Category: Sports News

It’s very hard to go from relying on the consistent presence of a three-time MVP in your lineup every day to going cold turkey without him, but with Aaron Judge sidelined for the time being with some sort of rib issue, the Yankees’ offense has had to make do without him.

They didn’t get the starts they hoped for out of Cam Schlittler or Gerrit Cole to start the series, and that put them behind the eight-ball as the offense struggled for the most part. They needed somebody to step up and get the big hit as the game entered the late innings tied on Thursday, not wanting to suffer a home sweep against the AL Central-leading Guardians.

Well, sometimes that big hit comes from an unlikely source. Ryan McMahon came through late, as he’s done a couple times already this season, plating Jazz Chisholm Jr. on a single through the right side in the seventh to give the Yankees a lead they wouldn’t relinquish in a 2-1 win. Carlos Rodón tossed a quality start, and the bullpen held things down from there.

Rodón started things off with a pair of quick, efficient strikeouts of David Fry and José Ramírez before falling behind 3-0 on Rhys Hoskins. After homering last night, Hoskins got a bit aggressive and got under a 3-0 fastball for an inning-ending flyout. Trent Grisham led off the bottom half with a bloop single, but was stranded on second base.

Cleveland got its first baserunner with two outs in the second on a walk to Stuart Fairchild, but Rodón worked around it before tossing another 1-2-3 inning in the third. Cecconi retired eight in a row after Grisham’s leadoff single before the Yankees’ center fielder ripped a double to left field with two out in the third, but Ben Rice flied out to end the inning.

J-Ram continued to kill the Yankees in the fourth with a leadoff single and stolen base, jumpstarting a rally that would open the scoring. It could’ve been worse, as Rodón was one pitch from walking the bases loaded after walking Hoskins and getting to 3-2 on Travis Bazzana, but he still did surrender a run on a seeing-eye RBI single by Fairchild with two out.

The Yanks punched back in the bottom half, but left meat on the bone. Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger led off the inning with a pair of singles before an expertly timed double steal put two in scoring position with nobody out. A long sac fly by Jazz Chisholm Jr. tied the game, but Bellinger badly overslid third base trying to tag and go to third and get around an off-line throw by Steven Kwan.

Both Cecconi and Rodón threw perfect fifth innings and mirrored each other in the sixth. Rodón once again walked Hoskins, but worked through it. Cecconi walked Rice and erased him with a 5-4-3 double play. That did it for Rodón, who had his third consecutive strong outing with six one-run innings while displaying better command for the most part. After subpar outings by Cole and Schlittler this series, it was good to see a winning effort from him.

Brent Headrick came on for his 30th appearance of the season, making him the seventh reliever in baseball to hit that mark. Who would’ve thought? After getting two quick outs, he inexplicably walked Austin Hedges on five pitches. In his career, Hedges has walked 10 times in 57 plate appearances against the Yankees, a walk rate nearly three times higher than his career average of 6.4 percent. With the inning extended, Brayan Rocchio nearly snuck one out over the porch, but Max Schuemann made the grab at the wall to send us to the seventh-inning stretch.

Codi Heuer replaced Cecconi and got into trouble after walking Chisholm with one out. Despite plenty of chances to steal, Chisholm waited to run until Caballero flew out, leaving it up to Ryan McMahon. A stolen base and wild pitch put the go-ahead run on third, and McMahon finally found a hole with a grounder through the right side for an RBI single to make it 2-1 Yankees.

Fernando Cruz, who also made his 30th appearance, got the eighth against the top of the Guardians’ order. Facing a trio of Yankee tormentors, he bounced back after falling behind the pinch-hitting Kyle Manzardo before getting weak pop-outs out of Ramírez and Hoskins for another strong inning.

It would be David Bednar who would come out for his first save opportunity since Memorial Day, facing 4-5-6 in the Guardians’ order. Bazzana chopped one back to the pitcher for the first out, Angel Martínez rolled over an 0-2 splitter for the second out, and the pinch-hitting Chase DeLauter did the same to end the ballgame, securing Bednar’s 13th save of the season.

The Rivalry is renewed this weekend for the first time since Alex Cora was fired in late April, as the Red Sox come to town for a three-game set, beginning tomorrow at 7:05 pm on YES. It’s Ryan Weathers against former Yankee Sonny Gray.

Box Score

The Royals announce they have called up utility player Josh Rojas, and that pitcher Stephen Kolek has gone on family emergency leave. To make room on the 40-man roster, Jonathan India was officially placed on the 60-day Injured List. India is out for the year, following shoulder surgery.

Rojas is a six-year MLB veteran who has appeared in 638 games with the Diamondbacks, Mariners, and White Sox. His best season came in 2022, when he was a 3.1 rWAR player for Arizona, hitting .269/.349/.391 with nine home runs in 125 games. His numbers fell off last year in Chicago, where he hit.180 in 69 games, worth just -1.5 rWAR. The Royals signed the 31-year-old left-handed hitter to a minor league deal this off-season. He was hitting .246/.309/.433 with six home runs in 48 games for Triple-A Omaha. He is a very versatile player, with MLB experience at every position except center field and catcher.

Kolek started on Wednesday against the Reds, allowing just two runs in seven innings for the win. The move gives the Royals 14 position players and 12 pitchers.

Welcome to today’s Mets Mailbag, where we once again try to determine whether the 2026 Mets can somehow pull themselves back into contention…and what happens if they don’t. Thanks to everyone who submitted questions.

What date (even if approximately) do you expect the Mets to make as their demarcation line for buying/selling? Another month? Month and a half? – @maclgm12345 (and others)

Many people asked a version of this question, which makes sense. David  Stearns even acknowledged last homestand that a moment will come when the Mets will have to make that call. At the time, he emphasized they are not close to that decision point yet.

The insight I can offer is as follows: the Mets are going to wait this out as long as possible. The feeling from the owner’s box to the dugout is that they are where they are because of injuries, not existential roster flaws. So they want to give themselves as much time as possible to let key players like Jorge Polanco, Francisco Alvarez, and Francisco Lindor return from injury – then give themselves enough time to see if those players can make a difference.

Knowing that, my next question (and I’m sure yours, too) is when will everyone be back and how long will they give them to turn things around once they return? The answers are slightly more encouraging than they might feel: Polanco could return as soon as this weekend in San Diego. Alvarez – and one can debate the extent to which he is a meaningful offensive upgrade over Luis Torrens at this point in his development – is already playing in rehab games, too. Let’s say he returns next week at some point (though no one has said so officially).

Luis Robert Jr. has not even begun baseball activities, so write him off for now. That leaves Lindor as the last big piece, and he was running, throwing, and taking ground balls for several days even before this road trip. Considering he will likely need a substantial ramp-up period on a rehab assignment before returning, a conservative estimate for his return would be two-to-three weeks – or mid- to late-June, barring a setback.

In other words, the Mets could have most of their intended starting lineup back and healthy by the last week of June. That gives them five weeks before the trade deadline. I would expect them to give this team as many of those weeks as possible to play their way back into contention. Plus, most teams are completely consumed by draft preparation until the All-Star Break, anyway. I see no reason why they would not take a week or two after that to let the market fully materialize as other teams emerge from draft machinations and take time to decide whether they are buyers and sellers, too.

So, barring a major collapse over the next few weeks that leaves no doubt about their status, I don’t know why the Mets would decide their fate before the week after the All-Star Break. Everyone involved has every incentive to give this team the chance to turn things around.

What happens to Baty when Lindor returns? Would they possibly trade Bo Bichette to keep Brett Baty at 3B if they’re not in good enough position by then? @jjc927_

I am answering this version of the "who stays, who goes" question because most of them were a little, let’s say…critical… of young Mark Vientos, and he probably doesn’t need me piling on. But I do think everyone’s point is a good one: when Lindor returns – particularly if Polanco proves himself healthy enough to play first base now and then in the meantime – the Mets will have a logjam in the infield. So it is fair to wonder who will be pushed out of a spot.

I do not see them trading Bichette. I guess if they totally swoon between now and then and are totally, completely, irrevocably out of it, that could maybe be on the table. But with his salary and the fact that he has yet to produce anywhere near where he normally does, that seems highly unlikely.

Assuming he stays, the two sure things in the infield would be Bichette and Lindor. Given the way Baty seems to produce better when playing third regularly, one could argue the Mets should move Bichette to second and keep Baty at third, forcing a decision on Marcus Semien’s big contract. But Semien has hit better and for more power lately, has played better defense than the metrics indicate, and has been one of the Mets’ most crucial hitters with runners in scoring position. 

Plus, Baty certainly has not blown him away in terms of production this year. So any major decision on Semien at this point would seem several steps away, if on the table at all.

So maybe the move then becomes moving Baty to first base, where he looked better defensively than Vientos. If Jared Young continues hitting, he could play there, too, leaving Polanco in the designated hitter spot. Either way, there is no obvious place for Vientos to play regularly, and since he has been so inconsistent at the plate and in the field, and so consistently prone to mental errors, I think his roster spot is more fragile than Baty’s at this point. But the emergence of Young certainly is not helping either of them.

If Kodai Senga doesn’t turn it around when he returns, do you think the Mets are prepared to eat the rest of his contract and DFA him? – davidsheridan.bsky.social

Short answer: yes. Doing so now would cost them whatever is left of the $14 million he is owed this year and the $14 million he is owed next year, so it would not be cheap. But the Mets can afford that financially, while they might not be able to afford to keep him emotionally.

In talking to people around the Mets, as well as Senga himself through his interpreter over the last few months, I have gained a picture of someone who reminds me a lot of Stephen Strasburg.

Strasburg was so hyperaware of things that were off in his body and his mechanics that he struggled to pitch when he knew those things were not in line. He gained a reputation for being soft when I think he was more accurately a perfectionist: he could pitch through pain if he felt his mechanics were in place. If they weren’t, or something didn’t feel right, he could think about little else, which made executing pitches in those situations much more difficult. 

Even Yankees rookie ace Cam Schlittler said something along those lines after his worst start of the year the other day: he knew something was off with his four-seamer, so he spent the whole outing worrying about getting that right and not focused on competing. That never goes well.

So I think Senga is largely an extreme version of that: he seems to struggle when everything is not exactly where he thinks it should be physically, and he has struggled to pitch well with whatever he has while searching for the stuff he wants. And ever since that play on the Pete Alonso throw last year, it seems that something has been off. 

Even when his stuff looked good in spring training, he was not certain he would pitch well as a result. Through his interpreter, Senga said something along the lines of "I hope so." My takeaway was that he has not been comfortable with where he is for quite some time, and that even comfortable stretches have felt fragile for him lately.

I also think that Senga and the Mets have sometimes missed each other in terms of working with and around that perfectionist tendency. But I also think the Mets did everything they could this winter to align themselves with what Senga feels he needs, starting with Justin Willard visiting him at his training facility and opening the lines of communication. The result was a promising spring training in which the power stuff that made him so promising in the first place returned. But that has not translated into the regular season. All that combines to make Senga a frustrating case for the Mets, who could certainly use the best version of him, but no longer seem certain they will ever get it. 

I think it is clear their patience is running out as a result. Carlos Mendoza is often polite but stern when he talks about the righty, and he said recently that the decision to bring Senga back from the minors will soon have to focus less on where he is physically than where his results are. In other words, if he is healthy enough to pitch in the minors, but is not pitching well, then performance will dictate whether he gets another start, not merely whether he is technically well enough to do so.

Senga had another rough outing this week, pushing his ERA on this rehab assignment to 5.25 in 12 innings. Whether he is still figuring things out physically with the back discomfort that sent him to the injured list initially, or whether he is just struggling to find his command and best stuff, he is struggling again. And the Mets cannot afford to have any more starting pitchers figuring things out at the major league level. 

It’s possible the Mets' sheer lack of starting pitching will mean they give Senga one more chance in the big leagues. But I would not expect him to get many chances after that.

 The Yankees defeated the Cleveland Guardians by a score of 2-1 on Thursday afternoon in the Bronx, avoiding a sweep.

Here are the takeaways…

--The Yankees were once again without Aaron Judge. Prior to the game, Aaron Boone said he had no update on Judge, but that the star outfielder underwent an MRI on Wednesday night and an X-ray and CT scan on Thursday morning.

--Carlos Rodon looked good early, but got into a bit of a jam in the fourth, when a single, a steal and a single put men on the corners with two outs. The Guardians then broke through for the first run of the game on a Stuart Fairchild single to left. 

Rodon had an excellent afternoon, going 6.0 innings of one-run ball, allowing just two hits while striking out seven and walking three. The lefty's season ERA is down to 2.88 on the season.

--With Judge out of the lineup, Paul Goldschmidt hit third on Thursday, and he singled and came around to score the first run of the game for the Yankees on a fourth- inning Jazz Chisholm Jr. sac fly, but Cody Bellinger was thrown out trying to advance to third on the play, and the Yankees wouldn't score again in the frame.

Cleveland starter Slade Cecconi went 6.0 innings, allowing just one earned run on four hits with four strikeouts and a walk. 

-- Ryan McMahon has had a tough year at the plate, but he came up clutch in the bottom of the seventh inning. With two outs and a runner on third, McMahon came through with a single to give the Yankees a late 2-1 lead. Chisholm, who walked and stole second, game around the score the go-ahead run.

-- It was a great afternoon for the Yankees bullpen behind Rodon, as Brent Headrick, Fernando Cruz, and David Bednar all pitched scoreless innings to secure the win. The Guardians had just two hits on the afternoon. 

Game MVP

Chisholm, who had an RBI, a run scored, and a stolen base despite not recording a hit.

Highlights

Jazz Chisholm ties the game with a sac fly but then Bellinger overslides third trying to tag and gets tagged out pic.twitter.com/Ey1cebTlGX

— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) June 4, 2026

The Yankees take the lead!pic.twitter.com/aKTtQXMPnC

— SNY Yankees (@snyyankees) June 4, 2026

Upcoming schedule

The Yankees stay home to host the rival Boston Red Sox over the weekend, starting on Friday night at 7:05 p.m.

Ryan Weathers will face Sonny Gray.

The Seattle Mariners are blasting from and/or into the past. On Friday, August 7th, the Mariners have announced they will be hosting a home run derby following their game against the Tampa Bay Rays.

While the structure is not entirely clear or perhaps even fully solidified, the list of participants appears to be an entertaining medley of recent Mariners retirees. At the helm in… some capacity, are three M’s legends with ample home run hitting qualifications. Commissioner of the event will be Ken Griffey Jr., a man be beloved enough to be forgiven blatant title inflation. Captains of what presumably will be a draft structure are Jay Buhner and Nelson Cruz.

The commissioner and team captains will sadly not be hitting. They’ll be selecting from a list of sundry and various Mariners whose careers in the bigs range from a single season to 19 years in the U.S..

• OF Mike Cameron – 278 career home runs
• OF Ichiro Suzuki – 117 career home runs
• 1B/3B Ryon Healy – 69 career home runs
• C/1B/2B Austin Nola – 24 career home runs
• 1B Bucky Jacobsen – 9 career home runs
• OF Stefen Romero – 4 career home runs
• LHP Ryan Rowland-Smith – 0 career home runs

It’s a delight to see several of these players take swings again, with the obvious draw being a chance to watch Ichiro attempt to slug the baseball. It will be, conversely, quite something to watch Hyphen take on his broadcast compatriot Healy, who must be the active favorite alongside Nola, both having the most recent big league plate appearances. Don’t sleep on Romero, though, who was playing in Mexico up through 2023 and hit 96 big flies from 2017-2021 in Japan. Cameron, Ichiro, Healy, Nola, and RRS are all active Mariners employees of some sort, making their participation easier to bank on, and Jacobsen recently announced an “extended leave” from the Chuck & Buck morning show on KJR radio in Seattle to focus on his health. Hopefully this bodes well for his health.

Adjectives that come to mind about Dave Roberts in the media are measured, reasoned, and thoughtful. Maybe a bit verbose or circular, especially when it comes to injury updates.

The point is that it’s rare when Roberts calls out a player, and it’s usually a doozy when it happens. The anger of the quiet person often booms the loudest. When Bob Nightengale of USA Today dropped “’Couldn’t be more lazy.’ Dodgers fire back at MLB payroll crybabies,” one could be forgiven for wondering if the headline was merely clickbait for diplomatic double-talk that did not say anything.

Those fears were dispelled instantly, immediately, and thoroughly. On Wednesday, Dave Roberts was there to take names and chew bubblegum; unfortunately for the targets of his vitriol, he was out of bubblegum:

“My honest opinion is the majority of takes about the Dodgers couldn’t be more lazy…that it’s just about the payroll. It’s about the draft. It’s about layering on where we pick in the draft annually. The player development. How we acquire international talent. How we perform consistently at the major-league level.

“I actually think it’s a competitive advantage in the sense that people feel that way, and not look at themselves in the mirror and see how they can operate things better. So that’s beneficial for us.”

As if to dispel the notion that Roberts had made an accidental remark, he kept talking:

“Having the payroll and the depth that gives you [is] certainly is a benefit. No one’s debating that. But I do think that the players we acquire, how we play the game every night, getting younger players to assimilate in a star-studded clubhouse, that’s important. That’s hard to quantify, but that’s of value.

“If you look at the World Series the last couple of years, there’s a lot of home-grown guys making league minimum that have been on postseason rosters.”

Then, for good measure, Roberts floated the idea of the Dodgers acquiring Detroit Tigers’ ace Tarik Skubal at the deadline.

“They would go ballistic,” Roberts said laughing. “But we would have the prospect capital to do [acquire Skubal]. We are one of the teams that could do that with the Tigers.”

One wonders who “they” are. Whether it’s the rest of the league or the critics of the Dodgers, Dave Roberts was not having it on June 3.

The players aren’t having it either

And lest anyone think it was just Roberts blowing off steam, Miguel Rojas added some justified rhetorical heat, stating it’s not just spending fueling the Dodgers’ success, and the organization’s roster construction is often overlooked:

“At the end of the day,” 2025 World Series hero Miguel Rojas said, “it’s not about wasting money or spending money to buy the best players because that’s not going to guarantee you anything. You can see it. There are another five or six clubs close to us in payroll, and they haven’t accomplished it. That’s why people aren’t talking about them, because they haven’t won. People just talk about us…

…The way they constructed the roster in this organization deserves a lot of credit,” Rojas said. “It’s not just buying the players and spending money on players, it’s having Plan B’s and C’s behind them, and that’s where I feel the organization is not getting enough credit for building a full team that is capable of sustaining so many injuries throughout the season and having guys ready when they get called up.”

Emmet Sheehan also went on the record, praising the Dodgers’ development system:

“Our development system is what gets overlooked,” Sheehan says, “how much time and money they put into finding the right people in the minor leagues to make people better. When I got drafted, I didn’t realize how lucky I was coming to an organization like this. Obviously, they put a lot of money into the team here, which is awesome, but there are a lot of guys that contribute way more than people realize, guys stepping up when we’ve had injuries.”

Even Jack Dreyer chimed in, praising how the Dodgers helped him develop as a bullpen stalwart:

“One of the things that the Dodgers do better than anybody else,” Dreyer said, “is that as soon as you get into that organization, they’re doing everything they can to develop you to maximize your potential. When I first got to the Dodgers organization, I had a long way to go before I had a chance at anything. I think they saw something that even I didn’t see in myself, but they kept fine-tuning, and tweaking, and revamping different things until I got to this point. Every single guy who’s in the Dodger organization is very lucky with all of the resources the Dodgers provide, so I’m very thankful I signed here.”

For regulars at True Blue LA, Roberts and the other quoted players are merely parroting arguments that have been expertly and diligently proffered in these parts for years.

Is it nice to have the indirect inference that various Dodgers players and staff read True Blue LA? Sure. Are we going to belabor what we have previously argued in a bit of self-congratulatory puffery? A little. Pride counts for something around these parts.

After all, the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants are seemingly hellbent on disproving the notion that spending necessarily equates to winning. The Mets look like an unexpected rebuild that has gone horribly wrong, whereas the Giants have somehow doubled down on a posture of masterly inactivity, resulting in one of the worst records in the league with a gaggle of immovable contracts.

The incompetence is almost impressive in its depth and scope.

The Commissioner’s Changing Tune

Contrast the fire coming out of the Dodgers with Commissioner Rob Manfred’s first public remarks since labor talks started, and one has quite the contrast. Watching the Commissioner act as a sock puppet for the owners is not particularly new or generally interesting. But occasionally the act has unintended consequences for those who have been paying attention.

On June 3, the Commissioner held his first press conference since MLBPA and MLB began their labor negotiations. ESPN’s Jorge Castillo reported that once again, the Commissioner repeated the talking point that the Dodgers were to blame for the perceived inequity in the sport:

“I think that the Dodgers understand there is a need to update the overall economic model in the industry and that the upside associated with that, in terms of growing the industry, growing the popularity of the sport, is big for large markets, small markets, owners and players in every way,” Manfred said. “That upside is bigger than any issue that separates us in the bargaining table.”

The Commissioner had previously praised the league’s parity, even as recently as October 2024, during the Dodgers/Yankees World Series:

Naturally, some fans in smaller markets will in turn complain that those teams, and their large payrolls, are the last two standing. But Manfred defended the state of competition and parity across the sport.

“Our record on competitive balance is darn good,” Manfred said. “I just don’t think you can scream about the Yankees and the Dodgers given the matchups that we’ve had in recent years.”

On Wednesday, he flip-flopped faster on that position than a fry cook at the International House of Pancakes during the Sunday brunch rush:

“We have tried mightily over several rounds of bargaining to use a competitive balance tax to address competitive concerns, and sometimes, you got to admit you failed…

…We want to make an agreement. We made a proposal on one set of topics at the outset of negotiations.

I went and said myself: Look, we’re open to whatever ideas people have. But we need a realistic framework that addresses the fans’ concerns about competitive balance, and you just can’t ignore that financial penalties have not gotten it done for us.”

Mockery aside, even if entirely well-deserved for trying to use the Dodgers to distract and enrage the fans of baseball, the Commissioner did say something accidentally revealing, as if accidentally almost having an epiphany before fleeing from it as fast as humanly possible:

“In the context, particularly of the postseason, where you’re trying to generate interest and maximize viewership, I think it’s important to emphasize competitiveness,” Manfred said. “And there are aspects of competitiveness: we haven’t had repeat winners (recently) until the Dodgers.

“When we think about it from a labor perspective, we’re focused on an entirely different part of the calendar. And that’s the offseason, when you’re trying to sell season tickets, and the perception among our fans that’s really strong that we have a lack of competitiveness.”

Fan perceptions do not always motivate major change — not unless they’re having major impacts. Considering MLB’s ratings and ticket sales figures have generally improved in recent years, has MLB identified quantifiable ways that this perception is harming them?

“We actually have spent a lot of time on this topic, and teams that go through periods, particularly longer periods, of non-competitiveness, not only have lower revenues, but they are slower to recover once they become competitive,” Manfred said Wednesday.

He didn’t offer specific figures.

(Emphasis added.)

Teams that are bad tend to make less money and are slower to recover once they actually do something productive? You don’t say. Whether the Commissioner meant to say the quiet, obvious part out loud is an open question; however, a broken clock is right twice a day.

The unspoken conclusion that the Commissioner failed to reach, even though it was right there, is that maybe teams should try more. You know, like San Diego, which just sold for a record amount.

However, that admission would be telling, and a puppet can’t leave its strings, not with the collective puppeteer holding on for dear life.