Category: Sports News

New York Daily News | Gary Phillips: Luis García Jr. has adapted well to life in the Bronx, with a 124 wRC+ before Wednesday’s game and solid play at the cold corner. Can he give the Yankees a bit more defensive versatility, though? Cody Bellinger, Aaron Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton are all due back at some point, and Paul Goldschmidt and, of course, Ben Rice, remain part of the first base picture. Can García move around the infield? Here’s manager Aaron Boone’s answer: “You watch him, and I feel like he’s got real natural actions to me,” he said. “He’s got a good arm, so I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t really have any plans to do that right now, but just watching him work and move and things like that, I feel like he could.”

ESPN | Kiley McDaniel: ESPN updated every team’s top 10 prospects list after the draft and the trade deadline, and the Yankees welcomed a new member to the top 10: right fielder Wilberson De Peña. George Lombard Jr., Dax Kilby, and Carlos Lagrange remain the top three, but Spencer Jones displaced Elmer Rodríguez as No. 4. For what it’s worth, McDaniel said that he ‘loved their top two picks in the draft (Dietz and Duncan), who added some upside to the system, while Matic and De Pena both emerged, adding even more.’

The Athletic | Evan Drellich: As you probably know by now, the Yankees were valued at $10 billion amid Apollo Sports Capital’s $2.6 billion investment announced this week. The valuation certainly comes at an interesting time, as owners and players seem destined to go into lockout mode in just a few months. That has sparked a debate, brought up by Drellich: is the sport blossoming or declining?

Seattle Sports at Mynorthwest.com | Brent Stecker: Rob Refsnyder, who was released by the Seattle Mariners earlier this month to accommodate new deadline acquisition Taylor Ward, might be a retired player at this point. While it hasn’t been confirmed yet, we did learn that he turned down an offer to join the Houston Astros.

Brian McTaggart, an Astros beat writer, said Refsnyder and Houston were “close” to a deal but that he “heard (Refsnyder) retired instead.” The 35-year-old played for the Yankees between 2015 and 2017 after being drafted and developed by the Bombers.

If you build it, the Phillies will come: Tracing their ‘Field of Dreams' ties originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

If you build it, the Phillies will come.

That’s the quote, right?

On Thursday, the Phillies will play the Minnesota Twins at the Field of Dreams site in Dyersville, Iowa, in the third edition of MLB’s showcase game. First pitch is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on Netflix, marking the first game played there since August 2022, when the Cubs and Reds faced off.

There is no better backdrop in the sport. A big-league field tucked into the Iowa corn, built around a movie that leans into baseball’s past, gives the Phillies a different kind of stage as they close in on the final stretch of their season.

It also makes sense that the Phillies are one of the teams featured.

Their connections run through the 1989 film, the state of Iowa and even a few other baseball movies over the years.

So before the Phillies walk through the corn, here is how they connect to the Field of Dreams.

THROWBACK THREADS FROM FORGETTABLE YEARS

The Phillies will wear uniforms from a much different time in franchise history.

They will don their road grays from 1939 to 1941, featuring the red Phillies script across the chest, navy and red piping and the baseball centennial patch on the sleeve, with the years 1839-1939. They will pair them with the navy cap and red block P from that era.

The uniforms are sharp.

The baseball was not.

Here were the Phillies’ records during that three-year stretch:

1939 — 45-106

1940 — 50-103

1941 — 43-111

The 1941 team lost the most games in franchise history, and it did so in a 154-game season.

That period was so rough that Hugh Mulcahy, the Phillies’ ace at the time, earned the nickname “Losing Pitcher,” even though he made the All-Star team. Mulcahy also became the first major leaguer drafted into the military ahead of World War II.

So yes, the Phillies will look good Thursday.

The era they are honoring looked a lot better on a uniform than it did in the standings.

A LEADING FIGURE

When Field of Dreams hit theaters in 1989 and became a national phenomenon, people began flocking to Dyersville to visit the movie set and the field.

That gave the area a chance to build something bigger around the film.

One of the people who helped was a former Phillie.

Joe Hoerner, a 14-year major-league veteran who pitched from 1963 to 1977, grew up on a 250-acre farm in Dubuque, Iowa, roughly 20 miles from Dyersville. He was living in St. Louis when the movie took off, but his connection to the area made him a key figure in the Field of Dreams’ baseball life after the film.

Hoerner helped organize celebrity exhibitions that brought fans to the site and raised money for local charities. He was instrumental in lining up former players and baseball legends to come to Dyersville, helping build a tradition of bringing real games and real baseball figures to a place that already felt magical.

His Phillies connection is significant, too.

Hoerner was part of the infamous seven-player trade that sent Hall of Famer Dick Allen to St. Louis in exchange for a package headlined by Hoerner, Tim McCarver and Curt Flood.

Flood, of course, never reported to Philadelphia. He challenged baseball’s reserve clause, a fight that helped pave the road toward free agency.

Hoerner did pitch well for the Phillies. He made his only All-Star team with them in 1970, then followed it with a strong 1971 season, posting a 1.97 ERA. That remains one of the lowest single-season ERAs by a Phillies pitcher with at least 70 innings since 1920.

Long before MLB brought regular-season games to Dyersville, a former Phillie helped keep baseball coming back to the corn.

MOONLIGHTS

The Phillies even have their own Moonlight Graham thread. Graham appeared in one major-league game for the 1905 New York Giants but never came to the plate, a brief baseball life later turned into one of Field of Dreams’ most memorable storylines.

The Phillies’ version is the phantom ballplayer — someone who reaches an active major-league roster but never gets into a game.

Tim Gradoville, Tim Lahey, Jeff Singer and Will Toffey all wore a Phillies uniform, reached the roster and waited for a moment that never came. It is not exactly walking out of the corn for one lost at-bat, but it carries the same ache: getting close enough to touch the dream without ever getting into the box.

They’ll be in attendance and be honored during the pregame festivities.

PHILLIES ON FILM

One of the most famous baseball movies ever has long been connected to a former Phillie.

The Natural is widely thought to have been inspired, at least in part, by Eddie Waitkus.

In the film, Roy Hobbs, played by Robert Redford, is a teenage phenom whose career is derailed when Harriet Bird, a woman obsessed with athletes, lures him to a hotel room and shoots him.

The real-life Waitkus story was also terrifying.

In 1949, Waitkus was in the middle of an All-Star season in his first year with the Phillies, batting .306. On June 14, Ruth Ann Steinhagen, a fan who had become obsessed with him, bribed a hotel bellboy to deliver him a note. She lured him to her room, saying there was a surprise, then shot him with a rifle.

The bullet missed his heart but punctured his lung.

Waitkus survived and returned to baseball the next season.

That is not exactly the same as a Phillie appearing in a movie, but a few have.

Mike Schmidt made a cameo in the 1987 film Slow Inning. Mitch Williams appeared in 1994’s The Scout. John Kruk played “Lanz” in The Fan, the 1996 movie starring Wesley Snipes and Robert De Niro.

That movie also featured an obsessed fan. This time, De Niro’s character, Gil Renard, stabs Kruk’s character, who had little to do with the main conflict.

Strange stuff.

Kruk later appeared in The Sandlot 2, too.

Any more Phillies cameos would be pretty corny, but there is also a now-Phillie who appeared in The Simpsons.

Don Mattingly guest starred as himself in Season 3 in 1992, in an episode that featured several major leaguers recruited by Mr. Burns to play on his softball team. In the episode, Burns repeatedly tells Mattingly to shave his sideburns, even though they do not exist.

That gag played off Mattingly’s real-life feud with the Yankees during his playing days over the team’s clean-cut policy.

BETWEEN THE LINES AND THE CORN

So how do the Phillies match up between the lines, and the corn, on Thursday?

The Field of Dreams park resembles the dimensions of old Comiskey Park, now Rate Field in Chicago. But without upper decks and with the way the air moves through the open site, the ballpark has played hitter-friendly.

In the first Field of Dreams game in 2021 between the Yankees and White Sox, the teams combined for eight home runs. The ball can carry there, even with 335 feet down the lines, much deeper than the movie field.

That might not bode well for Aaron Nola, who has surrendered a league-leading 29 homers this season.

There is one catch.

Part of what has kept Nola from looking more like his old self at times has been the ABS system, and there will be no automatic balls and strikes in Dyersville. Interesting, and controversial enough.

Nola has also been better lately.

The Phillies’ offense, which has struggled mightily in recent weeks, will face Twins right-hander Taj Bradley, who has not allowed a homer in his last three starts.

The event should be entertaining. It should be different. It should give the Phillies one of the coolest settings of their season.

But they also need to get moving in the right direction again.

Maybe that starts in heaven.

Correction: Iowa.

We don’t often talk about “trap games” – games against a weaker opponent that a team might overlook because of the ones immediately preceding or following it – in baseball the way we might in college basketball or football. Between the inherent variability from game to game, the sheer volume of games in a season, and the relative parity across the league, it’s hard to have “trap games” or even trap series in the sport. But if there were going to be a trap game or series for the D-Backs, it would have been this one. They’re coming off consecutive series against two high-powered divisional rivals and at the end of a season-long homestand of ten games. It’s not entirely surprising that they might be a little tired, both emotionally and physically. While last night’s loss was understandable as an admirable performance from a pitcher who has done very well against the D-Backs this season, today’s loss was a whole other level of frustration.

Merrill Kelly, coming off one of his best starts of the year with five innings of no-hit ball against the mighty Dodgers and continuing a string of solid performances that stretch back to the end of June, looked much more like the vulnerable pitcher from the beginning of the season. The velocity on his entire arsenal was down a couple of ticks and he clearly didn’t have his usual level of command that’s been a staple of Kelly’s game. He had just two strikeouts for the afternoon with three walks in five innings. It’s hard not to suspect that his cramps from his last start couldn’t have had an effect on how he pitched today. After a clean first inning, Kelly labored through the second with the first three batters reaching on a walk and a pair of singles, but he rebounded to retire the next two batters to nearly escape the jam. Instead, after three bad misses to get to a 3-1 count against the number nine batter Brett Sullivan, Kelly placed a four-seam fastball at the very bottom of the zone that Sullivan somehow doinked off the foul pole for a three-run homer. The fourth inning was another struggle as Kelly gave up a leadoff walk and then left a lifeless changeup in the middle of the zone that Zac Veen deposited into the outfield pool.

Still, despite Kelly’s struggles, watching the D-Backs offense this afternoon was actually even more painful. It’s one thing to simply get shut down by the opposing pitcher(s), but squandering opportunity after opportunity was excruciating as a fan. The D-Backs earned a season-high 10 walks against just three strikeouts on the afternoon to go along with 11 hits, but only managed to score four runs. That combination isn’t typical, but they did have a similar scoreline against these same Rockies back at the end of May when they had eight walks and scored just two runs. But it’s a little more understandable when you see that the team went just 3-for-12 with runners in scoring position and left a whopping 15 runners on base for the game. Clearly, they had no problem creating traffic on the bases against starter Ryan Feltner, but they found nearly every way possible to work themselves out of scoring opportunities. There was the ubiquitous double play that ended a pair of threats, but there were too many poor at bats with the bases loaded – from Nolan Arenado’s first-pitch weak grounder in the fifth to Ryan Waldschmidt’s inning-ending double play in the seventh – for the D-Backs to really get themselves back into the game.

In a season that will likely again be decided by the slimmest of margins, it’s particularly frustrating to watch the team squander an opportunity – no matter how small. Yes, I know, a couple of bad losses to a lesser team aren’t cause for panic on the season. Good teams lose to bad ones all the time. Good pitchers have bad days while bad pitchers have good ones. But losing bankable, winnable games against opponents like this when the standings are this tight feels much more dramatic than it actually is. We just have to hope the team doesn’t lose focus and comes back after the off day tomorrow in Atlanta to show exactly how formidable they can be.

Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman tracked Royals hitter Isaac Collins’ fly ball through foul territory to just outside the visiting dugout at Dodger Stadium.

He had a plan. With one out in the top of the eighth inning, Freeman was going to lean over the rail to make the catch.

He shuffled, shifted his weight, and the ground disappeared out from under him.

“Obviously there was no rail,” a sore but apparently not seriously injured Freeman said after the Dodgers’ 4-2 win against the Royals.

He pitched sideways, practically clearing the first set of steps and landing on the second flight. Freeman braced himself on his right side, which took the brunt of the impact. But thanks to the angle of the steps, he never hit his head, he said.

“Kneecaps are sore, shoulder is sore, hand is sore, wrist is sore,” Freeman said. “I mean, I fell. But I’m in good spirits. I’ve already cold tubbed. I’ve done everything I needed to do to put myself in a position to be able to hopefully play [Thursday].”

Manager Dave Roberts described Freeman’s status as “day to day” and noted that he’d already planned to give him a day off Friday, the second game of a four-game series against the Brewers. The Dodgers will monitor how Freeman is feeling Thursday morning.

“I think that we really dodged the bullet,” Roberts said. Freeman did not undergo any imaging on his various aches and pains, although he said head athletic trainer Thomas Albert asked if he felt like he needed any.

“I said, ‘Do you want to do a whole-body X-ray?’” Freeman recounted. “And he was like, ‘We can.’ But no, I’m OK.”

Read more:Eric Lauer shows his value as Dodgers sweep the Royals

Freeman was sore immediately after the fall but finished that half inning in the field. He said after the adrenaline wore off, he motioned to the dugout that he might need a pinch-hitter in the bottom half of the eighth. He was due up first.

Utility player Tommy Edman took the at-bat for him, and Kiké Hernández replaced him at first in the top of the ninth.

It wasn’t the first time Freeman has taken a tumble chasing after a foul ball, but he estimated the last time was about a decade ago, with the Braves in Arizona before they extended the netting.

“Actually went down probably like 10 feet,” Freeman said. “I hit seats and everything. So not my first time.

“I didn’t catch that one either.”

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Brent Headrick did not expect this. He did not envision his role being so significant.

Just one pitcher, left-handed reliever Mason Fluharty of the Blue Jays, has appeared in more games (63) than Headrick (62), and Fluharty likely won’t be asked to pitch into October like Headrick.

“If someone said you would have 60 appearances [at this point], I would say you’re crazy,” the lefty said Wednesday before pitching a scoreless eighth inning in the Yankees’ 10-5 win over the Mariners in The Bronx. “It’s awesome. It’s been a wild year, but it’s been a lot of fun.”

The Yankees reliever now has 52 scoreless outings this year, the most in MLB and a franchise record through 120 games. He’s showing no signs of slowing down, allowing three earned runs in his past 30 innings of work. On the season, he has a 1.47 ERA across 61 ¹/₃ innings.

Headrick could set a Yankees record for most pitching appearances in a season. Paul Quantrill owns the No. 1 spot (86) in 2004, and Scott Proctor is No. 2 (83) in 2006. Headrick is on pace to tie Proctor.

“He’s put in the work, the training, that starts in earnest in the winter. A lot of time your winter program sets you up for success during the year. He certainly put in the work,” manager Aaron Boone said before Wednesday night’s win. “Even though he has worked a lot, we at the same time have tried to protect him in certain situations of being disciplined on certain days, of, ‘You’re not available today.’ So [we’re] trying to avoid those situations where he’s too spent and you have to recover too much.

“Ideally you have a slightly less games/innings projection, but we haven’t been afforded that luxury necessarily this year, and he’s taken that on well.”

Headrick said he feels good and isn’t concerned by the heavy workload. He prepared for this season — the first year of his career when he knew he would be a reliever — differently. The Yankees gave him a higher-intensity and higher-frequency workout plan to prepare him for shorter outings after he was often used for multiple innings last season.

“I tried to train with more bursts more often,” he said. “So I’m not building up to 50, 60 pitches like I would as a starter in the offseason. Now I build up to 15 or 20, and do it more often. You’re not throwing as many volume bullpens, so you can throw more often and feel good.”

It has been a remarkable rise for the 28-year-old. A ninth-round pick in 2019, he was put on waivers in February 2025 and picked up by the Yankees. When he arrived in Tampa, the Yankees told him they saw the southpaw’s future in the bullpen. He has since taken off.