Category: Sports News

Rangers 5, Dodgers 2

• And the Rangers take the finale.
• For the second straight game, Jacob deGrom gave up a first inning home run, and then didn’t allow any more runs the rest of the way.
• The previous time out, the homer was by the second batter of the game. This time, it was to the first batter of the game. Maybe next time, deGrom will give up a homer to the zeroth batter of the game, maybe in some sort of closed timelike curve, and shatter the laws of physics.
• The home run last time out was to Cal Raleigh. The homer in this game was to Shohei Ohtani. I guess if you’re going to give up first inning homers, at least you want to give them up to guys who are legit.
• Things were more or less under control for deGrom after the Ohtani homer that started the game. The Dodgers had runners on first and second with one out in the third, but deGrom got Kyle Tucker to strike out, and then, with Andy Pages up, there was a mix-up on the bases, with Shohei Ohtani, who was on first, thinking that Alex Call, on second, was headed to third on an 0-2 pitch called for a ball. Call wasn’t going, though, until Ohtani heading to second meant that he had to run, and the result was a TOOTBLAN to end the inning.
• Call and Ohtani ended up on first and second with two outs in the fifth, and Call went to third on a wild pitch, but Tucker once again struck out, and that was that.
• DeGrom generated 15 swings and misses in the game — six on the fastball, five on the slider, four on the change.
• DeGrom went six innings, picking up a Quality Start and keeping the bullpen from having to carry to heavy a load after Jack Leiter left in the fourth inning the previous night.
• Just a really nice outing from deGrom overall.
• Skip Schumaker went to Jacob Latz for the seventh, likely hoping to neutralize the Dodgers’ lefty-heavy lineup while getting a couple of innings from Latz. Latz ended up retiring just two of the five batters he faced, getting pulled for Cole Winn with a run in and a pair of runners on base. Winn fell behind Pages 2-0 before getting him to pop up to shortstop — with all three outs in the inning coming on pop ups to shortstop.
• Speaking of pop ups to shortstop…one of the four hits deGrom allowed came in the sixth inning, when Freddie Freeman hit a routine pop up to the left side of the infield. Josh Jung appeared, on the broadcast, to have been calling it, but then stepped away, apparently expecting Seager to catch it. Seager though Jung was going to catch it, and the result was a single.
• Per Statcast, that single was on a ball with an expected batting average of .000.
• Winn got out of the 8th, though he was not sharp — in all on the day, he threw 12 balls and 9 strikes. Winn walked Alex Freeland with two outs in the eighth, fell behind Dalton Rushing 3-1, got a strike swinging, and then threw a fastball that was called a ball.
• Good thing there’s ABS this year. Danny Jansen challenged the pitch, which was shown to clearly be in the strike zone, and instead of two on and two out with the tying run coming to the plate, Winn was out of the inning.
• Jansen challenged five pitches in all, with four of them being overturned. The final one was on a 1-2 pitch to Alex Call, who led off the ninth against Jakob Junis. The call was overturned, and Call was called out. Junis walked pinch hitter Will Smith on four pitches to alarm us all, but he struck out Ohtani swinging and, after falling behind Tucker 3-0, induced a 3-2 easy fly to end the game.
• The offense showed up, which was good, though there were definitely a lot of opportunities missed in the game.
• Texas picked up 10 hits and 10 walks in all, and you’d definitely expect more than five runs to come from that.
• Unfortunately, Texas hit into two double plays, had a caught stealing, and were 2 for 14 with runners in scoring position.
• Still, everyone had a hit except for Corey Seager, who drew a walk, and Danny Jansen, who drew three walks. Evan Carter homered, Josh Jung was 2 for 3 with two walks and a double, and Brandon Nimmo had a pair of hits.
• The win means that the Rangers remain in a tie in the American League West with the Athletics.
• Jacob deGrom’s fastball topped out at 98.6 mph, averaging 97.2 mph. Jacob Latz touched 95.4 mph with his fastball. Cole Winn’s fastball hit 96.1 mph. Jakob Junis’s sinker maxed out at 92.8 mph.
• Brandon Nimmo had a 104.4 mph single. Evan Carter had a 101.7 mph home run. Josh Jung had a 101.4 mph double.
• On to wherever it is that the Athletics play.

Carson Benge found a way to make himself valuable, even as he is among the many in the Mets lineup coming up short at the plate.

Sunday against the A’s, with the Mets down by a run, Benge made an excellent diving catch in shallow center to rob Denzel Clarke of a two-run single to end the top of the fourth.

“It felt great to have my pitcher’s back,’’ Benge said after the 1-0 loss. “I haven’t been the best out there the past few days. I’ve had a couple hiccups, but it’s part of it. That’s how you learn.”

The Mets are hoping Benge’s struggles — on both sides of the ball — are part of his learning process.

He went hitless Sunday as the Mets were swept out of Citi Field by the A’s to extend their losing streak to five games.

Benge is in a 3-for-34 funk, with nine strikeouts and four walks.

But with Juan Soto on the IL with a strained calf and Luis Robert Jr. still on a controlled playing calendar as the Mets try to keep him healthy, Benge continues to get opportunities.

Lately, he’s been surrounded by plenty of other slumping hitters.

“I feel like, particularly over the homestand, I had really good at-bats,’’ Benge said. “I feel it’s just a matter of time for everything to click, and I’m gonna be — and we’re all gonna be — rolling.”

And he insists he’s not overwhelmed by major league pitching or the pressure that comes with slumping — despite just 131 minor league games under his belt and having begun last year with High-A Brooklyn and finishing with 24 games at Triple-A Syracuse before he won the job in spring training.

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“You double down on the process even when things aren’t going your way out there,” Benge said. “Sticking to what makes you good is a big thing. I’m just approaching all of this like I always have: as the same game, just that guys are a little bit better. That doesn’t change even if you’re not doing too well. You don’t let the outside get to you.”

And when you can, try to help on defense.

Carlos Mendoza called the catch, which came with runners on second and third and two outs in the fourth, “pretty incredible.”

“That was an awesome play by him,’’ Freddy Peralta said. “I couldn’t believe it. For a moment, I thought it was gonna hit the ground. He was prepared for that and made a great catch.”

“He had that jump off the bat,’’ Mendoza said. “It looked like it would probably fall in, and the way he went after that ball and the dive was pretty impressive.”

Since last we spoke, the Diamondbacks have been one of the hottest teams in baseball. What’s going right for them?

Wesley: Eduardo Rodriguez, Zac Gallen, Jonathan Loáisiga, Corbin Carroll, Ildemaro Vargas, Jose Fernandez, and the unfortunately now injured Lawlar and Moreno have all been key drivers of this early success, in my opinion.

Makakilo:  Two observations: 

• From 5 to 11 April, the Diamondbacks scored 5.2 runs per game, which is more than a full run higher than their average from last season. 
• From 5 to 11 April, the Diamondbacks relievers had 9 shutdowns.  Since the start of this season, they had 22 shutdowns, which was tied with the Pirates for the second most in the Majors.   

Spencer: They’ve been playing good ball against teams scuffling to start. In the best case scenario, this means we will hold tie breakers if necessary late in the season. 

James: The pitching has been digging deep to find a bit of quality and the defense has been bailing out some mistake pitches, especially for Sewald. The team has also looked like one that is never convinced they are out of a game, even down four, so they keep pushing. 

One thing that isn’t is Ketel Marte and Geraldo Perdomo. What do they need to change to get the bats woken up?

Wesley: Ketel homered in Saturday’s loss, so hopefully that means he’ll start heating up. As I commented recently, the league is clearly taking Perdomo a little more seriously now that he’s established himself as a much more credible offensive threat. Now Gerry needs to adjust to the league. Simple as that.  RIBBIT. (Side Note: the linked song could easily be reworked to be about Gerry, or used a walk up song)

Makakilo:  Perdomo.  This season his 98.6% zone contact percentage is a career high, while his 7.9% whiffs is near a career low.  Let’s look at two strengths from last season:   “Perdomo’s batting strengths include squared-up per swing and launch angle sweet spot percentage.” – Makakilo

• His squared-up percentage improved from 32.3% to 38.4%.
• His launch angle sweet spot percentage fell from 36.2% to 27.9%. 

Geraldo Perdomo is doing nearly everything excellently.  Perhaps if he could improve his launch angle sweet spot percentage, that would allow him to sustain his breakout from last season.  

Spencer: I think the cold is affecting Marte. And Perdomo is playing to his floor which is unfortunate but not entirely surprising. I trust he pushes through it and finds the sweet middle ground. 

James: Marte is pressing too hard now. He got off to a slow start, quite possibly due to the colder weather. But once those struggles started to carry on, he started pressing much harder. When batting righty now, he’s taking Paul Bunyan swings at any fastball near the zone. He needs to simplify things and take what they are giving him, even if it is just slapping the ball into open space. Once he starts getting some results, the rest will follow.

Perdomo just needs to not let these struggles get to him. He is still working the counts admirably. That’s his game. He isn’t always going to get the walk or the mistake pitch, especially now that the opposition is keying in on him. But he needs to stay within himself and to continue playing his game while at the plate. The league has adapted. It is time for him to adapt in response, but to not abandon what has gotten him where he is.

The bullpen has actually been decent. Is this sustainable, or is it a bubble waiting to pop?

Wesley: Yes, it is sustainable, but also yes, it’s a bubble waiting to pop. The only reason why I think it might be sustainable is some of those veteran relievers signed to minor league contracts over the winter, are actually showing some promising results initially in Reno. 

Makakilo:  Two reasons to think it is sustainable:

• After 15 games, the relievers’ innings per game and ERA were about the same as last season (3.47 vs 3.45 Innings per game, and 4.85 vs 4.82 ERA).
• The anticipated return of pitchers (both starters and relievers) from the injured list.

Spencer: Both. Could go either way. 

James: The level of results is indeed sustainable. But the performance levels of some of the pitchers, especially Sewald, is likely a bubble waiting to burst. Sewald is getting saves. But he is giving up entirely too much hard contact. Right now, balls bouncing off the top of the wall or finding themselves screaming into a glove that was barely moved are allowing Sewald “success”. As the weather heats up, those balls are going to leave the yard or make it through the infield. The pitching in general needs to start doing better at limiting hard contact. Continuing to allow exit velocities over 100 mph is not a recipe for extended success.

Jo Adell put on a masterclass in home run robbery. In your opinion was it the greatest defensive game ever?

Wesley: I don’t think there is a definitive answer to that question other than “Maybe?” and there’s a few problems with that question. The first problem here is that the data just isn’t there for us to actually compare performances across all of MLB history.  At best, we have about 20 years of solid defensive data out of the 150 years of pro baseball’s history. The second problem is that you can’t compare an outfielder’s defensive performance easily against catchers or the other infield positions easily. A shortstop, for example, is going to have so many more defensive opportunities compared to an outfielder. The third and final problem is that some of the stats we have don’t capture the difficulty of robbing a HR. Catch probability doesn’t factor in the height of the wall at all, which is why statistically the Jo Adell game doesn’t look all that impressive when it obviously is impressive. With all that said, I’d say it’s the best defensive performance in a game I’ve seen by an outfielder in the last 25 years. 

Makakilo:  I’m thrilled to know that the glove, which Jo Adell used in the 3 catches, will go to the Hall of Fame at the end of the season.  It gladdens my soul to honor an extraordinary achievement by a player very unlikely to reach the Hall of Fame.   

Spencer: It may well be. I tend to be a fan of amazing infield play over outfield, but what he did is incredibly impressive. Great to see. 

James: It was certainly among them. I know Stark tried to find an answer and had little luck in finding a solid one. It will certainly go down as one of the greatest ever and likely one of the greatest any of us will see in our lifetimes – until someone else does it next week, just because that’s how fickle baseball can be.

Besides baseball, what is your favorite summertime activity?

Wesley: Being able to enjoy the beautiful night’s sky without freezing my a** off. I’ve conveniently always been more of a night owl, so while southern Arizona gets hot during the day, it’s generally cooler at night as long as you aren’t deep in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas. I live just southeast of Tucson, where it still gets quite chilly at night even when hitting triple digit temps during the day, while also having some of the darkest skies in Western North America that aren’t in the middle of nowhere. 

Makakilo:  Play pickleball.  I registered for two tournaments (one in April and one in June).  Each has random partners assigned in each round, so my expectation is mostly fun.    

Spencer: Homemade pizza and movie nights in a backyard. The ideal cookout style yard games, etc. absolute perfection. 
James: Saturday dinners with the close friends at my besty’s place. We do various themes and just chill with some adult beverages, good food, good friends, great vibes. Whenever it cools down, we’ll sit around the fire pit instead of the patio table. Just chilling and relaxing. Depending on the weekend, there is likely footy watching involved.

The Mets are calling up Tommy Pham, a league source confirms to SNY MLB Insider Chelsea Janes. 

Pham will join the team in Los Angeles for their three-game set, which kicks off Monday night. 

The veteran returned to the organization on a minor league deal on Opening Day. 

After taking some time to build himself up, he jumped into Low-A games earlier this month. 

Carlos Mendoza said this week that he wasn't sure exactly how many at-bats Pham would need, but he didn't think he was too far off from joining the big-league roster. 

Now after five games, he's being recalled to try to spark the Mets' struggling offense. 

New York was shut out for the second time in three games by the Athletics on Sunday as they closed out an ugly 1-5 homestand with their fifth consecutive loss.

The Mets are now averaging just 3.38 runs per game since Juan Soto went on the IL.   

Even at 37 years old Pham was able to put together a very strong showing last season, racking up 28 XBH's and a .330 OBP across 120 games with the Pirates.

It remains to be seen exactly how he'll fit into the Mets' outfield rotation, but he figures to compete for playing time with Carson Benge, Brett Baty, Jared Young and Tyrone Taylor in the corners. 

White Sox pitchers these days have to feel something like the cavalry riders of Lord Tennyson’s vivid description of the Charge of the Light Brigade: Galloping hopelessly into a unrepentant line of cannonfire (or Cannon-fire, in today’s case) knowing that offensive support is minimal and death is more or less certain.

The Kansas City Royals lineup isn’t exactly a valley of death these days, but the situation that Will Venable threw Jonathan Cannon into this afternoon might as well have been. Dating all the way back to his college days at Georgia, 116 of Cannon’s last 120 appearances have come as either a starting pitcher (111 games) or a bulk reliever (5 games). Yet, for reasons that may become clear in today’s postgame press conference but are not so to this author, Cannon was thrown into a two-on, one-out situation in the third inning of this afternoon’s game, despite his role as opener having been seemingly planned for the better part of a week now. To be sure, some of the blame for today’s chaos lies with Sean Newcomb, who failed to retire either of the lefties that he was brought in specifically to handle. Nonetheless, it felt to me like an abdication of a manager’s top priority as an authority figure: Put your players in a position to succeed. Point blank.

The reason I’m saying this is to ask the question: Why the hell would you take a guy who’s only ever been a starter and instead of giving him a clean inning as he surely expected, stuff him into a pressure situation that he’s actually not all that well suited for? Cannon pitches to contact, for the most part — if it were the eighth inning, you wouldn’t think of bringing him on in the same situation, because it’s one that very clearly and obviously calls for bat-missing ability.

Thrown into an entirely unfamiliar situation, surely with the added pressure of trying to make good on a major league chance that he failed to win out of Spring Training, Cannon walked all three batters he faced before being removed from the game in what the White Sox later called a “right hip contusion.”

Yet, somehow, the White Sox actually won this game.

While Cannon’s struggles may have been a consequence of his unconventional usage, Venable got away with it partly because Grant Taylor was absolutely filthy in his fourth appearance as an opener. Excitingly, the powers-that-be in the Sox dugout let him get a second inning of work, leaving Taylor with two perfect innings on his final line.

Less excitingly, the latter two of Cannon’s three walks resulted in runs scored, which leveled the game at two runs apiece not too long after the Sox had struck first with Tanner Murray’s first major league bomb, a towering fly ball that just kept carrying until it left the yard:

The last two walks wound up giving the Royals a 3-2 advantage, but Brandon Eisert managed to work his way out of Cannon’s jam. One must give Eisert credit where it’s due: Dropping back down to the minors after a full year spent putting up a very acceptable league average ERA in the bigs has to be tough psychologically, and Eisert responded admirably to his number being called for the first time this year.

The back-and-forth carried on for virtually the entire game. The Cannon sequence was highly discouraging, but it didn’t take long for the Sox to pick their spirits up again when Colson Montgomery found a barrel on a hanging breaking ball and turned a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 Sox lead:

Unfortunately, Eisert’s second inning out of the pen didn’t go quite as well as his initial relief of Cannon. After the lefty allowed two runners to reach base in the fifth inning, Jordan Hicks came on and came this close to holding the lead before Bobby Witt Jr. did what Bobby Witt Jr. does and gave the Royals a 5-4 lead:

Apropos of nothing, when was the last time you saw not one but both teams walk in a run in the same inning? I couldn’t tell you myself, but it did happen today when John Schreiber and Daniel Lynch IV couldn’t quite find the zone enough to hold Kansas City’s lead, with the tally that would ultimately be the game-winner scoring on a White Sox-esque wild pitch:

Meanwhile, after Hicks allowed Eisert’s runners to score, the Sox bullpen put up an incredibly game effort in holding on to a hair’s-breadth lead, with Bryan Hudson, Jordan Leasure, Lucas Sims and Seranthony Domínguez fully shutting down the Royals offense, none of them allowing a single hit in salvaging the split for the South Siders.

Given the Kauffman Stadium losing streak (12 games!) the White Sox entered this series with, a split doesn’t seem like such a terribly bad outcome after all. Last year’s Sox team didn’t win their sixth game until April 24. In 2024, it took until April 28. It was April 15th in 2023. Progress is being made! We think, at least.

The squad gets the day off tomorrow as they travel back to Chicago for a brief three-game homestand against the Tampa Bay Rays. The next first pitch — and the first pitch of Noah Schultz’s MLB career — comes on Tuesday at 6:40 p.m. Central time, and we’ll see you there!

Logan Gilbert needed this game almost as much as I needed Logan Gilbert to have this game. I’ll admit I was nervous at the beginning when the game started with Jose Altuve hitting a line drive into centerfield. But things quickly turned around when Josh Naylor deked a move back to first base that sent Altuve scrambling back. When Altuve realized Naylor was faking, he loped back toward second, and at that exact moment, with Altuve relaxed and leaning toward second, Gilbert struck. It notched Gilbert just the second pick-off of his career, with Altuve caught so flat-footed he didn’t even try to get back. According to Gilbert, the move was planned and was called from the dugout, with Naylor’s deke, Cal’s read and call for the pick-off with a glove drop: “Basically, everyone else picked him off. I just threw the ball.”

Despite his limited role in the affair, it still elicited a huge smile from Gilbert, who thought it was his first in MLB, saying, “I was about to throw the ball out, but I didn’t know if that would like, look bad.” I think the moment might have served as a hardware reset for him because the rest of his performance was, in my view, his best since his breakout 2024.

The key, as I’ve been obsessing over, was Gilbert’s slider. He picked up his first strikeout today—against Yordan Álvarez—on an 89-mph slider with more bite than I’ve seen on a Gilbert slider in a year. It was the first of five whiffs against it on just eight swings, with another three called strikes, for a CSW% of 47%. He even used it to put five batters away, something he used to rely on it for in his best seasons.

Just as exciting as the slider was the bounceback in Gilbert’s four-seamer velocity, regularly sitting 96-97 all game, a mile-per-hour faster than he sat at for most of last year, even before his injury. And there may be more in store, as he usually gains most of his velocity as the season rolls along.

He only had two bad PAs all game. The first came against Isaac Peredes in the third, in which he got away with three inside pitches to the pull-happiest hitter in baseball. That’s a better bet in T-Mobile Park in April than at Enron Field where those pitches are liable to end up in the Crawford Boxes, but it’s bad pitching regardless. The sequence ended on a hit off a cutter (a Gilbert pitch I’m coming to hate again). The second bad PA did more damage but seemed like a flukier sequence. Despite his fastball being hot both before and after this at-bat, he was at 95 three separate times pitching to Yainer Diaz in the fourth, the final one being parked in the bullpens. But it was the only run Gilbert gave up all day.

Other than those blemishes, this was a vintage Logan Gilbert start. He was even efficient for the first time in what felt like forever, never taking more than 15 pitches in any of his seven innings. After a 2025 in which he struggled to put batters away, he was cruising today. It was the result of a real change in approach: In the run-up to today’s game, he focused on being more efficient, saying he tried to act as though “if they swing, it’s a good thing.”

He wanted to just stay in the zone “instead of just trying to out-stuff everybody.” I’m going to try to write about this later this week, but this totally tracks with when he struggled to put batters away last season. As a preview, I’m thinking my thesis will be: was the issue that all Logan’s tinkering made his arsenal too good?

But getting back to today, he probably even had some left in the tank after his seven innings, getting pulled at 85 pitches. It was the first time he’s pitched seven innings since Opening Day of last year. “Didn’t know it’d been that long,” he said after the game. “That doesn’t feel great.” 

Of course, much as I wanted more out of him, the Astros were there to serve as a walking (pun intended) reminder of what happens when you don’t take care of your pitchers. After drawing 17 walks in the first two games, the Mariners offense started today in much the same fashion, facing literally Cody Bolton, who’d taken Hunter Brown’s place in Houston’s rotation. Brendan Donovan led off by reaching on a hit-by-pitch and Naylor walked to set up an RBI single from Randy Arozarena. They kept it going in the second, loading the bases on a trio of walks with nobody out. But just as they got Bolton on the ropes, he too left the game with the trainer. The back tightness that took him out today marks the seventh Astros starter with an injury issue.

The Mariners only cashed one of those runs in, but they kept getting opportunities, loading the bases again in the third, and scoring another pair of those runners on a Cole Young RBI walk and a Donovan sac fly. But despite having scored four, it felt like they were wasting a lot of chances, leaving nine runners on base through five innings. That’s enough LOBsters in the pot to make you nervous no matter how well Logan was pitching. I had to keep reminding myself they had, in fact, scored four times.

Things got even dicier in the sixth when Julio Rodríguez was thrown out at the plate. But they finally broke through on the next batter, when a Luke Raley double scored two, including Randy Arozarena losing his helmet rounding second but scoring from first.

The Mariners certainly could have scored more today given their eight hits and nine walks, but six was enough. Those nine walks bring their total to 26 over just 25 innings of offense against the Astros this series.

Josh Naylor earns today’s Sun Hat Award for providing a perfect bookend with an unassisted double play in the ninth, once again putting down a Jose Altuve who’d gotten too far off first base. This time it was Naylor’s turn to smile. As Gilbert put it, “Sometimes you can have fun out there. That’s OK.”