Category: Sports News

The days of the promising 2024 Royals team that squared off with the Yankees in the postseason are well in the past. Bobby Witt Jr. remains every bit of one of the most exciting players in the game, but the talent around him has not blossomed in the way this team had hoped for, KC now sitting with one of the worst records in the American League. Witt Jr., self-evidently, is untouchable, but even with a team as underwhelming as the Royals, one can find specific pieces whose pursuit is worthwhile for a team looking to improve around the margins.

The Yankees need help at the catching position, and Salvador Perez’s experience makes for a good match—at least until you get a look at the numbers he has put up this season, currently with a .603 OPS, by far and away the worst of his career. Youngster Carter Jensen, who has received the bulk of the playing time behind the dish, is controllable until 2032 and not going anywhere. If the Yankees are going to look to the Royals for improvements, they’ll need to do so beyond the catching position.

One of the reasons why this Royals season hasn’t gone according to plan is Vinnie Pasquantino—on his way back from the IL as we speak—and when he was out there, he was putting up the worst season of his career, with an OPS+ of 88. Any deal for the left-handed bat controllable through the 2028 campaign would be tricky. Surely, the Royals won’t want to sell low after one bad year, but justifying leaving the DH spot for Giancarlo Stanton becomes harder and harder with each injury setback.

There is no doubt that the most reasonable path to improving your roster by dealing with the Royals is on the pitching side of things, even if, as a whole, their staff has been a far bigger disappointment than their lineup. A recent report from Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic has noted reluctance on KC’s part to deal Michael Wacha and/or Seth Lugo, seeking a return likely to be too great for most teams to be willing to pay. While losing either or both of these starters would severely hurt this team’s pitching staff, we’re talking about veterans controllable only through the end of next season. And the Royals are not a team one might describe as being a few tweaks away from contention, particularly not with Cole Ragans’ injury woes that will keep him sidelined until at least the middle of next season.

The AL leader in innings pitched at 114.2 frames, Wacha is having his fifth straight very reliable campaign, fully acquitted to his role a trusty veteran innings-eater. Since the start of 2022, Wacha has an ERA+ of 120 in over 700 innings for three different teams. Asking for a significant return for him is justifiable, but when it comes to Lugo, he has failed to live up to his 2024 numbers, his first season with the Royals. Since the start of last season, Lugo has a 4.32 ERA and 1.350 WHIP, and it’s not as if the $21.5 million he’ll make next year could be seen as a team-friendly deal.

Possessing little to no strikeout stuff in its bullpen outside of Steven Cruz, the Royals don’t entice the buyer on the reliever market. It wasn’t that long ago that Matt Strahm was a dominant reliever, though, and as a pending free agent, he may attract some attention despite a season ERA north of 5.00. Another lefty, Daniel Lynch IV, is the only option when it comes to someone actually performing well this season, boasting a WHIP under 1.00.

One of the few guaranteed sellers at the moment, the Royals could use that to their advantage, but in the end, most teams will only go so far, the Yankees among them.

The Cubs make their first 2026 visit to Great American Ballpark, just as we’re about to hit the All-Star break. They’ll return down the stretch, in mid-September.

For more on the Reds, here’s Wick Terrell, manager of our SB Nation Reds site Red Reporter.

The Cincinnati Reds are a mess. Stop me if you’ve heard that before!

Mired in last place in the NL Central once again, the Reds have somehow managed to not just be bad, but to collapse in the most hilarious manner imaginable. For instance, despite 3B Ke’Bryan Hayes, 2B Matt McLain, and OF TJ Friedl having been perhaps the single most woeful trio offensively to begin the year, the Reds managed to pile up wins in one-run games and surge as many as nine games over .500 by the end of April. All that came without Hunter Greene, who missed most all of the first half of the season after elbow surgery!

As things got so bleak with Hayes and Friedl, in particular, we saw an IL stint come for their 3B and an outright demotion for Friedl, who at one point recently was one of the better leadoff men in baseball. And the moment those two got demoted, the team simply became incapable of winning anything!

Old heads will point to the fact that the entire back of the bullpen (Emilio Pagan, Tony Santillan, and Graham Ashcraft) as well as Eugenio Suarez and Elly De La Cruz getting hurt at the same time may have helped derail the season. Twitter reply folks would beg to differ, however.

Either way, the Reds are flirting with being double-digit games under .500 after owning the single worst record in the game through May and June, and are heading into the All-Star break destined to be sellers once again. That is, of course, barring a miracle series against the Cubs at home to wrap the season’s first half, in which case they’ll probably try to maintain status quo until the absolute last seeing as they simply have no initiative in either direction ever.

Fun facts

The Cubs and Reds have played 2,433 games since the Reds joined the National League in 1890. In all those years, the Cubs have won exactly 23 more games than the Reds, 1,217 to 1,194, with 22 ties.

The difference was only 19 games before the Cubs swept four games at Wrigley Field on May 4-7.

In their final trip to Cincinnati last season, on Sept. 18-21, the Cubs lost four straight, the first and last both by 1-0. They had won two of three at Great American Ball Park earlier in the year.

The Cubs’ last sweep at Cincinnati was three games June 27-29, 2016. They have played 24 series there since then, including four in which they won the first two games and lost the third.

(Courtesy BCB’s JohnW53)

Probable pitching matchups

Friday: Shōta Imanaga, LHP (5-7 , 4.28 ERA, 1.097 WHIP, 4.67 FIP) vs. Hunter Greene, RHP (0-1, 21.60 ERA, 3.300 WHIP, 6.42 FIP)

Saturday: Javier Assad, RHP (6-1, 4.15 ERA, 1.101 WHIP, 5.11 FIP) vs. Nick Lodolo, LHP (3-2, 4.68 ERA, 1.457 WHIP, 5.04 FIP)

Sunday: Matthew Boyd, LHP (4-1, 4.31 ERA, 1.311 WHIP, 3.27 FIP) vs. Andrew Abbott, LHP (5-5, 3.92 ERA, 1.406 WHIP, 4.91 FIP)

Times & TV channels

Friday: 6:10 p.m. CT, Marquee Sports Network

Saturday: 6:10 p.m. CT, Marquee Sports Network

Sunday: 12:40 p.m. CT, Marquee Sports Network

Prediction

Lots of lefty starters in this series! The Cubs have improved their record vs. LH starters, as it now stands a game over .500 at 12-11, even while their OPS vs. LHB compared to vs. RHB is now about equal.

Cubs pitching has been pretty good lately so I’ll say two of three.

Up next

The All-Star break! Pete Crow-Armstrong will go to Philadelphia as the Cubs’ sole representative for Tuesday’s All-Star Game. The Cubs will resume the 2026 regular season Friday evening at Wrigley Field when they begin a three-game series against the Minnesota Twins.

The 2026 MLB Draft has a different feel to it for many reasons, including the Dodgers having their smallest bonus pool ever and the timing of the festivities themselves.

Rather than starting on Sunday or Monday as has been the norm ever since Major League Baseball moved the draft to align with the All-Star break, this time the draft will start on Saturday. The 20-round affair was shortened from three days to two last year and that schedule remains, which means the 2026 draft will conclude on Sunday, before any of the major league All-Star events have even happened.

Dodgers bonus pool

The Dodgers signing Edwin Díaz and Kyle Tucker, both free agents who declined qualifying offers, meant the Dodgers forfeited four early draft picks. They lost their second- and fifth-round selections for signing Díaz, then dropped third- and sixth-round picks once Tucker was brought into the fold.

Couple that with the Dodgers blowing well past the third competitive balance tax threshold last season, which dropped their first round pick 10 slots to 40th overall, the Dodgers have the lowest bonus pool of any MLB team this year, and their lowest-ever bonus pool in the 15 years of the recommended slot value system.

Draft bonus pools are derived from the total recommended slot values for every pick through the end of round 10.

Every signing bonus from the first 10 rounds count against the bonus pool, plus any signing bonus over $150,000 for any player drafted in the 11th round or later. Teams can spend up to five percent over their draft bonus pool and pay only a 75 percent tax on the overage. Any spending more than five percent over the bonus pool triggers more punitive penalties, including forfeiture of future draft picks. To date, no MLB team under the current slotting system has spent enough to trigger loss of draft picks.

How to watch

The first 135 picks of the draft happens on Saturday, which includes the first four rounds plus all competitive balance rounds, compensation picks, and prospect promotion incentive selections.

Saturday’s television and streaming coverage is fragmented, with NBC and Peacock showing the first 10 picks after a preview show, followed by MLB Network televising picks 11-40, that final selection belonging to the Dodgers.

MLB.com and MLB.tv will stream everything beginning with pick 11 through the end of the 20th round on Sunday. Day 2 is a nonstop ride, with 16 rounds all on one day.

Saturday, July 11 (rounds 1-4)
11 a.m. PT: Picks 1-10 (NBC, Peacock)
11:30 a.m: Picks 11-40 (MLB Network)
Streaming from 11th pick through round 4 on MLB.com and MLB.tv

Saturday, July 12 (rounds 5-20)
8:30 a.m. PT: MLB.com, MLB.tv

The Dodgers have two selections on Saturday (first round, 40th overall; and fourth round, 132nd overall), and 14 on Sunday.

After a long delay, the Red Sox made it to New York for their weekend series with the Mets. However, the travel issues caused MLB to push back first pitch from its original 7:15 p.m. start time to 7:50 p.m.

Following their win over the White Sox on Wednesday afternoon, the Red Sox dealt with "multiple plane issues," per Tim Healey of the Boston Globe.

Per Chris Cotillo of MassLive, as of roughly 2 p.m. on Friday, the Sox were set to land at LaGuardia Airport at 4:10 p.m., but eventually landed around 4:40 p.m. and got to CitiField a little after 5 p.m.

"Definitely something I don't think any of us have experienced that before," Red Sox pitcher Garrett Whitlock said before Friday's game. "But hey, that's travel nowadays"

At least I didn’t have to write “Braves tumble” into St. Louis, though the status of their tumbling remains a distinct possibility. The Braves righted the ship, or at least gave the appearance of righting the ship, a bit in Pittsburgh earlier this week, winning a series for the first time since June 19-21. After starting the season 18-2-1 in terms of series performance, the Braves are just 2-6-1 since (with possibly flipping one of those losses to a tie thanks to a rainout). One of those six recent series losses came against the Cardinals in Atlanta, and the Braves will get a chance to return the favor in St. Louis this weekend, before everyone heads off into the All-Star Break.

The Cardinals did not have a particularly fun time after departing Atlanta. They did take a series from their archrivals, the Cubs… but then lost four of five to the Brewers, putting a sizable dent in their playoff odds (from about 40 percent to about 30 percent). Before the Brewers had their way, the Cardinals held onto the NL’s last playoff spot with a one-game lead over the Marlins; now, they’re three games in what’s become a bit less of a logjam: the three NL Wild Card teams are separated by half a game, with the Braves three games ahead of them… but the Cardinals are part of a second tier of pseudo-contenders a bit further back.

Overall, the Cardinals are 14th in position player fWAR and 21st in pitching fWAR, which doesn’t suggest particularly useful production. However, they have two more wins than suggested by their run differential, and are three wins over what’s indicated by their BaseRuns, so that more or less explains that.

The Braves will have their one “steady” rotation member on the hill for this one, which is good news. But, Chris Sale will need to bounce back a bit, as his most recent outing was one of his worst in a Braves uniform. Sale lasted just five innings against the Mets, allowing two homers and posting a 3/2 K/BB ratio in a blowout win. The performance didn’t really matter in the context of the game, but in a vacuum, it wasn’t great. Sale’s FIP was his second-worst of the season, and his xFIP- for the start was 123 — only the second time this year he’s gone above 100, the only time this season he’s gone above 105, and his fourth-worst mark in any start as a Brave. Sale generally tends to get back to dominance after a poor outing, so there’s no reason to expect anything different here.

Sale has somehow managed to avoid the Cardinals as a Brave thus far, and, in fact, has faced them just twice in his career: once in 2015, and once in 2023. He dominated both times.

On the flip side, the Braves will take aim at 29-year-old Kyle Leahy, whom they didn’t see in Atlanta. Leahy spent 2024 and 2025 pitching long-ish relief for St. Louis, but has ascended to the rotation after some pretty good work in 2025 (1.4 fWAR in 88 innings, though a lot of that coming as a result of a low HR/FB). This season, Leahy’s stats are minorly weird: a 93 ERA-, 99 FIP-, and 101 xFIP- are all consistent, but he has this absolutely horrid xERA. Generally, xERA for pitchers doesn’t mean much because it’s so heavily influenced by the batters a pitcher faces, whose exit velocity tends to be more batter-derived than pitcher-influenced and factors into a large part of xERA… but seeing a guy with very generic peripherals and horrendous contact quality is not rare but still kinda weird, especially considering that Leahy didn’t have any contact management issues in 2024-2025.

Overall, Leahy is a true junkballer (legit six-pitch mix) who gets elite extension that makes his mid-90s fastball play up a bit. His pitch shapes don’t look good on paper, but are mitigated somewhat by him offering a harder set of secondaries than batters are generally used to. He has very good command of his four-seamer, sinker, and curve, while the rest of his arsenal is really more of a junkball-y “hope they get bamboozled” sort of thing. So long as the Braves’ lefties can acknowledge that his changeup is generally in the dirt and avoid looking terrible on it, they may be able to get some good hacks in against his four-seamer and curve.

Because of his profile, Leahy is pretty steady and generally throws up the same type of outing, with variance largely around whether fly balls clear the fence. He had a sky-high HR/FB in April (24 percent), but it then fell to around seven percent in May, three percent in June, and is sitting at zero for July so far. As a result, he’s been on a pretty good run for about seven starts FIP-wise, though it’s included a couple of xFIP-based clunkers. If the Braves can actually noodge his HR/FB up, that’ll bode well. If not, it could be another sad BABIP day for the team, at least until they chase him.

Game Info

Game Date/Time: Friday, July 10, 8:15 p.m. EDT

Location: Busch Stadium, St. Louis, MO

TV: None

Streaming: Apple TV (le sigh)

Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan

Two years ago, the Orioles hosted the Royals in the Wild Card round. Baltimore had just finished the regular season 91-71, a drop from their previous 101-61 record in 2023, but still good enough for second place in the daunting American League East and for the top Wild Card spot.

Despite dropping the series in two games to Kansas City, it looked like Baltimore was set up for the future. It wouldn’t have shocked anyone for the Orioles to continue making the playoffs and reaching the ALCS, if not beyond.

Instead, mirroring the Royals’ path, the Orioles bombed in 2025 and don’t look all that much better in 2026. Last year, coming off back-to-back playoff appearances, Baltimore fell to last in the East, finishing 75-87, 19 games back of first place. Manager Brandon Hyde, a mortal enemy of my family, didn’t even last 45 games before being ousted.

It didn’t matter.

This season, the Orioles have improved, albeit minimally. Their winning percentage is up, but they remain in the AL East’s cellar, and the playoffs look as far away as they did in 2021, when the Orioles finished an embarrassing 52-110.

Royals fans can relate.

Kansas City Royals (38-56) at Baltimore Orioles (43-51) at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD

Royals: 4.31 runs scored/game (20th in MLB), 5.11 runs allowed/game (27th in MLB)

Orioles: 4.55 runs scored/game (13th in MLB), 4.89 runs allowed/game (23rd in MLB)

Pete Alonso, signed away from the Mets in the offseason, leads the Orioles with 2.0 bWAR as he’s slashed .249/.345/.467 with 20 home runs, 67 RBIs, and 56 runs scored. Another offseason acquisition, this time by trade with the Angels, Taylor Ward leads the team in walks with 71, which has boosted his OBP to a career-high .383 as his slugging has dipped to .352, which would be his worst in a full season. Catcher Adley Rutschman, a/k/a The Only Player Drafted Ahead of Bobby Witt Jr., has bounced back from a very down 2025, though his numbers remain across a chasm from what he posted his first two seasons. Shortstop Gunnar Henderson, drafted in the second round of that same 2019 Draft, is struggling. Long ago are the days are finishing fourth in MVP voting, let alone winning Rookie of the Year in 2023. All told, the Orioles feature six regulars who are posting a below-average OPS, chief among them Henderson, but also starting third baseman Coby Mayo, starting right fielder Tyler O’Neill, and starting center fielder Leody Taveras.

It looks like the Orioles will start 27-year-old Brandon Young tonight. The second-year righthander leads the team in wins with seven while posting a solid 3.89 FIP over 77-and-1/3 innings pitched. He doesn’t strike out a lot of batters, but doesn’t walk many, either. Righties Kyle Brandish and Shane Baz are the projected starters for games two and three of the series. Brandish leads the team in strikeouts but also allows 1.1 home runs per nine innings, worst among Oriole starters with at least 10 starts. Baz sports the team’s best FIP at 3.79, but his strikeouts are down while his walks are up. Not a good combination.

The team’s closer, Ryan Helsley, is out, and so 36-year-old Andrew Kittredge picked up the save in yesterday’s 3-2 win over the Cubs. Reliever Tyler Wells picked up the win yesterday despite allowing the go-ahead run to score. He leads Baltimore relievers in innings pitched while Rico Garcia leads them in appearances with 42. Garcia has a WHIP well under one and strikes out over a batter per inning. Righty Yenier Cano leads all relievers with a 2.65 FIP.

I have no idea what to think of this series. As I stated in the opening paragraphs, two years ago it looked like the Royals and Orioles would be facing each other often once the calendar flipped to October. Clearly, things have changed for both teams, and for the worse.

Case in point: this mid-July series, the last before the All-Star break, has zero consequences for either club. What a shame.

Luinder Avila takes the ball for the Royals tonight. First pitch: 6:05 PM local time.