Category: Sports News

Saturday's game between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox has been postponed due to inclement weather.

It will be made up as the first game of a split-admission doubleheader on Saturday, Aug. 29, starting at 1:05 p.m.

The originally scheduled 7:35 p.m. game was initially delayed because of thunderstorms in the area, but the plan was for the game to get underway once the thunderstorms passed. 

However, just over an hour after the delayed start announcement, the game was called.

Right-hander Will Warren, who was set to take the mound for New York before the postponement, will now pitch in the first game of the Cleveland Guardians series on Monday night. Meanwhile, righty Cam Schlittler will still make his scheduled start in Sunday's series finale.

After a promising start yesterday, things took a turn for the worse for the Colorado Rockies, as the Milwaukee Brewers jumped on Colorado’s bullpen late to take the game to extras and earn a decisive win.

Not to paint a picture of doom and gloom, but Game 2 of the series won’t get any easier since the Rockies have a date with Jacob Misiorowski, who is dominating the league in several categories.

The Rockies have already faced their fair share of top pitchers in 2026, and, sadly, the results in those matchups have not been great. Looking across this season’s pitching leaders and other big names, Colorado has already taken on the likes of Paul Skenes (3-1 loss), Shohei Ohtani (4-1 loss), Cristopher Sánchez (6-0 loss), Chris Sale (9-1 loss), and Chase Burns (7-2 loss).

Misiorowski, by the numbers, will be the toughest hurdle the Rockies hitters will have faced so far.

The Miz leads MLB in strikeouts (108), WHIP (0.79), and batting average against (.150). He’s second in the league in ERA (1.65) and has been stingy with hits (just 37) and home runs (four) allowed across 12 games. Conversely, the streaky Rockies offense is tied for fifth-worst in strikeouts, so Misiorowski could prove to be a tough nut to crack.

Misiorowski is currently on a streak of five straight quality starts. In his last, a 2-0 win over the Houston Astros, he went seven innings with three hits and eight strikeouts. He’s relied primarily on his utterly dominant four-seam fastball (63% usage, averaging a whopping 99.9 MPH), but has effectively mixed in a slider, curveball, cutter, and changeup.

Heading into this morning, there was some uncertainty around Colorado’s plans for the evening’s pitching. The probable starter for the Rockies, Tanner Gordon, has joined the army of players on the injured list. It has since been announced that Zach Agnos will get the start.

Agnos last started against the Arizona Diamondbacks on May 21st, pitching five scoreless innings and giving up just one hit with four strikeouts. Since then, however, he returned to the bullpen and has fared much worse. He’s given up 14 runs across his last two relief appearances, giving up seven runs on six hits in two innings to the Los Angeles Dodgers and another seven runs on seven hits in only one inning against the San Francisco Giants.

Runs may come at a premium for the Rockies offense against the flamethrower on the mound. Agnos will need to return to form and show the promise he flashed in his lone start that has been missing in his relief appearances for Colorado to stay in the game.

First Pitch: 7:10 pm MDT

TV: Rockies.TV

Radio: KOA 850 AM/94.1 FM; KNRV 1150 (Spanish)

BrewersSB Nation Site: Brew Crew Ball

Lineups:

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Not a good day at the park. The good guys fell this afternoon, falling to the division rival Houston Astros 13-2 in the middle game of the series.

More to come…

In a surprising move, the Yankees placed Austin Wells on the injured list just ahead of Saturday’s soon-to-be-postponed with the Boston Red Sox. To replace Wells, the choice to fill in as the backup catcher is J.C. Escarra, returning to the big league club one day after getting sent down in favor of righty-hitting Ali Sánchez, who now might well take the bulk of the workload behind the dish — or at least a platoon split with the lefty Escarra.

Wells hits the shelf with what’s diagnosed as cervical headaches, potentially an issue that he has been dealing with for a while in what’s been up to this point a terrible campaign for the 26-year-old. Normally a very serviceable hitter behind the plate, especially adjusting for his position, Wells hit the IL with a .533 OPS, the worst among Yankee regulars.

Due to the nature of this IL replacement, it’s difficult to put a specific timeline on Wells’ return, and almost regardless of it, catcher remains a place the Yankees might look to improve at the deadline, even if midseason catcher trades are generally rare these days. Although Escarra was (very) recently with the big league club, he had scuffled for much of the season as well, batting .177 in 62 at-bats.

Here’s hoping that Wells’ injury isn’t too scary and he can safely recover. It’s a painful diagnosis.

Earlier this week, the San Diego Padres’ lineup took a major twist as the club decided to designate Nick Castellanos for assignment and release him two days later.

Before Friday night’s 5-0 loss to the New York Mets, Manny Machado met with reporters and talked about how the clubhouse was disappointed with the departure of Castellanos.

“The news got everybody by surprise,” Machado said. “I don’t really try to put myself in a [General Manager’s] shoes and why they’re doing the decisions. Obviously, we just care about Nick and what he meant to us in the clubhouse.”

Over the offseason, Castellanos was released by the Philadelphia Phillies and quickly signed with the Padres on a 1-year deal of $780,000.

Because Castellanos was originally released by the Phillies in the offseason, his release will only cost San Diego $296,141 due to his prior deal of $20 million.

Castellanos’ release comes after a poor start to the 2026 season, where he had a .560 OPS, with 4 home runs, 20 RBIs, and 34 strikeouts.

His struggles at the plate were due to offspeed pitches and breaking balls.

Last year, he was hitting .283 against offspeed pitches but this year he declined to .063 average. Against breaking balls, he had another drop, hitting .220 last season and now hitting .171 this season.

The Padres’ lineup has struggled this year, ranking as one of the worst in baseball in almost every hitting category. The reality was that San Diego needed to find ways to get better, even if that meant cutting ties with favorites in the locker room.

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Machado said that Castellanos was a favorite in the clubhouse and was a teammate he will remember forever.

“He was awesome,” Machado said. “He had some really big at-bats for us, and I think those memories won’t go away. He did a lot of good things for us.”

While it’s been less than a week since Castellanos was released, Machado added that he hasn’t spoken to him yet but plans to in the future.

“I think [that’s] tough news when you hear it,” Machado said. “I kinda want to give him his time before we wanna talk and see where his head is at.”

On paper, we should have won this game. On paper, Eduardo Rodriguez is a vastly superior pitcher to Zack Littell, the well-traveled journeyman who took the mound for Washington this afternoon on Corbin Carroll Mystery Bobblehead Day. Of course, baseball game aren’t played on paper, and before he’d even recorded his first out of the game, everyone’s favorite hologram had already given the Nationals their margin of victory.

Hologram Eddie didn’t look sharp to start off—his pitches weren’t landing where he wanted them. Either he was missing badly or leaving pitches in bad places, and for the second game in a row the leadoff batter reached, and was driven in by a dinger that went over the fence. Today it was a James Wood bloop single to left, followed by a Curtis Mead homer over the wall in left center. He then walked old Diamondbacks farmhand Andres Chaparro on five pitches, before LuJames Groover bailed him out by starting a nice 3-6 double play off the bat of CJ Abrams, and then catching a Dylan Crews pop up in foul territory. 2-0 Washington

To be fair, ERod settled in after that, pitching around a leadoff single to start the second and recording outs to the next eleven he faced, and fourteen of the next fifteen. Not too shabby after the rocky start to the first inning.

Meanwhile, our offense was unable to do anything against Littell, who was perfect through 3 2/3 innings before plunking Gabriel Moreno with two outs in the bottom of the fourth. His no-hit bid ended when Pavin Smith singled to lead off the fifth, and the shutout bid ended two outs later when LuJames Groover, in his sixth plate appearance in a major league game, hit a blooper to shallow center that rolled past Nationals center fielder Jacob Young and went to the wall. Initially I hoped it would be a triple, but it was scored as a single and a two-base error on Young, but it gave the young man his first big league hit and his first RBI as well, as Pavin Smith came around to score:

Tommy Tory then walked, but Ketel Marte rolled over on a grounder to second on the first pitch he saw, so Groover didn’t get to score his first run in the bigs. Great job, Ketel. 2-1 Washington

And that was it for the offense. Entirely. Well, except for a Corbin Carroll walk to lead off the bottom of the sixth, but that was promptly erased by Moreno rolling over to second for a double play. Great job, Gabi. After that, we didn’t have another baserunner.

Meanwhile, ERod pitched a clean sixth, and with only (?!) 85 pitches thrown, Torey Lovullo sent him out to start the seventh. That was a mistake, as the first pitch he threw went over left field fence, and after recording an out, he gave up a triple to center. Great job, Torey. Juan Morillo came in from the bullpen, was greeted by a squeeze bunt for which his only play was to first, so two more runs were in. 4-1 Washington

Jonathan Loaisiga pitched a scoreless eighth, and Drey Jameson, just up from Reno, gave up two more in the top of the ninth, to bring us to our final score of 6-1 Washington, because, as noted above, the offense couldn’t produce even another baserunner. Boo. Hiss.

Loss Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs

Tiny Little Bright Spot: LuJames Groover (3 AB, 1 H, 1 RBI, +9% WPA)
Holographic Dimness: Eduardo Rodriguez (6 1/3 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 1 HR, -10% WPA)
Total Eclipse: The Rest of the Offense (25 AB, 0 H, 1 BB, 5 K, -47% WPA)

The Gameday Thread Diamondbacks vs. Nationals Discussion was sparsely attended again today, and again it was probably just as well, given the product the team put on the field, with a less than whopping 146 comments at time of writing. Precious few went what now passes for Sedona Red, and I’m departing from “popular acclaim,” such as it was, to give this one to AZNailgal520 for shouting out one of our number who could not be with us today and also capturing pretty perfectly the vibe of the whole sad undertaking that was this ballgame:

So we will try to avoid the sweep tomorrow, and if you are willing to pay the Peacock streaming service for the privilege, you can watch the festivities starting at 12 noon AZ time, as Michael Soroka takes the ball for us and Curt Cavalli goes for Washington. We don’t have Peacock, so if I “watch” at all it will be with the MLB Gameday open in a browser tab. But I hope some of you can join us, if you dare, because otherwise it will be a sad and lonely Gameday Thread Diamondbacks vs. Nationals Discussion for whoever is doing the guest recap tomorrow.

As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!

The Yankees are in a bit of an odd state heading into play on Saturday against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. They already know that they’re going to be without Aaron Judge for at least the better part of two months (if not more) due to a stress fracture in his rib. They’ve lost four of their last six games, including a home series loss to the Guardians that saw the AL Central leaders rough up two previously unflustered aces in Cam Schlittler and Gerrit Cole. They lost the series opener against Boston last night thanks to some gopher-ball antics from Ryan Weathers and some defense and approaches at the plate that certainly left fans wanting.

The latest weirdness includes the catching situation. They’ve received very little production at the plate from the Austin Wells/J.C. Escarra tandem, and they decided to demote Escarra after last night’s game, seemingly with the desire to at least get a right-handed hitter in there in former big leaguer Ali Sánchez. He will start behind the plate on Saturday night. Then at 6:45pm ET — a little under an hour before first pitch — they reactivated Escarra because Wells needs to go on the IL with cervical headaches that sound downright painful, per the Cleveland Clinic. What a joy.

Oh, and the relish on top of this bizarre sandwich is that there are thunderstorms in the Tri-State Area and the game won’t begin on time. The Yankees announced this at about the same time as the Wells IL move, and they confirmed the rain delay at 7:17pm ET. Reports indicate that they expect to play before too long and that the storms will pass soon, but that’s where we are.

Hang in there and take care of yourself, especially if you’re dealing with neck pain like Wells.

Update

They banged it. The doubleheader won’t be until August though, they’ll just have a normal game tomorrow.

Manny Machado might think “Moneyball” is fool’s gold.

The seven-time All-Star third baseman is in the middle of what is — so far — his worst season in the major leagues.

And on Friday night, after a 1-for-4 game that included grounding into a double play in a 5-0 loss to the Mets, Machado took the opportunity to go off on the state of baseball and what he perceives as an over-reliance on analytics.

“The game’s evolving, man. It’s definitely getting harder to play. It’s definitely getting more strategic,” Machado told reporters after the Padres’ 10th loss in the last 11 games. “I just wish we can get the analytics out of the way. I think there’s too many stats out there. Too many stats, way too many numbers. I don’t even know half of the stuff that goes up there. I look at the board sometimes, and I even ask some of the guys, like, ‘What is WCCVBB, whatever it is? What are these names that are being created?’

“I mean, it’s just crazy to even keep up with.”

Machado, a three-time Silver Slugger winner, has seen his more traditional, back-of-the-baseball-card stats hit new lows.

Through 60 games, he’s hitting .175/.262/.355 with a 73 OPS+ — all of which would be career lows if the season ended today.

His advanced stats, whether or not he’s looked, have painted a slightly better picture (his hard rate still ranks in the 66th percentile), but his expected batting average an slugging are both below career norms.

The Padres, even at 32-30, have disappointed so far this season for a team that came in with high expectations.

On top of Machado’s struggles, Fernando Tatis Jr. only hit his first home run of the season on May 30 in what has been an inexplicable power outage.

Machado said baseball still boils down to one thing as the Padres look to get their season back on track.

“At the end of the day, it’s about competing,” he added, according to The Athletic.

“You got to go out there and compete and take away all those analytics, take everything you could possibly think of, and go out there and try to catch the ball and make more outs, right?

Let’s hope this one goes better

The state of the Yankees’ catching position has not been good this season, but now it is in flux.

In a span of 24 hours, the Yankees went from optioning J.C. Escarra to Triple-A and calling up Ali Sánchez to placing Austin Wells on the injured list shortly before Saturday’s game with “cervical headaches” and calling Escarra back up.

When Aaron Boone spoke to reporters two and a half hours before the scheduled first pitch between the Yankees and Red Sox on Saturday, there was no indication that Wells was dealing with something physically, other than him struggling mightily at the plate for most of the season. 

The right-handed hitting Sánchez was in the lineup on Saturday night, but that was believed to be only because the Red Sox were starting lefty Ranger Suárez. 

Now, the Yankees will have to figure out how to split the workload between Sánchez and Escarra while Wells — who had started 45 of the Yankees’ 63 games before Saturday — is on the 10-day IL. 

If the Yankees had known that Wells’ physical issues were serious enough for an IL stint, they presumably would not have gone through the hassle of telling Escarra he was being demoted to Triple-A on Friday night.

“It just felt like, with our catchers struggling a little bit offensively obviously, just felt like the opportunity exists for Ali to get up here and give us a different look, and give J.C. a chance to go down there and play a little more regularly,” Boone had said before the Yankees changed course.

“There’s some things he’s working on offensively that I really — not only has he already done a great job behind the plate, but I do feel like there’s an offensive player in there at this level. But I think some regular reps down there hopefully will serve him well and hopefully Ali can come up here and provide a little bit of a spark and a different look too.”

Andrew Painter’s rocky rookie season was beginning to turn a corner in the middle of May when he put together a strong three-start stretch between the Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, and Cleveland Guardians. He finished six innings in two of those starts and allowed two runs or less in all three. He then met the Los Angeles Dodgers in Dodgers Stadium and hit another bump in the road, allowing four runs on seven hits in less than four innings of work.

This start was sort of a new defining mark for a young pitcher that is trying to find his way. Painter entered today with an ERA well over 5 and a FIP well over 4. The fastball has been getting hammered but the slider and splitter have shown promising results when he has good feel for them.

In the first, Painter hit Sam Antonacci in the elbow guard and walked Miguel Vargas on eight pitches before Caleb Cotham walked up to the mound.

That early mound visit did not help. Andrew Benintendi slapped a single into left field for a run and then Colson Montgomery walked on six pitches. First four batters up, each of them reached base.

Painter was able to get a pair of outs but did not put hitters away. He got to two strikes against Chase Meidroth but the White Sox second baseman put a sweeper in play to move the runners and drive in a run. Painter got to two strikes again to Jacob Gonzalez but hung a splitter enough for a ground ball instead of a strikeout. 3-0.

It got worse when Drew Romo took a two-strike slider down the right field line for Chicago’s fourth run of the inning as boos began to roar that the television broadcast couldn’t hide.

After a better second inning, Painter returned to the third and ran into more issues. Montgomery crushed a fastball to leadoff the inning. Then, it was Jacob Gonzalez who crushed his first career home run on a hanging splitter that still hasn’t landed.

The rookie right-hander was able to push things to 4.2 innings with no remaining damage but it’s once again another concerning start. In 11 big leagues starts and 12 appearances overall, Painter has a 6.21 ERA and a FIP over 5. Given the lack of other starting pitching options, the Phillies might be forced to let him figure things out but this is the kind of beginning that at least warrants a conversation of being demoted.

Again, things are tricky because the Phillies next best option is probably Alan Rangel, someone with just 14 innings of big league experience as a 28 year old journeyman.

The White Sox did not need anything else as Tanner Banks, Tim Mayza, and Chase Shugart combined for four and a third innings of work. Banks specifically gave them two and a third which probably saved the bullpen an extra arm for tomorrow.

Alec Bohm caught a hanging Sean Burke cutter in the fourth and then Brandon Marsh crushed a fastball a couple of innings later. With the game at four runs, the Phillies began to make things interesting in the middle of the sixth.

JT Realmuto worked a seven-pitch walk, then Bryson Stott won a challenge that allowed him to reach first base on five pitches. Adolis García kept his hot streak going by slapping a down-and-away slider to right-center for an RBI single.

Mattingly then called for Edmundo Sosa to hit in Justin Crawford’s place when Will Venable went to left handed reliever Sean Newcomb in a high-leverage spot. Sosa struck out looking on a slider.

The Phillies would not get the tying run to the plate the rest of the way and the game fizzled out.

Aaron Nola gets the ball tomorrow against David Sandlin, who is making his third career start and has a 8.10 ERA in his first ten innings of work.