Category: Sports News

The Mets are calling up veteran outfielder Tommy Pham before their three-game series with the Dodgers begins in Los Angeles on Monday night, per a report from Will Sammon. The 38-year-old signed a minor league deal with the organization in late March.

Pham played in a handful of games with the Low-A St. Lucie Mets over the past few days, a relatively short ramp-up to get him ready to return to major league action. Having spent the majority of the 2023 season with the Mets, Pham has been a slightly-below-league-average hitter since the team traded him to the Diamondbacks that year. Over the course of the 2024 and 2025 seasons, Pham had a 93 wRC+ in 927 plate appearances with the White Sox, Cardinals, Royals, and Pirates.

There’s no news yet on the corresponding move that will clear a spot for Pham on the active roster, but the Mets have a few candidates. Carson Benge has struggled to the tune of a 33 wRC+ in his first 52 major league plate appearances, Brett Baty hasn’t been much better with a 51 wRC+, and Ronny Mauricio was only called up a few days ago, having spent the majority of this season in Triple-A Syracuse.

The Colorado Rockies have had the most up-and-down season so far. They were swept on the road by the Miami Marlins; they then took two of three from the Toronto Blue Jays; they took one of three against the Philadelphia Phillies in the Home Opening series; swept the Houston Astros at home; and then were swept in a four-game road set by the San Diego Padres.

There have been some close games and there have been some blowouts — and the Rockies have been on the winning and losing side of both outcomes.

With that in mind, I hope you answer me these questions three:

1. Who has impressed you the most so far this season?
2. Who has surprised you the most so far this season?
3. Who concerns you the most so far this season?

Let us know in the comments!

Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks!

The Sunday Night Baseball curse continues. After shutting out the Atlanta Braves last night, Tanner Bibee and the Cleveland Guardians weren’t able to take the rubber match from Chris Sale.

It wasn’t for a lack of hits that the Guardians lost, something strikingly different from last season. Cleveland, in fact, had a hit in every inning that they faced Chris Sale. Chase DeLauter and José Ramírez pieced together some quality at bats, but could never cross home plate.

In the top of the first, CDL and José hit back-to-back one-out singles. Chase had a great jump on José’s hit, going from first to third, leaving second base open for José to steal. In the top of the third, a force out and a single had runners on the corners that were, again, left stranded. Rhys Hoskins was the final out for both innings, making up for it in the top of the sixth.

With what was looking like a shutout looming, Rhys Hoskins got Cleveland on the board with a solo home run to center.

Hopefully Rhys’ next home run will come in a situation with runners on.

Other than that, this was a rough one. Bibee finished the night having allowed 8 runs on 11 hits in 4.2 innings of work. He walked 1 and struck out 4. Kolby Allard pitched 3.0 innings, allowing 5 runs on 8 hits and 1 walk. He struck out 1 batter. Hedges pitched for one out.

Chase DeLauter went 2-for-2 with a walk and a double before being pinch hit for. Rhys Hoskins went 1-for-4 with a HR. Daniel Schneemann went 3-for-4, keeping the offense alive at the bottom of the line up with 2 doubles.

Atlanta always has Cleveland’s number for whatever reason. I will take solace in the fact that this series came early this year, giving the team plenty of time to rebound and move on.

The team will travel to St. Louis to face the Cardinals in a three game series. Tomorrow’s games starts at 7:45PM.

The reports of the Braves’ offensive demise were greatly exaggerated.

A night after the lineup was blanked for the first time since last July, the Braves awakened with a vengeance, running away with a 13-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians to win their third rubber match of the season.

With the victory, Atlanta is the last team in the league to have not lost a series this season.

Atlanta finished with 19 hits, its third game with at least 15 this season and the most hits a major league team has had in a game this season. Nine different players earned a hit, led by a 4-for-4 night from Jorge Mateo and three-hit nights from Ozzie Albies and Mauricio Dubon.

The Braves’ offense handed Cleveland starter Tanner Bibee (0-2, 6.38 ERA) the worst start of his major league career. He let up a career-high eight runs and a career-high-tying 11 hits.

It didn’t get any better when former Brave Kolby Allard came out of the bullpen for Cleveland as Atlanta tagged him for five runs on eight hits over three innings of relief work.

The bottom four spots in the order played a big role in Sunday’s win, amassing a combined 12 hits and eight RBIs. Mauricio Dubon and Jorge Mateo opened the scoring with consecutive two-out RBI hits in the second before Ronald Acuña Jr. followed with an RBI double of his own to make it 3-0.

Dominic Smith added on with a two-run homer in the fourth (his third in 12 games and 31 at-bats) to extend the Braves’ lead to 5-0.

That alone proved to be more than enough for Atlanta ace Chris Sale (3-1, 3.27 ERA), who bounced back from a rough start last time out against the Angels to look like himself again in his fourth start of the season.

It wasn’t his sharpest outing. He allowed at least one baserunner in each of his six innings on the mound and scattered eight hits. But it may have been one of his more clutch starts, as he stranded seven runners by holding the Guardians hitless in six at-bats with runners in scoring position.

Sale’s only run allowed came on a leadoff homer from Rhys Hoskins in the sixth and he bounced back to retire the final three batters he faced.

Even with such a cushion thanks to Sale’s strong start, the offense kept piling on with a four-run fifth to open up 9-0 lead. After Drake Baldwin — the only starter to finish without a hit — lined out, five of the next six batters reached, highlighted by an RBI single from Albies, a two-run double from pinch hitter Kyle Farmer and another RBI hit from Dubon.

Just for good measure, Atlanta tacked on four more runs in the eighth, forcing Cleveland to bring catcher Austin Hedges into the game to get the final out in the ninth.

The freshly called-up Dylan Dodd carried things the rest of the way after Sale’s departure, tossing three shutout, one-hit innings to close out a stress-free win and earn his third career save.

The Braves remain at home to begin next week, kicking off NL East play with a three-game series against the Marlins before heading north for a weekend set against the Phillies.

The Mets, desperate for offense, are calling up Tommy Pham, The Post confirmed.

Pham signed a minor league deal with the Mets on Opening Day and played five games with Low-A St. Lucie.

The 38-year-old spent last season with the Royals and has been a consistent hitter from the right side. He spent part of 2023 with the Mets before being traded to the Cardinals at the deadline.

The move to bring Pham up in time for the series-opener against the Dodgers on Monday in Los Angeles came after the Mets were shut out twice in three games by the A’s.

Juan Soto is on the IL with a strained calf and they decided not to play Luis Robert Jr. in Sunday’s 1-0 loss to the A’s, as he played five straight games and they are trying to keep the outfielder healthy following several leg injuries the previous two seasons with the White Sox.

Mendoza said he could only use Robert as a pinch-hitter “with the game on the line and be done. We didn’t have him for defense.”

Robert has been solid at the plate and not being able to use him is especially tough with Juan Soto out with a calf strain.

Without them, the Mets relied on Tyrone Taylor, Brett Baty and rookie Carson Benge in the outfield in Sunday’s loss and are hoping Pham can still provide some pop.

They will need to make a corresponding move to get Pham on the roster, although they do have room on the 40-man roster.

There had been thought Pham, due $2.25 million if he sticks in the majors, would soon get promoted to Triple-A Syracuse to get more at-bats.

Instead, the Mets will turn to him earlier than expected.

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.