exchanged 1-2-3 innings in the third before the Yankees finally got multiple baserunners against Eovaldi in the fourth on a single by Cody Bellinger and a hit-by-pitch that wound up taking Domínguez out of the game with an apparent left elbow injury. J.C. Escarra got a chance to break the tie with two out, but grounded out to first.

Another 1-2-3 inning seemed to be settling things down for Rodríguez in the fourth, but things fell apart in the fifth. He plunked Osuna and walked Duran, putting the eight and nine hitters on base. Nimmo reached on an infield single that deflected off the glove of Rice to load the bases, and this time, the rookie couldn’t get out of it. A two-run single by Jung knocked him out of the game and gave the Rangers a 2-0 lead.

There’s a lot to unpack from this start for ERC (yes, he still likes being called that). He’s not some control wizard, but he’s generally regarded as being a strike thrower, but he was just a tick off today, missing all around the plate. He couldn’t get ahead enough to throw his curveball and slider in two-strike counts and leaned much more on his four-seamer than usual. It wasn’t a good start, but you can see why they’d rather throw him out there than Luis Gil.

Brent Headrick, whose elbow must be made of vibranium, was able to put out the rest of the fire behind Rodríguez, striking out Seager, getting a forceout out of Joc Pederson, and inducing a long flyout of Jake Burger. Nimmo seemed to have pulled a hamstring running to third on the Pederson grounder and was removed from the game.

Rice led off the sixth with a single off Eovaldi, but was erased by a line drive double play by Bellinger. The scorcher went 107.8 mph off the bat and had a .690 xBA. Not fun! Headrick and Jake Bird combined to get through the bottom half, 1-2-3.

Max Schuemann drew a walk against Eovaldi in his first Yankee plate appearance, and both he and Escarra (who had a hard lineout) both worked lengthy at-bats to drive up the pitch count of the two-time All-Star, but he finished off seven shutout innings in yet another strong start against the Yankees.

Bird stayed in after the seventh-inning stretch, and Duran greeted him with a double down the left-field line. Sam Haggerty, an underrated Yankee killer, lined an RBI single after two failed bunt attempts to make it 3-0. Tim Hill replaced Bird and continued to be a ground ball monster, inducing an inning-ending double play.

Jacob Latz was tasked with throwing the last two innings for the Rangers. Aside from another hit for Rice, he did the job to avoid the sweep for the home team. Rodríguez is saddled with the loss in his major league debut, the first Yankee to do so since Randy Vasquez on May 26, 2023.

After a Thursday off-day, the Yankees return home to begin a three-game set with the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium on Friday at 7:05 on YES. It’s Will Warren against a pitcher to be determined for the O’s.

Box Score

Yesterday’s game against the Cincinnati Reds was a lot closer than the score would indicate. The Reds didn’t bust the scoring open until very late in the day, and the Colorado Rockies had plenty of opportunities to score. The problem was that the Rockies didn’t capitalize on those opportunities.

This evening the Rockies are once again in the Queen City and it’s delightful Great American Ballpark, looking to bounce back after their three-game winning streak was brought to an end. The Rockies also have a nice and fresh bullpen after Monday’s off-day and only using two total pitchers yesterday.

Making his sixth start for the Rockies is right-handed pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano 菅野 智之. Without being flashy, Sugano has quietly been one of the Rockies’ best starting pitchers so far this season. Through his first five starts he carries an ERA of just 3.42 over 26.1 innings. He’s given up more than two earned runs just once an has issued only six walks to 19 strikeouts.

On the bump for the Redlegs is left-handed pitcher Brandon Williamson, who has made five starts so far this season after missing the entirety of 2025 due to Tommy John surgery. Williamson enters today’s game with a 5.40 ERA over 25 innings. Where the Rockies will need to capitalize is with long, patient at-bats. Williamson has issued 16 walks to just 15 strikeouts this season with four home runs allowed as he works on finding his footing.

The Rockies have seen Williamson twice before, where he holds a 3.38 ERA over 10.2 innings with two home runs allowed and 11 strikeouts. His primary pitch this season is a cutter that sits in the high 80s. He backs that up with a changeup he uses to get whiffs. Williamson also throws a sinker and a four-seam fastball—both in the low 90s—a curveball, and a sweeper.

First Pitch: 4:40 PM MDT

TV: Rockies TV

Radio: KOA 850 AM/94.1 FM; KNRV 1150 (Spanish)

Reds SB Nation site:Red Reporter

Lineups:

Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks!

St. Louis Cardinals vs. Pittsburgh Pirates, April 29, 2026, 6:40 p.m. ET

Location: PNC Park, Pittsburgh, PA

Broadcast: KDKA AM/FM, Sportsnet-PIT

Pitching Matchup: Andre Pallante (2-2, 4.26 ERA) vs. Bubba Chandler (1-2. 4.88 ERA)

The Pittsburgh Pirates are at home hosting the St. Louis Cardinals this evening at beautiful PNC Park.

Please remember our Game Day thread guidelines.

• Don’t troll in your comments; create conversation rather than destroying it
• Remember Bucs Dugout is basically a non-profanity site
• Out of respect to broadcast partners who have paid to carry the game, no mentions of “alternative” (read: illegal) viewing methods are allowed in our threads
• The commenting system was updated during the summer. They’re still working on optimizing it for Game Day Threads like ours. If you don’t like clicking “Load More Comments”, remember that the “Z” key can be your friend. It loads up the latest comments automatically.

BD community, this is your thread for today’s game. Enjoy!

The San Francisco Giants are on pace to end the month of April with either the fewest walks over the team’s first 30 games in 125 years or 108 years. Only twice have the Giants started a season with 65 or fewer in games 1-30: 1901 (60 BB) & 1918 (65 BB). After last night’s disastrous 2-hit, 12-strikeout, zero walks performance by the dismal lineup, the Giants have just 58 walks to go with their 97 runs scored — both the lowest totals in the sport.

The only possible explanation is that walks are a joke to the Giants. What sort of insults do you think they sling at walks? I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they know better than to invoke some sort of antiquated slur. So, what’s left? “Walks are dumb”? “Walks are cringe”? “Woke”? It’s clear something’s afoot, because at this point last season, the team was right around 9%. This year’s roster isn’t substantially different.

It’s clear that the organization’s emphasis on contact is having a somewhat profound influence on a crucial component to scoring runs: the base on balls. Outside of all those intentional walks to Barry Bonds and the Farhan Zaidi era of the front office, the “walks are good” era of baseball as made mainstream by Moneyball has been vigorously rejected in San Francisco, by the fans and the front office alike. With the help of the ABS Challenge System, the league’s walk rate is the highest it’s been since 1951 at 3.69 BB/9 (9.6 BB%). The Giants are 30th in MLB by nearly 2% at 5.6%.

“Walks are washed”?

Only 56 teams in MLB history of recorded 65 walks or fewer in their first 30 games of a season and only five of those instances have come in the 21st century: the World Champion 2015 Royals, the 2015 Rockies (68-94), the 2010 Astros (76-86), the 2008 Twins (88-75), and the 2006 Angels (89-73). Prior to this group, the last MLB team to do this was Cleveland in 1990 (77-85). And before that it was in 1968. So, this is a somewhat rare feat, and it a lot about the sport has changed since it last happened: Statcast, balanced schedule, universal DH, and now ABS.

“Walks give the ick”?

Is it just a front office edict that’s causing this or is it personnel? Well, maybe it’s a bit of both. As Andrew Baggarly pointed out this morning in a post for The Athletic about the team’s worrying walk rate:

No team is seeing a higher percentage of pitches in the strike zone. When pitchers face the Giants’ lineup, the fear factor just hasn’t been there.

Hard to walk if pitchers are staying inside the strike zone.

And maybe that’s the one simple tricks staffs are using to subdue the Giants, because the walk rates for the core of the lineup are way down despite seeing plenty of strikes:

• Matt Chapman: 10.8 career BB%, 2026: 9.0% | 50.3% career pitches in strike zone percentage, 2026: 49.7%
• Jung Hoo Lee: 7.3 BB% career, 2026: 7.1% | 52.7% career zone, 2026: 48%
• Luis Arraez: 6.5 BB% career, 2026: 5.1% | 50.8% career zone, 2026: 53.9%
• Rafael Devers: 9.4 BB% career, 2026: 5% | 47% career zone, 2026: 50%
• Heliot Ramos: 7.2 BB% career, 2026: 5.6% | 48.7% career zone, 2026: 44.9%
• Willy Adames: 9.8 BB% career, 2026: 4.2% | 48.2% career zone, 2026: 47.7%

Hmm, maybe it’s better to take the Baggarly comment this way: for a roster of players who have, historically, tended to see a lot of pitches in the strike zone, they’re not doing very much damage with that situation here in the first month of the season.

I would argue that’s because the team has virtually dropped the walk from their game and because I’m a fabulist and not a journalist, I’m pitching that the reason for this is because of an ideological bent bordering on hostile. The statistical case for the walk is straightforward. Unfortunately, my statvestigation wasn’t thorough enough and so I’ll pull from this 2019 article that shows that, although a walk is not as good as a single, its correlation with run scoring is meaningful.

The post also goes into the psychological/perceptive value of singles over the walk. Singles tend to signal to people that the hitter is good whereas a walk indicates a flaw in a pitcher. There’s also the whole thing about how walks don’t drive in runs unless the bases are loaded. We can also probably extend this thought to a cynical conception of player valuation. If walks are less valuable, then walks are cheaper, which explains why the efficiencymeisters who have made cheap baseball “real baseball” here in the last 20 years. Though, to be fair, if you’re trying to make player spending more efficient, the guy who walks and hits home runs is financially more reasonable than the guy who gets a lot of hits and walks and homers. So, yes, the obsession with Three True Outcomes is because it’s cheaper.

“Walks are trash”?

Aha! You might say. Here’s proof that the Giants’ strategy is sound. They are spending money on hitters who have value because they get hits. Except, well, it takes a lot of Luis Arraezes to make that strategy work, and entirely discounting the walk looks foolish even on paper. I mentioned this a few weeks ago, and I’ll reiterate:

Still, it’s a little alarming that the Giants have dipped so far below not only [the league average] but their own lineup average since 2022 […] Still not convinced walk rates matter? Some additional information: During the championship era, the 2010, 2012, and 2014 teams posted walk rates of 7.9%, 7.8%, and 7%.

It’s the second-most likely outcome according to this chart, and Oracle Park is pretty good at suppressing home runs — offense in general — so, you might as well look at the complete picture rather than dismiss the walk out of hand. What good reason is there to avoid it?

Logan Webb, Giants lose to Dodgers despite 10 walks

H-hey! That’s not fair!

San Francisco drew 10 walks from the Dodgers’ pitching staff but only collected one hit, finishing 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and leaving nine runners on base. It was the first time the Giants tallied at least 10 walks at Dodger Stadium since July 19, 2002, though that game lasted 12 innings.

OK, but at the end of the day, a walk is just another way of avoiding an out. The longer a lineup can go without making an out, the greater the odds some runs will be scored. The prevailing wisdom with contact and batting average is that “if the bats can just get going then the lineup will start clicking.” Sure, but in the meantime, why not cool it with chasing pitches outside the zone? Tony Vitello seems to be coming around on the idea. He told the press on Sunday:

“It’s not about going up there trying to walk,” he explained. “But it’s hard to get your best swing off on a pitch that’s not in the zone.”

This is just the plainspeak way of saying “swing decisions,” which was a phrase that got used a lot by the previous front office and became an exhibit in the anti-stats sect of Giants fandom’s case against “analytics.” It seems like common sense to swing at good pitches and layoff bad pitches, but when the word on high is to make contact, I wonder if that decision-making gets cross-wired in such a way that it leads to mistakes.

Anyway, the Giants are on course for some more bad history and it’s only April. I’m sure this will be a big ol’ nothingburger to those who never thought much of walks in the first place, though, because walks are dumb and bad, right?