Category: Sports News

Was today’s trade a precursor to another one coming soon?

Today the Astros traded OF Jesus Sanchez to the Toronto Blue Jays for a former Astros fan favorite – OF Joey Loperfido.

Clearly the Astros were sour on Sanchez after he performed poorly both at the plate (.199 AVG with Houston) and in the field, as this deal essentially equates to a salary dump. Sanchez was due to ear $6.8M while Loperfido still makes the MLB minimum $820K. Loperfido also has an option remaining.

With the trade, the Astros now sit close to $15.8M under the first tax line ($244M), and have more flexibility for another deal to bring in a player who would be a lineup upgrade. While a previous fan favorite, Loperfido profiles as a reserve OF capable of playing all three outfield spots.

What does this trade mean going forward?

Right now it means the Astros have a projected starting outfield of Zach Cole in LF, Jake Meyers in CF and Cam Smith in RF. But it’s important to note, that is as of right now.

Astros GM Dana Brown dropped the bomb at the end of his conversation with the media. “We’re not done.”

Now armed with more flexibility under the first tax line, perhaps Brown can now be more aggressive in his pursuit of another left-handed OF bat, possibly one that can play LF every day and set up a RF platoon of Cam Smith and Zach Cole, or lead to a trade of Jake Meyers and a shift of Cole or Smith to CF?

Meyers has been the topic of trade discussion all off-season, as has 3B Isaac Paredes who has been caught in a logjam in the infield with 1B Christian Walker. While the club likes Paredes bat and toughness, Paredes has far more value on the market than Walker does due to his age, contract, production and positional flexibility. Reports have indicated significant interest in Paredes and near none in Walker.

In addition to a left-handed hitting power bat in the outfield, the Astros could also benefit from a backup catcher to replace Victor Caratini and another high-leverage arm in the bullpen due to uncertainty surrounding closer Josh Hader and reliever Bennett Sousa. Hader had a setback in his recovery from a sprained shoulder capsule as he developed bicep tendonitis, and Sousa’s season was cut short due to a flexor/pronator strain in his left elbow.

Sousa also had Thoracic Outlet surgery in 2024 but returned to pitch the best baseball of his career. Thoracic Outlet surgery usually leaves pitchers with diminished stuff, but Sousa was surprisingly at his best.

There isn’t much in the way of a viable backup catcher on the free agent market that would offer an offensive upgrade from Cesar Salazar, so it seems the best way to achieve that would be the trade market. The Astros have been linked to Pirates catcher Joey Bart.

While the Astros didn’t get their final roster truly settled before Spring Training began, it is clear that they are still working on that potential final roster. They’re not done yet.

Tell us in the comments what additional moves you would like to see the Astros make.

With spring training officially rocking and rolling, this is definitely as good of a time as any to hear from both Atlanta Braves President of Baseball Operations/General Manager Alex Anthopoulos and the newly-promoted manager, Walt Weiss. Both of them spoke with the media one-after-the-other on Friday afternoon and the first thing on my mind was to confirm how AA felt about the state of the rotation.

“We’ve got four guys right now in Strider, Sale, Holmes and López in our rotation We’ll have competition for our fifth spot,” confirmed AA when I asked him about the rotation. “We know what Strider can be, we know what Sale has done. López was an All-Star the year before and Holmes did a nice job for us in the rotation before he went down. We like some of the arms we have and some of the talent we have.”

He went on to add that he feels like the team as a whole can step up in order to make sure that the burden of bringing this team back to success is equally spread amongst the squad. “I think the big key for our club is that offensively for the past two years we haven’t performed the way we hope,” said Anthopoulos. “Part of that is performance, part of that is injury. We have a deeper group of position players, a deeper bullpen and that should take a lot of pressure off of the other parts of the team.”

Anthopoulos was also asked about Ha-Seong Kim during the press conference and we got a tiny bit of good news on that front. “We’re hopeful and optimistic that he’ll be back at the beginning of May,” revealed AA. That bit of information is new, as that appears to be on the shorter side of recovery from Kim’s icy calamity.

“That’s why we have guys like Mauricio Dubon. He can play everywhere and we’re excited to see him at shortstop where he’ll have an opportunity, ”Anthopoulos affirmed shortly afterwards. “If we didn’t sign Kim then we were prepared to go with Dubon at shortstop. Hopefully it’s not that long of an absence for him and he’ll have the remainder of the season to have a chance to have a lot of at-bats and make a big impact on our team.”

AA also shared his reasoning behind the signing of catcher Jonah Heim, as he confirmed that he’ll be getting an opportunity to serve as the backup backstop around here. “He had a tremendous 2023 as starting catcher on a World Series team. He was a Gold Glove, it was great. The last two years offensively, he hasn’t performed nearly as well and the numbers certainly bear that out. Even defensively, he hasn’t been the same,” stated AA.

“He’s still young — he’s only 30. He’s got a switch-hit bat with a lot of upside and Walt Weiss talked about during his interview about how he wants to get Drake Baldwin’s bat in the lineup as often as he can with the DH spot. Having someone who’s been durable as an everyday guy, I’m not going to put it on him to be the guy he was in 2023 but he’s young enough, he’s capable and he’s done it before. We think he can do better offensively and defensively as well.”

We also got a bit of an update on Sean Murphy’s status as well, which was basically just confirming that they’re expecting to have him back in May as well before evaluating their options at the catcher spot. “We think Sean Murphy will be probably be back sometime in May but we start at the end of March so that’s a long period of time,” said AA. “Having a guy like Jonah who’s been a starter and we think he has upside, it was a no-brainer for us. He knows when Sean Murphy comes back that we’ll see where we’re at with the roster but we’re excited to have him. We think he’s certainly capable of being a better player than he’s been and that’s certainly the goal and we think our staff might be able to unlock some things.”

With two players already heading to the 60-Day IL in the form of Spencer Schwellenbach and Joe Jiménez, AA also had to talk about the injury situation as well. He did acknowledge the issues with injuries but also made sure to bring up everybody’s track record in that regard.

“We’ve been a healthy club, we had a bunch of durable players. Some guys had pre-existing things, especially some of the guys that pitched,” said Anthopoulos. “We knew that there was some risk with some of those guys. [When it comes to] position players, guys getting hit in the hands, sliding into a base, I don’t know that you can really address those things.” He went on to say that the Braves were looking into “their throwing programs, their bullpens. We’ve looked at if a guy has had a recurring injury on the position player side. It’s obviously an issue across the game and we had a really good run of success with the same group of coaches and trainers and all the medical staff — a long run of success that led to six divisions and seven postseasons in a row. We had injuries but not like we had the last few years. Like anything, you should review and tweak and make adjustments and we’re certainly going to try to do that as well.”

I also asked Alex Anthopoulos about how he envisions new outfielder Mike Yastrzemski fitting in with the current Braves squad. As you can tell, he’s pretty excited about having Yaz in that clubhouse at the moment. “Right now with Sean Murphy being out, the thought is that Jurickson Profar will get the majority of DH at-bats against right-handers. Mike Yastrzemski would start in left field against right-handers. Against left-handers, Walt Weiss will move some things around.”

AA went on to talk more about how he’s looking forward to seeing Yaz get deployed heading into the new season. “Knowing Yastrzemski is the strong side of a platoon facing the right-handed starter should get a lot of playing time. We also like the fact that he can cover us at all three outfield spots. We don’t view him as an everyday center fielder but he can certainly fit in there short-term and we just like the upside,” stated AA. “We thought he got back to some of the really good things he had done with his swing when he went to the Royals so we like that. We think there’s offensive upside as well as a left-handed bat and the fact that he protects us at so many positions. He’s just a great fit.”

Overall, AA seems pretty optimistic about the state of the club — though to be fair, everybody’s excited about the state of their club at this time of year. With that being said, there is actual reason to be optimistic about things surrounding the Braves heading into the new season and we’ll have to see how things play out going forward. We’ll have more information from Walt Weiss in the near future so keep an eye out for that. For now, what do you think abut AA’s comments here on Friday?

Today we look at the Cubs’ newest rotation member, a flamethrowing righty acquired by trade from the Miami Marlins with tremendous upside.

Edward Cabrera is 6’5”, 217 lbs. That’s a tall skinny drink of water with a buggy whip for an arm. He throws as hard as anyone when he’s on the mound. But he has averaged 95.8 innings per annum so far in his MLB career, and that’s not enough to be the difference-maker he could be. His five years in Miami’s system didn’t produce the kind of numbers you’d want from a TOR type, but the Pitch Lab will get hold of him and we’ll see what they can do.

In 2025 he was 8-7, 3.53, with 150 strikeouts and 48 walks in 137.2 innings, the most he has pitched in his MLB career. His WHIP was 1.23, which is a tad high, but Cabrera tend to put more guys on via the base on balls than the average. Not really unusual for a guy that throws that hard. He also hits a guy or two and will wild pitch on occasion.

With the Cubs’ otherworldly defense behind him and a decent offense, I suspect he could add five or six wins with a full season’s work (175+ innings). He seems to be getting a little more durable — 2025 was his best year in terms of showing up for work.

Former Cubs Mike Krukow, Randy Wells, and current Cub Jameson Taillon are among his best comps according to his Baseball-Reference profile. That’s just in terms of results and not his pitch arsenal or selection. All of those men have had some pretty decent seasons, and if he wants to be a younger, harder-throwing Taillon and has the mental makeup for that kind of consistency and professionalism, I’m right there for it.

I’m sure nobody would be upset if Cabrera amassed more than the 2.8 bWAR (2.0 fWAR) he fashioned last year, and all he really needs to do it is pitch. These Cubs are way better than the Fish are.

I don’t know where Craig Counsell will slot him. My best guess is Boyd, Horton, Imanaga, Taillon, Cabrera, at least until the Cubs know what they have in him, but he could occupy any spot from 2-5. I don’t see Cabrera opening the season as the No. 1 but he could get there given the results we expect.

Most projections have him in Taillon territory, 8-9 wins/losses, 140 or so innings in 25 starts or thereabouts. Some have him as high as 14-15 quality starts. I want to see plenty of this:

Welcome to the Cubs, Edward.

In our last matchup, in the tournament between the last free agents signed before the season, Jake Arrieta earned more votes than Ricardo Pinto and moved on to the next round.

On to the next pairing:

2. Bryce Harper, 2019

Stats with the Phillies: 858 games, .261/.357/.487, 179 HR, 530 RBIs, 26.3 bWAR

The Phillies had a lot of money to spend before the 2019 season, which put them in the mix for the two big free agents that offseason: Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. The Phillies pursued both men – there was brief speculation that they might try to sign both – but ultimately decided that Harper would be the better fit.

Harper remained unsigned into February, but eventually, the Phillies came to terms with the former National, giving the team its new franchise player.

15. Dustin McGowan, 2015

Stats with the Phillies: 14 games, 23.1 innings, 1-2 W-L, 6.24 ERA, 21K, 20 BB, -0.7 bWAR

After a failed last gasp to contend in 2014, the Phillies admitted they were in full rebuild mode heading into 2015. So, there weren’t going to be a lot of big names brought in via free agency. But the team still needed some veterans to fill out the roster, and one of those veterans was relief pitcher Dustin McGowan.

McGowan had a decent season with the Blue Jays in 2014, but he was brutal in 2015. Used mostly in low leverage situations, he still couldn’t get anyone out. His final appearance came against Baltimore on June 16th after starting pitcher Jerome Williams was knocked out of the game in the first inning. McGowan absorbed 3.1 innings, allowing five home runs. This would infamously come to be known as the “white towel” game.

Who should advance? Vote now!

The Kansas City Royals look to enter 2026 with a much-improved outfield over the, shall we say, less-than-stellar 2025 outfit. But they could still use another bat, preferably a right-handed hitter who could be a platoon guy as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos.

Kauffman Stadium has been home to a few defining moments over recent memory that only tangentially related to the team. Miguel Cabrera hit his 3,000th career hit there. Remember Trevor Bauer losing his mind and yeeting a baseball over the fence rather than give it to Terry Francona? That was fun. It happened at Kauffman, too.

And yet Kauffman Stadium was also home to one of the weirdest and most fascinating baseball moments of the 21st century: Nick Castellanos hitting a home run off Greg Holland in the middle of Thom Brennaman apologizing for saying a slur on a hot mic earlier in the evening. In an empty stadium due to the pandemic, it is pure, hilarious performance art. And some see a connection between Castellanos home runs and other negative news incidents. I mean, how many other random home runs have a Wikipedia entry? This one does.

Castellanos had a bit of a down year in 2020 (I mean, who didn’t?) but otherwise was in the middle of a six-year stretch where he’d hit .286/.338/.515 and whack 142 home runs. That performance earned him a five-year, $100 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Well, time catches up with all of us, and Castellanos started to decline. He hit .250/.294/.400 with 17 home runs in 147 games last year, worth -0.8 rWAR. He hit just .230/.267/.367 away from Citizens Bank Ballpark. A few days ago, the Phillies released Castellanos from their service, swallowing their pride and $20 million to have the man who made it a habit of hitting home runs during somber broadcast monologues play for somewhere else.

The upshot of this all is that Castellanos can be had at the league minimum salary. As a right-handed outfield bat with some pop, it’s a low-risk move for a team like the Royals, who certainly need right-handed outfield bats with some pop. In Philadelphia, Castellanos averaged 20 homers a year and put up an even 100 OPS+. For $20 million a year? Not great. For 1/20th of that price? And considering what Kansas City had last year? Ehhhh?????

Unfortunately for Nick, he is also a Zamboni in the outfield grass. Over the last four years, Castellanos has been arguably the worst defender in Major League Baseball. In his right field home, he’s accrued -45 Statcast Fielding Run Value in right field and -41 defensive runs saved. It’s been an issue that has dogged him his whole career, but his defensive woes are accelerating as he decelerates due to age—he’ll be 34 in March. I’m 34 right now, I have certainly decelerated due to age, and the only thing I have to patrol is my basement looking for cat vomit. 

There’s also this:

Ultimately, I think the Royals have improved their outfield enough that the addition of Castellanos, as fun as it would be to reminisce about that August evening in 2020 every time he plays, would not move the needle. Castellanos had an on-base percentage of .294 last year. He is, basically, Hunter Renfroe wearing one of those old-timey mustache disguises, and that’s no fun to watch for anyone. 

Roman Anthony among 12 Red Sox players in World Baseball Classic originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Roman Anthony is set to join 11 of his Boston Red Sox teammates in the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

The budding superstar outfielder will play for Team USA if he passes his physical on Saturday, according to Tim Healey of The Boston Globe. He would serve as the injury replacement for Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll, who recently suffered a broken hamate bone.

If all goes well with his physical, Anthony will represent the United States alongside Red Sox reliever Garrett Whitlock. The 21-year-old has apparently had a change of heart after ending his rookie season with an oblique injury.

“I would say that’s out of play,” Anthony said last month about playing in the WBC, per Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com. “There’s a lot of noise that I’ve heard, but for me, the goal after this year was, ‘Hey, I ended on an injury. I don’t want to rush into something.’ I think this was on both ends, not just my side. This is gonna be the first full year of a big league season. It’s important we take advantage of spring and this offseason going into spring training.”

Anthony will be one of the most exciting young players in the tournament. The former No. 1 prospect showcased his star potential through 71 games last season, slashing .292/.396/.463 with 18 doubles, eight homers, and 32 RBI.

While it’ll be fun to watch Anthony on an international stage, it’ll be nerve-racking for Sox fans as he’s one of the most important pieces of the 2026 club. The Red Sox, already lacking power in their lineup, cannot afford to lose him to injury.

Anthony will join the entire Red Sox outfield in the World Baseball Classic. Here’s the full list of players on Boston’s 40-man roster who are expected to participate:

Full list of Red Sox WBC participants

1. Roman Anthony – USA
2. Garrett Whitlock – USA
3. Jarren Duran – Mexico
4. Wilyer Abreu – Venezuela
5. Ranger Suarez – Venezuela
6. Willson Contreras – Venezuela
7. Masataka Yoshida – Japan
8. Brayan Bello – Dominican Republic
9. Greg Weissert – Italy
10. Ceddanne Rafaela – Netherlands
11. Jovani Moran – Puerto Rico
12. Nate Eaton – Great Britain

The 2026 World Baseball Classic is scheduled to run from March 5 to March 17.