Category: Sports News

Good morning! The Red Sox have a new infielder. And, uh, he’s not exactly one to get all that excited about.

Isiah Kiner-Falefa is a perfectly good backup to have on your team. He plays three positions in the infield and plays them all well — possibly better than anyone else currently on the Red Sox if you’re not yet convinced of Marcelo Mayer’s glove (though I am). He makes contact and doesn’t strike out much. He’s right-handed, which is important for this Red Sox team. He’s a perfectly cromulent backup, is what I’m saying.

But where the worry creeps in is in the possibility that he doesn’t end up being a backup on the Red Sox. Six million dollars is in no way a lot of money for the Boston Red Sox, a team that finds all kinds of ways (both benign and not so benign) to print money — but it’s a curious amount to give to a backup who is only a marginal upgrade over the backups that are currently in-house. Are the Sox envisaging something of an everday role for IKF? And even if they’re not, will he end up playing essentially every day anyway, given the injury risks on the left side of the Red Sox infield?

How do you see this infield situation shaking out this year?

Talk about that, whatever else you want, and, as always, be good to one another.

THIS IS A GUEST ROCKPILE BY ZEKE PEREZ JR

Since the departure of Charlie Blackmon, the Colorado Rockies have been without a face of the franchise. Sadly, the team also lacks a face for just about every position on the field.

Looking at the most common players by game at each position over the last decade, six different positions have had six different starters across that span. In recent history, the revolving door has continued across four of those positions (catcher, second base, left field, and right field), where the team has utilized three different starters over as many years.

Paul DePodesta has made it clear that developing a team identity is a priority for the 2026 season. Barring injuries or trades, core pieces like Brenton Doyle and Ezequiel Tovar will continue to anchor their respective positions and make life a little easier for the new president. Across the rest of the lineup, he’ll look to evaluate solutions to the perpetual thorns in the Rockies’ side, both for 2026 and beyond.

Where They’re Set

Aside from center field and shortstop (the only two positions returning the same starter for a fourth consecutive year), the Rox might be closest to crossing catcher off their list of needs.

• Things are feeling a little steadier behind the plate with Hunter Goodman taking on the role, starting 97 games as catcher last year. He made some big strides, especially offensively, pacing the team in hits, doubles, homers, batting average and RBI on his way to securing his first Silver Slugger. His 3.7 rWAR is also the highest the Rockies have seen at the position since Iannetta’s 3.1 in 2011.

Where They’re Shaky

Michael Toglia and Ryan McMahon had first base and third base, respectively, covered in recent years, albeit with varying success. With Toglia being designated for assignment this winter and McMahon traded to the Bronx last July, the Rockies will have to look elsewhere.

• Toglia was a solid power contributor in 2024 (25 HR, 2.2 rWAR) but had a fall from grace after struggling in 2025 with a negative rWAR, a .190 batting average and a top 5 finish in strikeouts. The Rockies recently claimed Troy Johnston off of waivers and could use him as a bridge while top prospect Charlie Condon grows into the role at first.

• Kyle Karros will look to pick up where he left off after the McMahon deal and get the bulk of the reps at third. In 43 games in the bigs last year, Karros had a slash line of .226/.308/.277. McMahon left big shoes to fill, and Karros will need to continue to grow into them offensively to be the long-term option.

Where They’re Desperate

Left and right field are where things devolve into a very unfunny version of “Who’s on First?”

The organization was stockpiling a surplus of outfielders across drafts, but some of these promising prospects have floundered and are no longer in the pipeline (or with the organization). Luckily, there’s a good bit of potential waiting in the wings to be explored, as Jordan Beck continues to develop, and Zac Veen (No. 7 mid-season PuRP) and Cole Carrigg (No. 6 mid-season PuRP) look to climb into the platoon.

• Right field has been tough to crack. Beyond the Kris Bryant problem, the spot has seen prospects stall and veterans dip in production. It felt like Veen might finally get the bulk of playing time in 2025, but he struggled in his time in the majors, batting just .118 over 12 games. As he tries to rebound, Mickey Moniak is set to be the frontrunner for 2026. Moniak didn’t quite live up to his ceiling last year but still had a better on-base percentage (.270) than most of the roster. The team was impressed enough to bring him back on a one-year contract. Even as other prospects climb the ranks, Moniak should command a share of the games and could flourish as a fourth outfielder in the rotation as things move on, at the very least.

What’s Ahead

The Rockies’ future obviously won’t come to fruition in the 2026 season alone. There are too many holes to fill after years of roster churn and failed prospects.

After clearing house of several early round draft picks, the new leadership has made it clear that they are looking to identify which players are worth building around.

Colorado won’t be securing its first divisional crown anytime soon, but if the Rox can leave the season with fewer positional question marks, clearer pathways for prospects and their development, and a few emerging everyday players, it will feel like the franchise’s prolonged rebuild will have a meaningful direction.

Colorado Rockies News

Yankees claim OF Yanquiel Fernandez off waivers from Rockies | Yahoo! Sports

Continuing a trend of bringing in former Rockies, New York claimed Fernandez off waivers. The 23-year-old Fernandez will look to turn the page in a new setting after slashing .225/.265/.348 in 52 game appearances with Colorado. The Yankees designated pitcher Dom Hamel for assignment to clear space for Fernandez on the 40-man roster.

Former MLB catcher Cancel to manage Double-A Hartford | MLB.com  

Down on the farm, the Yard Goats are getting a new skipper. Former New York Mets catcher Robinson Cancel was announced as the team’s manager, taking over for Bobby Meacham (2024-2025). Cancel has been a coach within the Rockies system for almost a decade, including as manager for the High-A Spokane Indians (2023-2025) and for the Single-A Fresno Grizzlies (2021-2022).

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On Wednesday, the Detroit Tigers made the biggest addition of the Scott Harris era. After a pretty quiet offseason that drew a ton of frustration from the fanbase, they made one of the biggest moves of the offseason by signing left-handed free agent starter to a three year deal worth $115 million. Valdez will have the ability to opt out after the second year, giving him some freedom to pursue his next deal in the 2027-2028 offseason, after the next CBA is completed.

This is a huge move for the Tigers and it came right out of the blue on Wednesday evening. Valdez elevates the Tigers from a slightly above average team into a good one with a much more durable pitching staff, whose playoff odds will skyrocket after this move. The Tigers are instantly two wins better, and possibly more as the cascading effect of pushing starters into the bullpen adds up over the course of the season. Maybe more to the point, this is a move designed to make the Tigers better in October and beyond as well.

For four years straight, Valdez has ranked as one of the top 15 pitchers in baseball. His durability, command, and high ground ball rates enable him to eat up innings, prevent home runs, and generally make it very difficult for teams to drop a big number on him. Not only is he rocking a clean 3.21 ERA and 3.29 FIP combination in that timespan, he’s also averaging over six innings per start, which isn’t so easy to find these days. Valdez is going to be a godsend to A.J. Hinch as he can deploy his bullpen aggressively knowing he’s got Skubal and Valdez to keep them more rested on their start days.

Valdez has averaged roughly 60 percent ground balls over that four year span. Typically he keeps opponents’ line drive rates low as well, making it very tough for them to do any major damage. Beyond the batted ball table, his walk rates are average, so even when he does give up homers or extra base hits, he isn’t hurting himself much by putting people on base to be driven in either.

Valdez hasn’t been too victimized by the Crawford Boxes in Houston. It’s possible Comerica Park would have held a couple of home runs in 2025, but the difference isn’t that significant. Below is a chart of all Valdez’s fly balls allowed, with Comerica Park’s dimensions overlaid. One or two balls may heve left Comerica that Minute Maid Park held in play. So it probably balances out. Valdez only allowed 15 home runs across 31 starts in 2025 anyway.

Valdez’s strikeout rates need to hold up

If there’s a question mark with Valdez, it’s whether he can continue to strike out an above average amount of hitters. His strikeout rates have dipped a little bit each year since his peak in 2023. His command and the consistency of his sinker say that walks and homers aren’t going to be an issue and he should be able to sustain his performance into his mid-30’s in both respects. The question is whether the whiffs will hold up or whether hitters will start putting the ball in play a little more in the years ahead. He doesn’t feature the nasty slider or splitter, nor the high 90’s gas that typically leads to huge whiff rates.

Bolstering the strikeout argument is the steadiness of his whiff rates over the past four years. He’s posted whiff rates of 11.3, 11.6, 11.4, and 11.5 percent over those seasons. So there’s no sign of a falloff. More importantly, his whiffs come from the curveball and the changeup. So the moderate decline in fastball velocity since his peak isn’t really involved there too much. The curveball drew a whopping 43.7 percent whiff rate in 2025, while the changeup was at 28.7 percent, which is solid. He will mix in the odd slider as well, but while that pitch has at times been effective, he’s really relegated it to a rarely thrown fourth pitch over the last two seasons.

Valdez leads with his sinker, which he typically used 45 percent of the time. He averaged 93.7 mph with it in 2025, which is still pretty good gas for a lefty starter, but pedestrian compared to the league’s starters overall. His second most used offering is his curveball, which he threw 33 percent of the time in 2025. The 79-80 mph breaker has good depth and can add tilt to it and vary the break against hitters of either hand, but it’s his main secondary weapon against lefties. He’ll mix in the more average changeup against right-handed hitters.

His peak sinker velocity was 95.7 mph in 2023. The past two seasons that’s dipped to 94.5 mph in 2024 and 93.7 mph in 2025. That’s not an ideal trend, but again, it hasn’t impacted his underlying performance. He gives up plenty of hard contact against it, but hardly any of it is in the air and it’s not the pitch he racks up his whiffs against in the first place. The sinker only accounts for 12-14 percent of his whiffs in recent years, so as long as he’s keeping the ball on the ground with it and surpressing home runs, the whole package looks very sustainable.

The movement profiles on the sinker, curveball, and changeup have all remained steady over the past few years as well. So short of an injury or some real disaster in terms of his stuff, the results should continue to be very good.

Advantages and disadvantages in moving to Detroit

While I don’t think the change in ballparks is going to have much of an effect based on the spray charts up above, pitching in a little cold weather in the spring is probably to his advantage. Hitters hate a nasty sinkerballer in cold weather and Valdez is outstanding in terms of setting hitters up and jamming them with sinkers that numb hands and get beaten into the ground. The rare one that gets lifted may be smothered a bit by the cold weather early in the year. So, I wouldn’t expect Valdez to be better in Comerica Park, but it is a factor that could help him early on as long as he’s as comfortable throwing in colder weather as hitters are uncomfortable hitting in it.

While we’re big fans of the Tigers’ coaching staff, Houston is typically well coached on the pitching side. It’s doubtful that Chris Fetter and Robin Lund are going to squeeze much extra out of Valdez that the Astros didn’t get to. However, he will get a major upgrade in catchers going from Victor Caratini and a cast of depth catchers to Dillon Dingler and Jake Rogers. Valdez thrives by pounding the bottom edges of the zone for strikes and weak contact, and Dingler in particular got a lot better at getting low strikes over the past two years. The catching upgrade in Detroit is going to be good for Framber Valdez.

The big fly in the ointment is that the Tigers infield isn’t as good as defensively. DRS says the difference isn’t that great, but per Outs Above Average via Statcast, the Astros infield collected 38 more OAA than the Tigers did last year. There really are no signs of a defensive upgrade coming for the Tigers either. Until some of the kids arrive, they’re basically running back the same infield. Gleyber Torres played through a hernia for two months, so perhaps his defensive numbers will rebound somewhat, but they also played Zach McKinstry a lot at third base. If Colt Keith plays a lot more third base and McKinstry is at shortstop, things could look worse rather than better. The imminent arrival of Kevin McGonigle isn’t going to change that equation a whole lot unless he’s playing second base. Either way, Valdez is probably going to give up a few more hits over the course of the season than he did with the Astros infield behind him.

All around, there are advantages in pitching for the Tigers for Valdez, but most of them may be negated by worse infield play. The Tigers are really just looking for the same results for two or three years, however, and on that front things look pretty positive. He should have no trouble giving the Tigers 3.0-4.0 fWAR seasons unless a real physical breakdown occurs. Valdez keeps himself in shape and is pretty ferociously competitive and hard-working by reputation, with some chip on his shoulder, but it’s all the luck of the draw where pitcher injuries are concerned.

Putting Valdez into the Tigers rotation alongside Tarik Skubal gives them a case to have the best 1-2 punch and perhaps the best starting rotation in all of baseball. It improves their bullpen and their pitching depth for 2025 by pushing guys like Troy Melton, Drew Anderson, and Keider Montero to the pen until they’re needed to fill in a rotation spot. Valdez also offers the Tigers a good starting pitcher to keep leading the way beyond 2026 once Tarik Skubal presumably departs in free agency.

The 2026 Detroit Tigers now look like more of a force to be reckoned with in the American League and hopefully deep into October. They aren’t a powerhouse yet but they project like a good team and perhaps the class of the AL If they get some help from their top prospects by season’s end, and have a successful trade deadline, they may even be a problem for the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers. For now, it’s just great to see more serious commitment from ownership and the front office to try to win right now, while developing post-Skubal contingencies at the same time.

Spring training is approaching fast, and with it the storylines for the 2026 Philadelphia Phillies season are starting to form. One of the predominant ones so far is the impending influx of youth that is due to make its way to the Major League roster from the farm. It’s something the Phillies haven’t seen in quite some time, so it will no doubt be one of the biggest themes of the spring.

One of those youths to be leading the movement is Justin Crawford. It is widely expected, and the team has almost confirmed as much by their words and their actions, that Crawford will be the team’s everyday starting center fielder when camp breaks in late March. It will likely be a highly anticipated debut, as calls for Crawford’s promotion reached a fever pitch last year before the team acquired Harrison Bader in a deadline trade with the Minnesota Twins.

Recent prospect rankings all have Crawford sitting somewhere among the top 50 to 60 prospects in baseball and among the top for outfielders. He has performed well at every level in the Minor Leagues, capped off with his 2025 season at Triple-A where he hit .334 with an .863 OPS across 112 games. But as you’re no doubt aware by now, he has some flaws that include a high groundball rate and a very “work-in-progress” look in center field.

Nevertheless, Crawford figures to get plenty of chances to prove himself at the Major League level in 2026. As mentioned before, he projects to start in center field and likely bat ninth in the Phillies lineup. If he can get on base with any sort of consistency, he could be a major run scoring factor with his speed on the bases ahead of the top of the order.

FanGraphs’ ZIPS projection for Crawford in 2026 is a .286/.337/.390 batting line with 1.5 WAR. If we use that as a baseline, what are your realistic expectations for Justin Crawford in 2026? Will he outperform those projections or underperform? Will he take the starting CF job and run with it, or will he struggle out of the gate? What’s your prediction for a final batting line?

We are launching a new daily article here at South Side Sox, more prominently than our items that pop up on The Feed. It falls under the category of White Sox Discussions, which you’ll see in a few weeks will also be our new branding for Game Threads.

Our Discussion series continues by addressing those individuals we refuse to let go of. Numbers are supposed to be the final word in baseball — the cold, hard truth of a player’s worth. But any Sox fan knows that a stat sheet can’t measure the way a player carries himself in the dugout or the way a coach stands up for his guys in a postgame presser. We all have that one name: The player whose batting average we ignore, or the manager whose questionable bullpen moves we excuse, simply because of the grit, heart, or swagger they brought to 35th and Shields. They might be “washed” to the national media or “overrated” by the analytics crowd, but in our eyes, they can do no wrong. It’s a stubborn, irrational loyalty that defines what it means to be a South Sider.

Who is that one person on the field or in the dugout you’ve always backed, even when the logic is stacked against them?

I don’t mean, Michael Soroka’s Achilles’ heel. Just, you know, in general.

The set of questions we received for February included, “What weakness will doom the team if nothing changes?” — but I twisted it around a bit. I have an answer to the former, and it’s also the answer to this question, but “doom the team” seems overly deterministic. The idea of an Achilles’ heel is a point of weakness on a totality of strength; teams overcome weaknesses all the time, if only because no team is perfect and many really good teams have flaws that end up not mattering much.

So, I guess that’s what I’ve twisted this question into: what’s going to be the weakness that drags this team down?

You could say, “Starting pitching” based solely on the Braves not making any rotation additions that required shelling out real resources. Or based on the fact that essentially all of their starters have a lot of injury uncertainty. Hell, “propensity to get everyone injured” could be the proverbial heel in and of itself. It’s up to you.

For me, I don’t know if this is still going to exist, much less be the team’s Achilles’ heel, but I’d go with “sticking with any semblance of the 2025 vis-a-vis 2019-2024 offensive approach” to the extent it transpires. I don’t know if they are going to do it, but Tim Hyers is still there, and adding the guys they added offensively doesn’t help me read a hard “no” into “are they gonna do it again?” Mike Yastrzemski and Ha-Seong Kim are neither prototypical 2019-2024 Braves hitters, nor do they look like guys that can be moved much in that direction. For Kim, you can say that there really weren’t many other choices, but Mauricio Dubon is the polar opposite of the previous offensive approach, and he was also deliberately acquired, like Yastrzemski. The team probably can’t afford another protracted Michael Harris II and Ozzie Albies offensive disaster unless it gets a really clean bill of health elsewhere, so we’ll see what happens.

Last week, Red Sox fans Damon Campagna, Lily Rose Smith and Patrick Spaulding filed a class-action lawsuit against the team in U.S. District Court, alleging that it charged illegal junk fees from at least 2022 through 2024 and used “drip pricing” to inflate the stated costs for tickets. I believe them.

To be clear, I believed them as soon as I saw the first headline about all this. As I am not a court of law, I am under no obligation to find the team innocent until proven guilty. I relish doing the opposite, in fact. I nonetheless read the criminal complaint. After doing so, I still believe them, but I am now angry.

To be clear, I am not just mad at the Red Sox, who in this writer’s opinion are obviously guilty of the charges, and who stopped the scheme before last season likely because of its obvious illegality and/or because the team was finally good enough, after a self-induced swoon, to render it unnecessary. I am also mad at myself for having paid junk fees like this over and over, having accepted it as the cost of doing business when holding bad actors accountable is at least theoretically possible. 

All of which is to say that the complaint is the extreme, uncut good stuff, and an incredible look at how the team allegedly squeezed money equally from high- and low-priced ticket buyers through what appears to be an algorithmic, inconsistently applied process. The plaintiffs claim there were two interrelated mechanisms at work: “drip-pricing,” in which a good’s full cost is slowly increased throughout the buying process, and “junk fees,” which are exactly what they sound like and include absurdities like “Per-Ticket Fees” and “Order Fees.”

These practices differ insofar as legitimate fees (like taxes) can be used in a drip pricing scheme, but that’s about it. It’s really about the marriage of the two; specifically, it’s about how the team allegedly leveraged “drip pricing” to add variably priced “Per-Ticket Fees” and a flat, usually $7 “Order Fee” to rip off buyers from the front row to the last. The Red Sox, naturally, did not comment on the suit, only saying that they team “always follows the law.” 

It’s a good thing, then, that the complaint covers at least a portion of that silence up front, noting that “the team never even pretended that these fees covered anything of value to buyers independent of the tickets the buyers had already shown interest in purchasing.” It also notes that “Per-Ticket Fees” varied depending on the price of the originally chosen seat – running from $.50 for cheaper options to $8.50 for more expensive ones – and the opponent, correctly saying that “it does not cost the Red Sox more to issue a ticket to a game against the Yankees than to a game against the Brewers,” despite the costs differing. It also takes on the “Order Fees,” flatly stating that “it does not cost the Red Sox $7 to process each” transaction.

All told, the complaint alleges that if the team sold 2.5 million tickets per year with average junk fees of $4 per ticket, they’d have pocketed $6 million in the event that only 20% of inventory was “tainted” this way. Given that the team happened to *coincidentally* close down sales at its Fenway Park box office in 2022 – where one could previously bypass “Order Fees” – that number is likely far closer to 100% than 20% (my words) and “the actual damages are likely far in excess of that amount” (theirs). The complaint says the team’s actions constitute “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” under Massachusetts law.

Putting aside the legal issue, anyone charging an “Order Fee” for the convenience of buying a ticket online is theoretically acting amorally; perhaps it would be one thing for a struggling business to do it, but that doesn’t describe the Red Sox. No matter how the court rules, the team is already guilty of being shitty to its fans. Not was — is. Two tickets to this year’s April 6 game against the Brewers will run you $8.75 each in fees, which are ridiculous even if they are now stated up-front alongside the ostensible “face value” of the ticket. April 22nd against the Yankees? $11.75 each. You get the picture. The Sox have stopped hiding the fact they have extortionate pricing practices, but it doesn’t make them virtuous.

And yet, they’re happy to do business this way, because they think it’s the right way. Maybe it is. Their house, their rules, after all. I don’t expect much will change going forward, but if they lose this lawsuit – and frankly, I don’t know how they’d win it – they’ll just increase the up-front fees going forward to recoup the difference. They say you can’t predict baseball, and in most cases they’re right. This is the exception to the rule. Without legislation and enforcement, the Sox will continue to steal as much from us as they possibly can. It sucks!

We’re only days away from Orioles pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training to prepare for the 2026 season. It’s the time of year when optimism abounds and fans everywhere can hope for the best from their favorite team. The O’s are no exception, and yesterday you let us know what most excites you about the 2026 Orioles.

Still, even as hope springs eternal, we know that not everything will go according to plan this season. Look no further than the 2025 Orioles for an example of how a few glaring weaknesses can torpedo a team’s high expectations. So now we’d like to hear from you: as of today, what’s your biggest concern about the 2026 Orioles?

For me, the answer is the defense, particularly the outfield defense. Right now the O’s seem to be lined up to have below-average defenders at every outfield spot, at least when Dylan Beavers isn’t starting. Their two new additions to the lineup, Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward, are coming off of subpar defensive seasons, joining a group of holdovers who weren’t particularly stellar with the leather last year. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll tank the Orioles’ season, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

How about you, Camden Chatters? What are you concerned about? Do the starting pitching and/or bullpen feel a little light? Are you unconvinced that the offense will rebound from its 2025 malaise, even with Alonso and Ward on board? Let us know in the comments.

Meet the Mets

Newest Met Freddy Peralta is already in camp and said he will not pitch for the Dominican Republic in the upcoming World Baseball Classic.

Nolan McLean also reported early and is looking forward to his first big league camp.

Spring training officially starts next week and Anthony DiComo wrote an handy guide for everything fans need to know when it gets under way.

The Pirates are reportedly interested in acquiring Brett Baty or Mark Vientos but no trade involving either player is imminent.

Seven Mets prospects made Baseball Prospectus’s top 101 Prospect list.

Around the National League East

The Braves released their non-roster invitee list made up of both prospects and veterans hoping to make the team out of camp.

Jim Bowden gave the Marlins a solid grade after the moves president of baseball operations Peter Bendix made this offseason.

Despite being the reigning division champions, the Phillies will have a tough battle on their hands this season with the other teams in the divison improving over the winter.

Around Major League Baseball

The Tigers reportedly signed free agent Framber Valdez to a three-year deal worth $115 million.

Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal had his arbitration hearing and the ruling is expected shortly.

Former Tiger hero Mickey Lolich passed away at the age of 85.

The Red Sox signed infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa to a one-year, $6 million contract.

The fight over control of the Padres between the widow of late owner Peter Seidler and his brothers appears to be over but the club could still end up being sold.

Yesterday at Amazin’ Avenue

Brian Salvatore previewed Christian Scott’s season.

Nolan McLean is Steve Sypa’s number one prospect in the Mets system.

This Date in Mets History

On this date in 1903 the team’s first owner, Joan Payson, was born.