Category: Sports News

Deja vu all over again – day game, trying to deny a sweep.

First pitch for Grant Holmes vs. Anthony Kay is at 2:10 pm ET.

Game Notes

Pitching preview

Lineups

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to Thursday Afternoon Baseball featuring the Kansas City Royals. In today’s episode, the Good Guys look for win no. 5 in a row (which would also be six out of seven) against the dastardly Athletics, who, once upon a time, called Kansas City home. Now, they’re the only team without one.

On the mound for the Royals will be Randy Dobnak, his stellar beard, and flowing locks. Dobnak, making his seventh start of the season, looks to follow up on his solid start against the Angels back on August 15th. In the game, in which he received no decision, and which the Angels ultimately won, 1-0, Dobnak pitched 5-and-2/3 innings while striking out six, walking two, allowing four hits, and giving up zero runs. Alas: he had no run support.

For the year, Dobnak is 2-1 with a 1.73 ERA, 3.66 FIP, 1.296 WHIP, with 25 strikeouts and 16 walks in 41-and-2/3 innings. I wouldn’t mind Dobnak returning to the Royals in 2027 (if a season happens) but only as the team’s fourth or fifth starter. Right now, I imagine next year’s rotation looking something like this:

1. Michael Wacha
2. Noah Cameron
3. Seth Lugo
4. Randy Dobnak
5. ?????

I would not be opposed to signing a starter who takes over the first slot and pushes everyone else down. Can the Royals compete with a rotation headlined by Wacha/Cameron/Lugo/Dobnak? Eh.

Also, if you’re one of those fans who doesn’t like talking about next season on August 20th, well, may I point out to you the standings? Wins and losses are moot at this point. Contention is out the window. Let a man dream.

Back to the here and now: the Royals face another lefty today, this one named Gage Jump. Reminds me of Jame Gumb. It puts the lotion on its skin. Anyway, Gumb—I mean, Jump—is only 23, a rookie, and not having a bad year. He’s been a bright spot on this blight of a season for the Nomadletics: 5-7, 4.50 ERA, 3.78 FIP, 1.449 WHIP, 85 strikeouts, 37 walks over 15 games started in which he’s pitched a total of 78 innings. The A’s drafted him just two years about out of LSU.

Facing a lefty, you get the Royals’ lefty lineup:

Carter Jensen receives off the afternoon with Luke Maile behind the dish, Salvador Perez manning first, and Vinnie Pasquantino DHing. In case you missed it, Starling Marte is no longer available off the bench, as the Royals released him this morning. I’m sad that didn’t work out.

No active Royal has faced Jump.

With Pasquantino and Maikel Garcia back in the lineup the past few games, the Royals look like they have 7/9 of a decent lineup. For next season, I’d like a different left fielder and for Salvy to move permanently to a back-up role. Kyle Isbel and Tyler Tolbert could platoon in center.

For SacramentoLas Vegas the Athletics

Not much to say about this lineup. Lawrence Butler has struggled. No Nick Kurtz again. He’s only on the 10-day IL, but hasn’t played since July 31st. I wouldn’t be surprised if they shut him down entirely.

Uh…yeah. That’s about it. Behold the lineup for the worst team in baseball.

First pitch at 1:10.

Its a Thursday afternoon, and everyone is all grouchy after last night’s loss.

Seems like a good time to offer up a trivia question.

Once again, a couple of rules…

1 — Put a spoiler over your answer in the comments.

2 — Don’t go digging around on baseball sites to try to discover the answer. This is a trivia question, not a scavenger hunt.

Here is an alphabetical list of professional baseball pitchers:

Greg Maddux

Terry Mulholland

Chan Ho Park

Curt Schilling

John Smoltz

These pitchers are all tied for first place in a very specific category involving them doing the most of something.

Can you guess what category that is?

I will provide an update with the answer later on today.

When Edward Cabrera returned from his injury, Craig Counsell announced that he’d go back in the rotation and David Peterson would go to the bullpen.

Welp. As you know, Cabrera’s start was a disaster and he wound up back on the injured list with a blister. Earlier this week I had asked you in the SB Nation Reacts survey who you’d like to see in the rotation to replace Cabrera.

Here are the results:

The majority got their wish, as Peterson will be added back to the rotation this weekend. He’s now the scheduled starter for Saturday against the Mariners in Seattle.

Peterson did make one relief appearance during his “banishment,” 1.1 scoreless innings and 22 pitches during the Cubs’ win over the White Sox on Monday. So he’ll be going on normal rest in Saturday’s game and with that low pitch count Monday, should be able to (hopefully) go deep into the game.

The question remains: When Cabrera is eligible to return from the IL, should he go back in the rotation? I’m pretty sure the answer from most of you will be “no,” as Peterson has been quite effective since that awful start against the Cardinals in early July. In seven games since then: 2.06 ERA, 1.229 WHIP, 3.86 FIP and the Cubs won six of those seven games.

Cabrera might actually be quite effective out of the pen. He throws hard — up to 97 — and that 94 mile per hour changeup is a good out pitch when he has it working. And throwing one inning at a time might help him with his blister issue.

As always, we await developments.

Here are the results of the national question asked this week.

This is something with which I concur. The Diamondbacks, for example, made the postseason in 2023 with a negative run differential — 746 runs scored, 761 allowed. They were 84-78. Of course, with wild card teams you’re going to likely have some near-.500 teams in the postseason and in fact, this year there could be more than one with the American League Wild Card race currently with six teams within 1.5 games of the last wild card spot, every one of them under .500. And the AL West-leading Astros are only one game over .500.

All you have to do is get in and get hot for four weeks in October.

The Cubs, most likely, are a 92-95 win team and don’t have to worry about that — but still will have to have four hot weeks in October. Make it so.

This edition of SB Nation Reacts is sponsored by FanDuel.

After winning 22-0 in Tuesday night’s series opener, the Brewers dropped last night’s game 7-5 against the Mariners, as Dustin May got off to a very shaky start, but the bullpen did all they could to keep Milwaukee in the game.

The Crew will look to bounce back for a series victory in Thursday afternoon’s rubber match, as left-hander Robert Gasser gets the ball opposite George Kirby for Seattle.

Gasser, 27, has made 14 starts this season, with a 3-5 record, 4.54 ERA, 4.60 FIP, and 68 strikeouts across 73 1/3 innings. He went 6 1/3 innings against the Dodgers his last time out, allowing three runs on eight hits (two homers) and a walk while striking out seven in a 3-1 Brewer loss.

Kirby, 28, has made 23 starts this year, with an 8-9 record, 3.89 ERA, 3.78 FIP, and 114 strikeouts across 136 2/3 innings. He’s coming off a no-decision, as he went 4 2/3 innings against the Astros, allowing five runs on eight hits (one homer) and three walks, striking out two.

Brice Turang, Jackson Chourio, and Jake Bauers sit at the top of Milwaukee’s order, followed by Gary Sánchez, Christian Yelich, and Joey Ortiz, who moves up to the six spot in the order after a strong month and a half. Garrett Mitchell, David Hamilton, and Luis Lara round things out.

First pitch is set for 1:10 p.m. on Brewers TV and the Brewers Radio Network.

The Braves are back in town for one game against the White Sox to finish a series from June 11. The White Sox have already taken the first two games and have a chance to sweep the Braves this afternoon. Atlanta was just swept by the Twins after losing two of three to the Diamondbacks, so ideally that trend will carry over today.

The Good Guys are back to their regular pitching rotation today with Anthony Kay on the mound. Since the team no longer has today off and went deep into the bullpen during the Crosstown Classic, a lengthy outing from Kay would give the relief corps a much-needed break. Sam Antonacci is back in the leadoff spot today, Drew Romo is behind the plate, and it’s Montgomery squared with Braden and Colson hitting back-to-back.

Grant Holmes (7-5) will be on the mound for the visiting team. Holmes is fresh off a poor start in which he gave up six hits, six earned runs and three walks in 3 2/3 frames in a 10-3 loss against Arizona. Holmes was also the starter for the June 9 game against the White Sox.

First pitch is scheduled for 1:10 p.m. CT. You can watch the game on CHSN or listen on ESPN Chicago 1000.

Amid the summer heat, and on a Monday no less, the Yankees announced they were placing Max Fried on the injured list. The news broke with a very general release saying the move was retroactive to Friday and due to a left elbow bone bruise. The same injury that cost Fried two months already this year.

Since Monday was an off day, we had to wait a full night and day before we got to hear from Aaron Boone on the news. When he was finally in front of the cameras, the skipper downplayed the news and made it seem like Fried and the team, or a collective “we,” made the decision for an injured list stint. Us fans were then treated to four good innings from Carlos Rodón, which made the place start skipping his last rehab start like Fried did on his way back.

On Wednesday, Boone went on a podcast and said that Fried did not want to miss time and further downplayed how serious the injury appears to be at the current time. He doubled down on the idea that the team wanted to ensure they did not let a little thing become a big thing. The slight shift in message and the big shift in tone make it feel like a game of telephone.

However, this relatively consistent information and positive reassurance should make us feel better, right? But I cannot be alone in wondering why this does not make me feel any better.

After consideration, I have decided I, or the collective “we,” have some traumatic, or probably just dramatic, fan stress disorder. This can most realistically be traced back to the first time for many of us when the Yankees punted the season and sold off players at the deadline. One of those acquired players was Clint Frazier.

Many have their opinions on Frazier. The nuts and bolts of it are that he went on to have an injury-riddled career stemming mostly from a concussion suffered with the Yankees in 2018. The team pushed the star prospect narrative hard on us and then quickly blamed injuries as the cause for his washout. Frazier has since publicly criticized how the Yankees handled his injuries and given legs to the “we can’t trust the team” argument for many fans.

Frazier was really just the visible part of the iceberg. Anthony Rizzo is the big chunk and main cause of our still-prevalent angst. Remember watching Rizzo get absolutely trucked and then play like a shell of himself for over a month back in 2023? Rizzo was officially diagnosed with a concussion after playing 46 games.

I am not a medical doctor, but the eye test, numbers, and quick decline raised alarms in all of us, it seemed, other than the team itself. Before the collision, Rizzo had an .880 OPS. During that month-plus, his OPS was .496. It made many of us feel like they simply needed to save the player from himself, if nothing else.

In the 2025 season, we got essentially the combination of Frazier and Rizzo with Anthony Volpe’s injury. The former star prospect was clearly battling something for essentially the whole year. Boone pounded the table for his young shortstop all season, and they kept saying it was not the issue.

Then, following the season, surgery revealed Volpe’s shoulder injury was far more extensive than what their initial in-season MRIs had indicated. Cashman, in the most Cashman way, even admitted that it was likely part of the issue after all. So another player clearly fought through an injury for a large stretch of the season, with the team trying to tell us logic, data, and our own eyes were not adding up correctly. Volpe might not be much better than his performance in 2025, but the team should have given the young man a break instead of cortisone and hope.

Sebastian Junger himself could have written the perfect storm of injuries the Yankees have had during the 2026 season and how they directly contribute to the reluctance to accept the Yankees’ optimism on Fried. When Giancarlo Stanton goes down with soft-tissue stuff, it is hard to put a date on his return. Then you have the Yankees captain, who prefers to stay private in his affairs. Since the team likely lacks a true ETA on Stanton and has respected Aaron Judge’s wishes about return timetables, both situations only further fuel all of our stomach aches.

That brings us full circle back to Fried. A recurring injury. But not a big injury this time. A move meant to make sure a little thing does not become a thing, even though it was already once a pretty big thing not long ago and is usually a precursor for a really big thing. Ugh.

How the team has handled injuries in the past, and the way it communicates, has led us to this point. Will Fried, Stanton, or Judge come back this season? Will any of them end up having surgery in the offseason? Your guess is as good as any.

And if you feel hesitant to buy into the injury optimism with Fried, I am with you. I want to accept the optimism, but recent history makes it hard to take the positive news without at least a grain of salt.

Back on July 7, with the Mets toiling at 38-53 and the writing on the wall ahead of an eventual trade deadline, sell-off, I wrote that the lost 2026 season seemed more like an isolated nightmare than the start of a prolonged downturn. 

That was a hard sell at the time, given the recent firing of manager Carlos Mendoza and the freshness of the failed campaign -- following an offseason where president of baseball operationsDavid Stearns engineered wholesale changes to the roster and coaching staff.

But the main thesis of my argument was that, while Stearns had seemingly miscalculated a number of things, nearly everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong.

In April, there was a season-crushing, aberrational 12-game losing streak that coincided with Juan Soto's first calf injury of the year.

Freddy Peralta, acquired in the offseason to help lead the rotation, inexplicably posted a 4.99 ERA in 22 starts for New York before being traded to the Rays, where he has a 7.53 ERA in three starts. 

Major injuries hit not only the players who had checkered injury histories (such as Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr.), but those who were almost always healthy (including Francisco Lindorand Soto). New York lost one of its most important pitchers and clubhouse leaders (Clay Holmes) to a freak injury when his leg was broken by a line drive in the middle of May, throwing the rotation into disarray. 

Nearly every bounce back candidate (Sean Manaea, Kodai Senga, and David Peterson) had flopped.  

Bo Bichette, potentially due to a bit of an adjustment period on a new team in a new city while learning a new position, started off very poorly at the plate, and didn't get his legs under him until June. 

Through July 7, the Mets had also been unlucky, including a 9-16 record in one-run games that was shocking given how good their bullpen was. In other words, it seemed like something that would revert to the mean -- along with their injury luck and some better performance from players who were too good to be that bad.

New York's BABIP to that point was the second-worst in baseball. And the difference between their wOBA (weighted on-base average) and xwOBA (expected weighted on base average) was also massive. The Mets' xwOBA was .322, which was 11th in MLB. Their actual wOBA was .299, which ranked 29th. That 23-point spread was tied with the Mariners and Reds for biggest gap between actual production and expected production.

To be clear, this is in no way meant to excuse the Mets' play over the first three months of the season, which was often uninspired and sloppy. But it was quite clear that all was not lost, that there was a foundation in place that could help New York turn things around quickly and -- with some offseason reinforcements -- contend again in 2027.

Since July 8, the Mets' record is 20-16. They are 17-13 since the All-Star break, and 11-4 since the Aug. 3 trade deadline.

Their record in one-run games during that span is 5-4, with the Mets' outcome in tight contests normalizing.

The Mets' wOBA since July 8 is .319 (11th-best in the majors), while their xwOBA is .309 -- a spread that is more indicative of their talent than the wild 23-point spread they had prior.

Bo Bichette looks like Bo Bichette, with a .313/.357/.457 triple slash since June 18, Lindor (whose career was left for dead by some because he had a rough 10 days to start the season) has an .802 OPS since returning from the IL, Manaea has a 3.71 ERA and has regained his velocity since returning to the rotation on June 13, and Senga is excelling in a late-inning relief role.

If you go all the way back to June 25, which was the day after Lindor was activated from a two-plus month IL stint, the Mets are a .500 team. And if they win on Friday against the White Sox, their record since May 1 will be 49-49. That's nothing to write home about given their initial expectations, but certainly not a hopeless disaster that is doomed for seasons to come.

So it's fair to say things have evened out.

But the most promising thing about the 2026 Mets has been the emergence of the homegrown players who look like they'll be mainstays.

There's Carson Benge coming into his own offensively while unleashing seeds from right field to nail runners at the plate, A.J. Ewing emerging as an answer in the outfield, Nolan McLean displaying moxie and often dominating near the top of the rotation, Christian Scott missing bats at an elite rate in his first season back from Tommy John surgery, and Zac Thornton impressing at the back of the rotation.

Since the trade deadline, which saw New York deal nearly one-third of its active roster (including four key bullpen members), the remade relief corps with Senga now at the back end hasn't missed a beat. Left-hander Nate Lavender's swing-and-miss stuff has translated, Daniel Duarte has emerged as a legitimate option, and jumping Jefry Yan is firing 100 mph fastballs.

Meanwhile, most of the prospects the Mets got back in their deadline deals have been on fire since joining the organization. That includes Jefferson Rojas, who could figure prominently in the second base mix next season. Another possible second base option in the near future is Mitch Voit, New York's first-round pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, who has been having an offensive breakout since being promoted to Binghamton.

With all of this as a backdrop, the Mets are playing a crisp, fun, exciting brand of baseball that has reignited the fanbase -- making these technically meaningless (barring a miracle) late-season games at Citi Field something to look forward to.

That's because when you squint just a bit, it's easy to see that this has been coming together for months, and that many of the players who are helping to author this change should figure prominently in 2027. While this season will not be remembered fondly, it might be a year that is eventually looked back on as the start of things coming together -- even if it took longer for the Mets to get there than they originally hoped.

Game three in the ballpark of the damned. This is game #129. It is starting to get serious.

I spent a fair bit of time, this morning, cleaning a fish tank. I had a few fish in it and then we went on holiday, with my son looking after the house. Well, the filter stopped working and he didn’t notice until way too late. I kept it going until the last fish died (he was a fighter) and now I’m trying to make it livable again.

I’m not sure I’m really a fish guy, but I’m going to refill it with water tomorrow and hopefully, in a week or two add fish.

Today’s lineup: