Category: Sports News

The latest news on the Houston Astros and from around MLB:

Spencer Arrighetti was dealing in what should be his last start for the Sugar Land Space Cowboys before joining the Houston Astros:

Has ABS finally made the strike zone fair for Jose Altuve?

Should the Astros consider signing Cam Smith to an extension?

Flashback: April 10, 1965. The Astrodome.

Flashback April 10, 1947. Jackie Robinson is officially a Brooklyn Dodger.

Fun fact about Dodgers Stadium the day it opened from Vin Scully:

Mason Miller. Wow.

MLB Free Agency turns 50. Buster Olney looks at the best and worst free agent deals.

Nasty outfield collision for the Tigers:

Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Chicago Cubs, April 10, 2026, 2:20 p.m. ET

Location: Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL

Broadcast: KDKA AM/FM, Sportsnet Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh Pirates are on the road today against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field looking to grab a win.

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

The Seattle Mariners didn’t need a copy of Cal Raleigh’s MVP-caliber 2025 to repeat as AL West champions this year. What they *will* need is not to repeat his frigid first foray in the big leagues back in 2021. Hard as it may be to remember (or, all too easy after the first two weeks of this season), Raleigh hit a brick wall in his first big league taste. He went .180/.223/.309 in his first 148 plate appearances across 47 games, a grisly 46 wRC+ with an unseemly 35.1% strikeout rate while walking just seven times in the bigs that year. It wasn’t until his 2022 return that Raleigh solidified himself as a star, in Seattle and then across the sport. Now, those expectations loom even larger, with the Big Dumper mucked up and mired in a .143/.236/.245 over his first 55 PAs this year, a 51 wRC+, and a funny-but-not-ha-ha-funny bad 38.2% punchout rate. He’s hit just one round-tripper, for goodness sake.

So what’s eating the Big Dumper?

Home Run Derby hangover delayed by two-thirds a year? Randy Arozarena’s secret hexes? Insufficient gumption?

All good answers, but color me skeptical. Two weeks offers less data than necessary for many statistical stabilizations. But something we can see and quantify is Raleigh’s literal process at the plate – his swing. With advancements in data tracking and cameras, MLB and Baseball Savant can track and publicize the bat tracking data for each pitch and swing. What I’ve seen this spring has gone from troublesome to troubleshooting, and I believe in the near future to be trouble-shedding.

In eliminating culprits, there seems not to be something physically awry for Raleigh. His average bat speed is in keeping with a season ago, give or take a half tick at 74.7 mph. That’s a strong score, on the higher end of the league as befits Raleigh’s strength and emphasis on elevating pitches with damaging intent. So far as we can measure, Raleigh hasn’t massively altered his mechanics or setup pre-pitch, leaving us scrapping for answers. The best indication I’ve found, beyond the sheer variability of an inch different in contact, stems from an overly uppercut swing, an issue so fundamental to his craft that he began addressing it in the time it took me to put together this article.

Statcast measures swings in a few ways. There’s the vertical angle at which the hitter is impacting the ball at contact (e.g. uppercut to flat or even downswing) which Savant calls “Attack Angle.” Correspondingly, there’s the horizontal angle, which determines the direction into the field the ball is hit (e.g. a bloop single against a yanked laser double) which is “Attack Direction.” Combining those and the speed of the swing allows us to measure the angle of the bat’s path relative to the ground, which Savant judges in the final 40 milliseconds before contact/crossing the path of the pitch to determine “Swing Path Tilt.” Their explainer, data, and visuals are quite good in my estimation, for instance allowing Ryan to recently write on bat speed as it relates to variable temperature for FanGraphs.

What I’m going to focus on is Swing Path Tilt, or just “tilt,” as it combines our pertinent measures here. Raleigh has a steeper-than-average tilt to his swing, with around a 33-35 degree tilt over the past two years between his lefty and righty swings. It’s slowly gotten steeper since 2023, when he was around a 31 degree angle. MLB average is 32 degrees, with the lowest end of the spectrum – a.k.a. the flattest swing – being a trio of Rays: C Nick Fortes (19°), 3B/SS Junior Caminero (23°), and Yandy Díaz (24°). On the high end are OF Riley Greene of the Tigers (43°) and Dodgers regulars 1B Freddie Freeman (42°) and OF Andy Pages (41°), noted upper-cutters. Intuitively, these are some good hitters and some middling ones – there’s not one “perfect” swing path for everyone, and these numbers are impacted by the physical traits of each hitter, the location of the pitch, and enough other factors to make this hard to gauge.

At this season’s outset, Cal was employing a steeper, more uppercut swing than ever before. It’s not clear that this was intentional, and we’re talking about a few dozen swings, but through the first week of the season Raleigh was around a 38°-40° tilt. That looks like this:

And this:

Here we can observe the obvious: pitch location has a huge role on all these factors. A key component of Cal’s MVP-caliber season in 2025 was his knack for scooping pitches at the bottom of the zone or below with his steep uppercut and elevating them into the outfield grass or bleachers. So teams adjusted. He’s gotten a steady diet of elevated fastballs and cutters+sweepers in on his hands since late last year, putting the ball where an uppercut either means a swing-and-a-miss or a sawed-off handle. The Guardians and Yankees did this quite effectively, and Raleigh’s initial use of a steeper uppercut ran into issues galore.

Here’s an example of Raleigh a year ago, on a near-identical pitch to that Tanner Bibee offering from the first image and link:

This isn’t everything, but it is Raleigh at his most locked in. June of last year, Cal ran a 191 wRC+ and 1.088 OPS, striking out just 18.6% of the time and following his torrid May with more meteoric play. If I could, I would tie a bow here and say that this is the issue. The Big Dumper needs to dip and rip just a skosh less and boom: problem solved. In fact, over the past several games, this is what he’s doing, with Cal already flattening his swing incrementally by Attack Angle and Swing Path Tilt back towards his norms from a year ago. I do think this is the right move, as such a steep uppercut on elevated offerings especially is a recipe for hard times.

But baseball players aren’t just protractors. Raleigh has struggled because he’s been doing several things poorly. He’s chased pitches more than he did a year ago through this tiny, two week sample. On pitches in the zone, he’s whiffed WAY more. He’s made just 67.1% in-zone contact, down from 81.2% last year – and 69.0% vs. 84.9% on pitches over the heart of the plate. It’s not that Raleigh needs to just make more contact of any sort (and there are players for whom that’s a good goal). He needs better contact, better timing, and better pitch selection. Piece of cake, right?

I suspect the shift to recalibrate his swing path back towards where it was in 2025 is part of that wise correction, but this is the difficulty of drawing conclusions and prescribing adjustments off of 13 games. The clip above (from the game on April 7) isn’t Raleigh looking fully Cal-ibrated, but it looks back in the ballpark of the player Seattle expects to be the heartbeat of their offense. To get back to hitting it out of the ballpark, starting in the ballpark is where he’ll need to be.

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Orioles fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.

Only a few days ago, the Orioles were limping into a cold road series against the White Sox, looking like they were going to be weighed down by problems they could not solve early in the season the same as last year. What if their woes had continued against the White Sox? What then? With those concerns in mind, in this week’s survey, I asked O’s fans to think about whether the team would be able to get back to .500 this month, something they never did in April 2025 or beyond.

The question was decisively answered before I could even share the results with you since the Orioles went ahead and swept the White Sox in the three-game set played Monday through Wednesday. O’s fans may not have expected it to happen already, but an overwhelming majority expected the team to at least get back to .500 by the end of this month:

Between the time I sent off this question to the survey guy and when I shared it with you, the Orioles had already gotten one of the three needed wins. They picked up the other two on the way to the road sweep.

It must be said that the Orioles did not look particularly good in any of those games and were probably fortunate to get a three-game sweep. There are problems to be solved. At least for now, if they can minimize the damage while they are trying to solve those problems, that should help the team avoid the problem they had last year of falling into an early hole from which there was no chance to recover.

Everybody in the AL East is dealing with problems early on, even the Yankees. Just avoid falling too far behind to catch up. Hopefully the Orioles can continue in the right direction in this weekend’s series against the Giants, who are also scuffling early on.

This week’s survey is sponsored by FanDuel.

After a couple of so-so starts to open his New York Yankees’ career, left-hander Ryan Weathers had his best outing of the young season on Thursday against the Athletics. He completed eight innings, surrendering a single run on seven hits and punching out seven. He didn’t walk anyone, which is particularly encouraging since he entered the game having given away five bases on balls in eight frames.

Now, Weathers’ season ERA stands at a strong 2.81 in 16 innings of work, with five walks and 18 strikeouts. That’ll do.

The Yankees’ offense is not at its finest, but the starting pitching sure is amazing. Max Fried, Cam Schlittler, Will Warren, and Weathers have been excellent on the whole, and we haven’t even seen Luis Gil, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Clarke Schmidt yet, not to mention top prospects Elmer Rodríguez and Carlos Lagrange, who continue to develop on the farm.

Back to Weathers: we saw him dominate on Thursday despite diminished velocity, at least compared to his previous two games and what he showed in the spring. His four-seamer averaged 95.1 mph, down from 96.6 mph on the season to this point, and touched 97.4 mph. The pitch has flirted with the triple digits at various points this year. Is the decrease something to worry about?

Well, judging by the results and the lack of any post-game comments about his health or any potential issues, it appears to be the pitcher dialing back in an effort to throw more strikes (it also sure was chilly at the stadium on Thursday). And it worked! He peppered the zone with 73 strikes out of his 101 pitches.

According to what he said after the game, Weathers was more relaxed on the mound, and it clearly had a positive effect on the outcome: “Now I know what that feeling is of just being calm on the mound – hopefully I can keep throwing strikes.”

If that was the key, keep the strikes coming! Weathers’ stuff is good enough to trust it to play in the zone. On Thursday, it definitely did, against an Athletics lineup with a number of formidable bats. Weathers earned 12 whiffs, four each with the four-seamer and sweeper, three with the changeup, and one with the sinker. He did allow some hard contact, but never seemed to be overly fazed by the occasion, except for the Max Muncy triple and the subsequent RBI single by Tyler Soderstrom in the seventh.

If we are being fair, that triple he gave up wasn’t a bad pitch location-wise, so credit goes to the batter:

The whiffs were nice to see, but that wasn’t all: Weathers got a healthy amount of called strikes, especially with his sinker (10) and sweeper (eight). He had 19 in total. Additionally, he had first-pitch strikes against 20 of the 30 batters he faced for a solid 67 percent.

Weathers experienced diminished velocity during his outing, toward the late innings. It was likely due to fatigue, as after touching 96.4 mph in the second frame and 97.4 mph in the fourth, he was down to 93.3 mph in the sixth and 93.8 mph in the seventh. By the eighth, he stopped throwing the pitch altogether, dealing with that frame with sweepers and changeups.

After throwing his four-seamer 42.4 percent of the time leading up to Thursday’s start, more than any other offering, Weathers prioritized his sinker (30 percent), sweeper (27 percent), and changeup (25 percent) against the Athletics, with the heater a distant fourth at 18 percent. He earned a lot of strikes with the mix, but it remains to be seen if it will be a permanent shift away from the four-seamer or if it was matchup-based. He even moved away from the fastball as the outing went on, using it 35 percent of the time the first time through the lineup, 16 percent the second time, and eight percent the third time, with the number dropping to zero the fourth time through.

Despite the loss, Weathers did everything in his power to give his team a W. It didn’t happen because the offense didn’t show up to the ballpark, but he pitched a very solid game. He said it himself: throwing strikes appears to be the most important thing for him, and when he trusts his stuff, he will most likely succeed even if he is not hitting 99 mph on the radar gun.

The two teams in MLB that are yet to lose a series will face off in Atlanta this weekend, as the Braves host the Guardians.

Bryce Elder will take the mound in game 1 and the Braves hope he can keep up his hot start to the season. He has been getting the job done to the tune of a 98th percentile pitching run value (in a miniscule sample) with a combination of walk avoidance, ground balls, inducing barrels, and quality strikeout numbers, due in no small part to his elite chase%. He has added a cutter and added substantial depth to his slider, which add some plausible durability to his improved performance, even as it is unlikely that he is suddenly a true talent Cy Young candidate. The Braves will hope he can look like one against this Guardians lineup and contribute to a win in game 1.

On the other side, the Braves’ bats will have to contend with the 33rd pick in the 2020 draft, righty Slade Cecconi. In some ways, Cecconi is similar to Elder, in that he has been sitting in the low-90s with his fastball this season (a tick and a half down from last year) and added a cutter this season. Cecconi has utilized his new cutter much more than Elder though, as it has been his second pitch this season, throwing it 26% of the time. He uses a very slow curve as his breaking ball of choice, but has also swapped his slider for a sweeper this year, which he uses to keep hitters off-balance. Cecconi is not especially good, but gets the job done well enough when he keeps walks down. He doesn’t really miss bats or induce chases though, and he was in the 1st percentile in hard-hit%, 2nd percentile in avg exit velo and 3rd percentile in barrel% in 2025, all with a roughly league average ground ball rate, so to say he can be hit hard would be an understatement. I’ll be looking for the Braves to hammer Cecconi and I’m gonna be bold(ish) and predict that Ronald Acuna finally hits his first homer of the season off of Cecconi.

Game Info

Game Date/Time: Friday, April 10, 7:15 p.m. EDT

Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA

TV: BravesVision

Streaming: MLB.tv

Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan

The Royals unveiled new City Connect jerseys this week, with mixed reactions from fans. The uniforms, which will be worn Friday evening, include a Royals “R” in a font similar to that used in the city flag with gradient colors celebrates the City of Fountains logo adopted by Kansas City in 1991.

They are one of eight new City Connect jerseys around baseball unveiled this year. The jerseys are an outlet for added creativity, but let’s face it, it’s also a way to move more merch. Here’s a look at some of the other designs.

Atlanta Braves

The Braves have had a number of different jerseys over the years, but they went with a classic baby blue jersey with the 70s era “Atlanta” script across the front.

Baltimore Orioles

The Orioles went with “BMORE” across the chest, with a 1890s Baltimore Baseball Club “B” logo on the cap.

Cincinnati Reds

The Reds really leaned into their name – the jerseys are very, very red. The sleeve graphic features the Tyler Davidson Fountain, a notable landmark in Cincinnati.

Milwaukee Brewers

The Brew Crew design features “Wisco” across the chest and “Forward,” Wisconsin’s state motto, sewn into the collar, and a Barrelman sleeve patch and a wheat/barley braid.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Pirates uniforms include a 1997-era Pirate wearing an eyepatch with a red bandana on the left sleeve, along with 1887 split in half by “PGH” in the same font as the front.

San Diego Padres

Padres uniforms are “bone, obsidian, marigold, aqua, fireberry, and Padres gold” with a sleeve patch honoring Dia de los Muertos.

Texas Rangers

The Rangers spell out “Tejas”, a word rooted in the Caddo language, which has historically been spoken by Native American groups across Texas and Oklahoma, and is “Texas” in Spanish.

Of the new City Connect jerseys, which one is your favorite? Least favorite? Which of the past City Connect jerseys is tops in your book?