Category: Sports News

MLB rumors: Teams were ‘appalled' at Rafael Devers' handing of Red Sox situation originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

It’s no secret that Rafael Devers’ Boston Red Sox tenure did not end on a positive note.

The superstar slugger reportedly was not thrilled with his former team asking him to transition from third base to designated hitter in the offseason after the team signed free agent Alex Bregman, and eventually to first base earlier this season after an injury to Triston Casas, before he was traded to the Giants in a stunning blockbuster deal on Sunday.

While many have criticized both Devers’ and the Red Sox’ handling of the situation, ESPN’s Buster Olney shared on the latest episode of the “Baseball Tonight” podcast that individuals with other MLB teams he spoke to placed far more of the blame on Devers.

“Within the sport, people with other teams are appalled at how he handled that,” Olney told Tim Kurkjian. “I had one person say to me, ‘Look the team’s handling of this on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being bad, was a six.’ This person said, ‘Devers? It was a 10 out of 10 [for] how badly he handled this.'”

Even Red Sox icons, such as David Ortiz, have criticized Devers for how the young slugger carried himself as Boston’s face of the franchise.

It’s a small sample size, but in two games with the Giants, Devers has been willing to do whatever his new team needs of him, including playing first base.

It remains to be seen when, or if, Devers will take over as the team’s everyday first baseman, but if he does, it’s fair to assume the Giants hope the transition will be drama-free.

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Stephen Vogt states Buster Posey landed Giants ‘top 10 hitter' in Rafael Devers originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — When the Rafael Devers press conference ended Tuesday, Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey went down to the field, but he wasn’t there to take in any more of the day’s craziness. Posey spent some time catching up with former teammate Stephen Vogt, who now manages the Cleveland Guardians. 

“I just gave him crap for pulling off the trade,” Vogt said a day later, smiling.

Vogt knows Devers better than most of the current Giants. His Guardians currently are neck-and-neck with the Red Sox for the final wild-card spot in the American League, and he has gone up against Devers for years as a player and manager in the AL. 

In Vogt’s final season with the Athletics, he and Devers homered in the same game at Fenway Park. Earlier this season, as a manager, he watched Devers pick up five hits, five runs, two homers and three RBI during a three-game series at Progressive Field in Cleveland. 

Asked what the Giants are getting in Devers, Vogt referenced his Giants debut, when he hit a 111 mph double early in the game and later singled.  

“You saw it last night. You make a mistake, he’s going to bang it,” Vogt said. “He’s just a really good hitter, he’s a complete hitter and obviously the power is real. He’s going to hurt you [but] when he needs to get a single, he’ll get a single. He’ll work a walk when he needs to. He’s a top 10 hitter in baseball in my opinion. The Giants got a good one.”

Vogt is in his second year as a manager, and his debut last season was about as successful as Posey’s first year as an executive has gone so far. He was named AL Manager of the Year after leading the Guardians to 92 wins and a division title. 

Vogt played just one season in San Francisco, backing up Posey in 2019. He was extremely popular within the clubhouse and remains close with Posey. 

“Buster was an awesome teammate,” Vogt said Wednesday. “I’m really happy that he’s in the position that he’s in and wish him nothing but the best.”

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Giants notes: Bob Melvin explains lineup changes after Rafael Devers addition originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants are no longer living platoon life, but they still make tweaks to their lineup depending on whether they’re facing a lefty or a righty. On Tuesday, Jung Hoo Lee led off against a right-hander. A night later he was hitting sixth against a lefty, with Heliot Ramos in the leadoff spot. 

Both nights, however, included Rafael Devers in the third spot, and that wasn’t just to keep him comfortable as he settled in at Oracle Park. Devers has a .909 OPS against right-handed pitching and a .882 OPS against lefties. He hits them all, and he is likely to hit third for Bob Melvin most nights. But the manager said Wednesday that he could change his mind over time.

“I don’t worry about where I hit him. I might worry about where I need him at times,” Melvin said. “Depending on how the offense is doing, you may juggle some stuff. You could see him in the two-hole, you could see him in the four-hole, something like that. But he’s not going to venture too far from where he is.”

Devers hit second in every appearance for the Boston Red Sox this year, but he also has 270 career starts in the cleanup spot and 75 hitting third. Teams often use their best hitter second these days, but having Devers third allows the Giants to keep Willy Adames — who was starting to come around in the week before the trade — near the top of the lineup. It should benefit Adames, too. 

“I know in the long run for a fact I’m going to get more pitches to hit because of him,” Adames said Tuesday night. 

With a different look at the top of the lineup, Lee hit in the bottom half for the first time in his two seasons as a Giant. Lee has done a nice job against lefties this season, but he is hitting just .192 in June. 

“He hits lefties fine, but Ramos has really probably done the best job in the leadoff spot,” Melvin said of Lee. “With Flo in the lineup today behind Devers, I just moved him down a little bit.”

Disappointing Return

Justin Verlander called his return from the IL “frustrating” and “inconsistent.” He paid dearly for a fastball that was middle-middle and crushed into the seats. Three of the four runs on Verlander’s line came on that pitch, which he called “one of the worst I threw all day.”

Verlander fell to 0-4 and went just 4 2/3 innings in his return from the IL on Wednesday, but the Giants had him on a pitch count since he didn’t have a rehab assignment and instead built up with live BP sessions and bullpens. This is not how anyone imagined his first three months in San Francisco going, but Verlander said he was excited by the Devers addition and hopeful that he soon can join the party. The Giants will need him, since they just traded away some crucial starting pitching depth. 

Slumping At Second

The homer came shortly after Tyler Fitzgerald booted a ball with one out and nobody on. There have been mistakes on the bases and defensively lately, and Fitzgerald also is 8-for-52 over his last 17 games. In both games of this series, he was lifted for a pinch-hitter late in the game. Wilmer Flores hit for him on Tuesday and Dominic Smith replaced him in the ninth Wednesday. 

“He’s a little in-between,” Melvin said of Fitzgerald. “A little late on the heater, out in front on the breaking ball … it’s a little bit of a struggle recently.”

Fitzgerald seemed to find his stride in mid-April but missed 13 games in May with a rib fracture. The latest slump has dropped his OPS to .629, and he has just two homers after breaking out for 15 last season. 

Another IL Stint

In the midst of Devers Mania on Tuesday, there was some roster shuffling. Outfielder Daniel Johnson initially was optioned to Triple-A to open a spot for Devers, but he returned a couple of hours later after Jerar Encarnacion went on the IL with an oblique strain. Melvin said Encarnacion’s strain is a pretty bad one, and he’ll miss extended time.

The injury is the latest tough blow for a player who had a strong spring and looked headed for plenty of at-bats. Encarnacion fractured his hand at the end of spring and missed about two months. He was back for just eight games, going 3-for-22 with six strikeouts and no walks. 

The injury occurred as Encarnacion was trying to find a way out of his slump. Melvin said he came to the ballpark on Monday’s off day and got a lot of swings in. 

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Twenty-nine hours before his official return to the Dodger Stadium mound, Emmet Sheehan took a moment to get himself reacquainted with his home ballpark.

In an empty Dodger Stadium on Tuesday afternoon, Sheehan walked onto the field at Chavez Ravine, climbed up a slope he hadn’t toed since the 2023 season, and practiced his pitching motion a few times before returning to the clubhouse.

For Sheehan, such dry tosses are part of his normal pre-start routine. In any ballpark where he pitches, he likes to get a feel for the mound and its surroundings before the game.

The only difference this time: how long it had been since he’d taken the bump in a big-league stadium.

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After an auspicious rookie season in 2023, in which his 4.92 earned-run average belied the potential he flashed with his low-arm-slot and high-velocity delivery, Sheehan missed all of last season and the first three months of this campaign after undergoing Tommy John surgery.

On Wednesday, he finally completed the long road back, spinning four impressive innings in a 4-3 walk-off win over the San Diego Padres that ended on Will Smith’s pinch-hit home run in the ninth.

"It was awesome,” Sheehan said, after giving up just one run while striking out six batters. “Once I was out there, it was kind of just back in compete mode once you see a hitter in the box. But definitely before and then after, [I was] feeling the emotions of just the past year, for sure."

A former sixth-round draft pick who blossomed into one of the organization’s top pitching prospects during an impressive minor-league career, Sheehan became one of the Dodgers' many recent homegrown pitchers to endure a major surgery after injuring his elbow in spring training last year.

As he worked his way back, though, his relatively seamless recovery process had fueled excitement throughout the organization.

His stuff still looked sharp, from a mid-90s mph fastball to a tantalizing changeup-slider combination. His command had been surprisingly consistent during a minor-league rehab stint, collecting 16 strikeouts against only one walk in three outings with triple-A Oklahoma City.

And against the Padres on Wednesday, the 25-year-old right-hander looked like he had hardly missed a beat.

He threw 65 pitches, 43 for strikes. He didn’t issue a walk, while yielding only three hits. And the lone score against him came when second baseman Tommy Edman failed to corral a hard-hit one-hopper with two outs in the top of the second.

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“Emmett was fantastic,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Going into it tonight, [I wanted him to] trust his stuff, be on the attack with his mix. And he did just that. He flooded the zone, kept them on their heels.”

Sheehan wasn’t the winning pitcher. That honor went to another former prospect, left-hander Justin Wrobleski, who followed Sheehan with five stellar innings of long relief in which he flashed his own promising signs (including a fastball that touched 99 mph at one point) after an up-and-down start to his big-league career.

For most of his outing, Wrobleski was protecting a 3-1 lead the Dodgers took in the bottom of the fifth, when Max Muncy hit a leadoff triple, Hyeseong Kim followed an Andy Pages sacrifice fly with a double, and slumping rookie catcher Dalton Rushing plated the game’s go-ahead runs on a two-run single.

"You look at the growth of two young pitchers, and what they did today against a very formidable ball club," Roberts said. "And also Dalton, being the catcher back there with the fingers, I thought it was a big night for him, as well."

With the Dodgers’ relievers worn out from back-to-back bullpen games the previous two nights, Wrobleski went back to the mound in the ninth and gave up two runs after a Muncy throwing error put him in a jam.

But Smith made sure it didn’t matter, coming off the bench in the bottom of the inning to whack a walk-off home run just over the right-field wall.

The Dodgers (46-29) have now clinched a series victory in this four-game set against the Padres (39-34), with the chance for a sweep Thursday. Overall, they are 17-11 in what has been a daunting 28-game stretch over the last month, extending their lead in the National League West to 4½ games.

“It's definitely been a long few weeks, playing some really good ball clubs, dealing with injuries and everything,” Smith said. “But yeah, we're just sticking together as a team, grinding through it one day at a time. … Try to play good baseball and see what happens.”

Despite the late dramatics, it was Sheehan’s return that had the biggest implications on the rest of the Dodgers’ season, giving their shorthanded rotation a badly needed, and highly intriguing, new option.

While discussing Sheehan before the game, Roberts said the Dodgers always “liked his makeup, his toughness, his ability to repeat his delivery, the swing-and-miss stuff, the preparation.”

But the way he navigated his Tommy John recovery — returning to action 13 months after undergoing the procedure last May — had added another element of optimism among team officials.

Roberts noted how Sheehan had increased his physical strength during his rehab, with the once lanky 6-foot-5 pitcher (who joked that he was so nervous during his rookie season, he lost weight from hardly eating) now possessing noticeably more mass.

Roberts also explained how Sheehan has “had a chance to watch a lot of baseball, learn and then now apply it.”

“I think that's going to make him a better major league pitcher,” Roberts said.

One start back, signs of such growth were already present — from the way Sheehan attacked the strike zone, put away hitters and commanded a mound he had longed to pitch off the past two years.

“He’s not afraid, he’s not gonna run from it and he’s gonna trust his stuff,” Roberts said. “To be prepared for tonight and not feel [out] his way back to the big leagues, in a big ball game, a lot of credit goes to him.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Mets manager Carlos Mendoza gave an injury update on Brett Baty after Wednesday's 5-0 loss to the Atlanta Braves, saying the infielder was unavailable for the second straight game due to right groin tightness.

"He wasn't available today," Mendoza said. "So we gave him another day. Took BP, ran some sprints. We'll see where we're at tomorrow."

When asked about the possibility of an IL stint for the 25-year-old, Mendoza said he's made "some progress" but the team will make a decision on Thursday.

"We'll see, we'll see tomorrow," Mendoza said. "See how he reports tomorrow, if he's able to do something or we have to make a decision there."

He added: "So yeah, depending on whether he's available because the past two night he hasn't been available. Again, we'll see where we're at. There was some progress today because he ran and all that, but again, not there yet."

Baty left Sunday's loss to the Tampa Bay Rays in the seventh inning and was listed as day-to-day. He said he felt the injury when "going for a foul ball towards the tarp."

Mendoza went on to say that he'll have to talk with David Stearns about if the team will bring someone up in case Baty can't play Thursday in the series finale against the Braves. New York will then head to Philadelphia for a three-game set with the Phillies this weekend.

The Dodgers on Thursday will announce their plans to assist the immigrant communities recently impacted in Los Angeles, according to a team spokesperson.

The announcement will mark the Dodgers’ first public comment regarding the recent unrest in the city since federal immigration agents began launching raids throughout the Southland almost two weeks ago.

The Dodgers initially declined to make any public comment when the raids first began. But their silence had become divisive among parts of their fan base, leading to increased calls on social media in recent days for the team to address what was happening around the city.

Read more:Dodgers say Nezza is not banned from stadium for singing national anthem in Spanish

Manager Dave Roberts was asked about the situation last week, saying, “I just hope that we can be a positive distraction for what people are going through in Los Angeles right now.”

Utilityman Kiké Hernández also spoke out on social media on Saturday, writing: “I cannot stand to see our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and human rights.”

The Dodgers became embroiled in a related controversy last weekend, when singer and social media personality Nezza sang a Spanish version of the national anthem at Dodger Stadium, in an act of protest against the immigration raids, despite being asked by a team employee to sing in English.

To this point, the only other local professional sports teams to issue public statements in the wake of the raids have been soccer clubs LAFC and Angel City FC, which both acknowledged the “fear and uncertainty” being felt throughout the L.A. community.

The full breadth of the Dodgers’ plans was not immediately clear. But, their silence on the situation will soon be broken.

Read more:Commentary: Angel City takes stand against immigration raids as others stay silent

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

It was another rough night behind the plate for a Mets catcher as Luis Torrens made a few uncharacteristic mistakes against the Atlanta Braves on the heels of Francisco Alvarez's errant throw to second base in extra innings.

In the starting lineup to give the young Alvarez a night off following a bad night defensively on Tuesday, the normally sure-handed and heady Torrens cost his team a couple of runs with his own miscues, the first of which coming on a strange play in the first inning.

With Paul Blackburn in trouble and the Mets already down 1-0, Torrens touched the ball that skipped by after a swing-and-a-miss with his mask which is not allowed. It's a very common rule that all catchers know, but for some reason Torrens blanked which cost New York a run as it acted as a balk which brought home the runner at third base.

"I took off my mask and I had the mask in my hand and when I went to grab the ball I touched it and I immediately knew," Torrens said through a translator after the game. "I tried to stop it, but it’s something that shouldn’t have happened."

Another odd play involving Torrens happened in the fourth inning. On a 3-1 count and a runner on third base, Jose Butto threw a fastball inside for a ball. However, Torrens made little to no effort to even catch the ball and it went to the backstop, resulting in another run. It was called a wild pitch on Butto, but it could've easily been called a passed ball on Torrens.

Offensively, Torrens finished 0-for-4 as Chris Sale dominated New York over 8.2 scoreless innings. While the Mets' entire offense looked bad against Sale, Torrens is now 2-for-his-last-25 and has seen his batting average drop to .223.

With Alvarez also struggling at the plate and behind it as well, New York suddenly has a problem at the catcher position -- add it to the growing list lately.

"We did a really good job the first month, two months and a half of playing things through," said Francisco Lindor after the loss. "And this is the time of year that we’re going through it. Every team goes through it and as a team we gotta continue to push each other. We gotta dig deep and continue to climb.

"At the end of the day, everybody here wants it and we all understand it’s a long year, we’re gonna deal with adversity. Put our heads down and work as hard as you can to get back to the winning side and then don’t look back."

The Mets return to action on Thursday night as they close out their three-game series against the Braves, hoping to not get swept at the House of Horrors that has become Truist Park.