Category: Sports News

Here are five things to watch and predictions as the Mets and Brewers play a three-game series at Citi Field starting on Wednesday at 1:10 p.m. on SNY.

5 things to watch

The Mets' starting rotation has been a big issue

As bad as the Mets' weekend sweep at the hands of the Pirates was, two of the losses can be chalked up to poor starting pitching, as David Peterson and Frankie Montas got jumped early to make Friday and Sunday's games relatively non-competitive.

In the cases of Peterson (who has had two bad starts in a row after being tremendous before that) and Montas (who was great in his first start back from the IL), it's fair to expect they'll be fine going forward.

Peterson gets the start in the series finale on Thursday, which will follow starts by Clay Holmes and Blade Tidwell during Wednesday's doubleheader.

Holmes was solid against the Braves last Wednesday, tossing 5.0 innings of one-run ball while allowing three hits, walking four, and striking out two. His issues with bases on balls and his increased workload will continue to be something to watch, though.

As far as Tidwell, he was hit hard in relief against the Pirates on Friday, surrendering four runs in just 3.1 innings. That came after a decent showing against the Phillies on June 20, when he allowed two runs on four hits in 3.2 innings.

Can Mark Vientos shake off the rust?

Vientos returned on Friday but didn't provide much, going 1-for-13 while striking out five times.

That Vientos looked rusty shouldn't be a surprise, given the fact that his rehab assignment was relatively short and that he had gone nearly a month without an at-bat in a big league game.

But the Mets badly need Vientos to provide better at-bats, which would help lengthen a lineup that has been very inconsistent lately.

Vientos had been hitting relatively well in the six weeks before his injury, and he has the type of power bat that can make a serious impact if he finds his footing.

When are the reinforcements coming?

As the Mets hope for their rotation and offense to stabilize, help is on the way.

Sean Manaea, whose rehab was briefly paused due to a cortisone shot in his elbow after a loose body was discovered, will make another rehab start on Wednesday. That could potentially be Manaea's final one before returning.

Then there's Kodai Senga, whose return could possibly come shortly after the All-Star break.

Senga is nearing a rehab assignment. And once he gets in rehab games, it might not take long for him to return. Despite being out with a hamstring injury, Senga has continued throwing - and threw off the mound last week.

Another key cog the team could get back soon is Jesse Winker, who is in the middle of a rehab assignment.

Jacob Misiorowski

Misiorowski, one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, has been a force of nature since debuting on June 12.

In three starts, he has allowed just two runs on three hits while walking seven and striking out 19 in 16.0 innings.

The wiry right-hander features a fastball that regularly touches triple digits, and a devastating slider that he throws in the low-90s. He also mixes in a curve and changeup.

Misiorowski gets a start during Wednesday's doubleheader.

The Brewers have been hot

During a season that started with Milwaukee being a bit of an afterthought when it came to the playoffs, they're again right in the middle of things.

The Brewers have won eight of their last 10 games, trail the Cubs by just 2.0 games for first place in the NL Central, and are holding the second Wild Card spot.

A lot of that can be linked to Milwaukee's solid starting pitching, which includes Freddy Peralta, former Met Jose Quintana (who starts on Thursday) and now has Misiorowski.

Offensively, they're getting strong contributions from the usual suspects. That includes Christian Yelich, Jackson Chourio, Rhys Hoskins, Sal Frelick, and Brice Turang.

Predictions

Who will the MVP of the series be?

Francisco Lindor

Lindor is overdue for a breakout.

Which Mets pitcher will have the best start?

Clay Holmes

Holmes carries a 2.97 ERA and 1.24 WHIP into Tuesday's outing.

Which Brewers player will be a thorn in the Mets' side?

Rhys Hoskins

Hoskins seems to relish playing the villain in New York.

Alex Bregman shares encouraging update on return timeline originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Red Sox’ struggling lineup could soon get a much-needed boost.

Alex Bregman is inching closer to returning from a quad injury that has sidelined him since May 23. According to WEEI’s Rob Bradford, the star third baseman said Monday there is a chance he returns before the All-Star break. Boston’s last game before the break is scheduled for July 13.

Bradford also relayed an encouraging update from manager Alex Cora, who said, “The way (Bregman’s) talking about it, he’s close to 100 percent.”

Bregman looked like an American League MVP candidate before his injury. Through 51 games, the 31-year-old slashed .299/.385/.553 with 11 homers and 35 RBI. He still ranks second on the team in homers, fourth in RBI, and second in doubles (17).

With Rafael Devers no longer in the picture, the Red Sox desperately need Bregman’s bat in the middle of their lineup. They entered Monday having lost three consecutive series and seven of their last eight games. Since trading Devers, they have a 4-8 record with an average of only 3.83 runs scored per game.

Despite missing the last month, Bregman was the only Red Sox position player to advance to Phase 2 of MLB All-Star Game voting. Phase 2 voting ends Wednesday at noon.

The Red Sox will look to turn things around when they welcome the Cincinnati Reds to Fenway Park on Monday night.

The glasses might’ve come first. But it was a light bulb moment with the swing that made the most profound change.

Just over a month into the season this year, veteran Dodgers slugger Max Muncy was in a desperate search for answers.

Through the team’s first 30 games, his batting average started with a one and his home run total was stuck on zero. His role as the team’s starting third baseman was being called into question, fueling early-season speculation that the team would need to replace him before the trade deadline. He was absorbing daily criticism from fans, while trying not to succumb to internal self-flagellation.

The 10-year veteran had gone through cold starts before. But nothing quite so frustrating as this.

“It’s a privilege to play under this pressure, and it’s something I’ve always thrived on, but it doesn’t mean it’s been easy,” Muncy said on the last day of April. “It’s been a rough month.”

Read more:Justin Wrobleski gives Dodgers a surprising boost during win over Royals

Starting that afternoon, however, Muncy made one big change. Upon learning he had astigmatism in his right eye, he began wearing glasses at the plate to balance out his vision. In his first game using them, he hit his first home run of the year.

Then, nine days later, came the real breakthrough.

After spending the entirety of the winter tinkering with his swing, and most of the opening month trying to calibrate his mechanics, everything suddenly synched up during a May 9 at-bat in Arizona.

Muncy took a quick hack at a high fastball from Diamondbacks reliever Kevin Ginkel. He lined a ninth-inning, tying single through the right side of the infield in the Dodgers’ eventual win at Chase Field. And he realized that, finally, he’d found a feeling in the batter’s box he’d been chasing the last several years.

A demarcation point had just been established.

And Muncy’s season has been transformed ever since.

“The funny thing about baseball is, sometimes, it just takes one swing, one play, one pitch to lock someone in,” he said. “And ever since that day, I’ve had that feeling in the back of my head. Like, ‘That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.’”

In 36 games before then, Muncy was hitting .188 with only one home run, eight RBIs and 43 strikeouts; his early days with the glasses not even leading to an immediate turnaround.

But since May 9, he has been one of the best hitters in baseball, and on one of the most prolific stretches of his entire career. Over his last 43 games, Muncy’s batting average is .313, a personal best over any span that long in the majors. He has 12 home runs and a whopping 47 RBIs, a major-league-leading total in that stretch. According to Fangraphs’ all-encompassing wRC+ statistic, only Ronald Acuña Jr., Cal Raleigh, Aaron Judge and Ketel Marte have been more productive at the plate.

And, most important, he has re-established himself as a central cog in the Dodgers’ lineup.

“He’s one of our most trusted hitters,” manager Dave Roberts said this past weekend. “I haven’t always been able to say that.”

Being a better, more trusted hitter has been a work in progress for Muncy ever since the devastating elbow injury he suffered at the end of 2021.

In Muncy’s prime years with the Dodgers from 2018-21, he not only blossomed as one of the best sluggers in baseball by belting 118 home runs over a four-year stretch, but did so while posting a .246 batting average and .371 on-base-percentage; solid marks for a power threat occupying a key role in the middle of the Dodgers’ order.

At the core of that all-around approach was an ability to handle pitches to all parts of the plate — none more important than elevated fastballs at the top of the strike zone.

“When I’m going well, I’m a really good high-fastball hitter,” Muncy said earlier this year.

“When Max is covering that pitch,” added hitting coach Aaron Bates, “it allows him to do so many other things as a hitter.”

Coming off his elbow injury, however, getting to high heat became a weakness in Muncy’s game. For much of the next two years, when he still hit for power but batted only a combined .204, he felt “it was really hard to replicate” his old swing. Last year, he made some incremental progress — when he batted .232 — but was stalled by an oblique strain that cost him the middle three months of the season.

Thus, this winter, Muncy set his mind to rediscovering his old mechanics.

“It really wasn’t that big of a change,” he said. “It was just going back to what I did when I first got here from 2018 to 2021. The same philosophy I had all those years.”

The work started in January, when Bates and fellow Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc visited Muncy at his home in Texas and crafted a simple focus for the 34-year-old’s offseason work: Purposely practice hitting grounders and line drives on a lower trajectory, in hopes it would train his swing to stay on top of the ball even on pitches up in the zone.

“You know he’s naturally going to have loft in his swing to elevate the baseball easily,” Bates said. “So that was a focus point for him, making sure he can hit a hard line drive on a pitch up in the zone, not necessarily trying to elevate it more than he needs to.”

A sound theory, with some disastrous early results.

Read more:Shohei Ohtani hits 102 mph in another sharp pitching start, but Dodgers fall to Royals

At the start of the year, Muncy’s new swing thought bred other unexpected bad habits. In his effort to stay on top of the ball, he was opening up his backside and letting his front shoulder drift too far forward at the start of his move. As a result, Muncy had trouble squaring the ball and keeping his bat level through the strike zone. It led to not only a lack of power, but a diminished ability to distinguish the kind of pitches being thrown — evidenced by a nearly 32% strikeout rate in April that was seventh-highest among MLB hitters.

“That’s where it’s tough playing the sport,” Muncy said. “Because you can’t chase results immediately, even though you kind of have to. You have to chase the process in the long run.”

And even as external pressure over his dwindling production mounted, Muncy said the club’s coaches and front office assured him he’d have time to keep working through it.

“It’s easier to stick with something long-term when that’s the case,” Muncy said. “And for me, that’s been my entire career. Trust the process, not the result.”

During late April, Muncy’s process included a visit to the same eye doctor who had diagnosed Kiké Hernández with eye astigmatism last year; a discovery that prompted Hernández to start wearing glasses, and keyed a sudden offensive turnaround in the second half of the season.

Turned out, Muncy had a similar problem. Though his vision was 20/12, astigmatism in his right eye had made him left-eye dominant, a subtle but limiting dynamic for a left-handed hitter.

Thus, on the last day of the month, Muncy also started wearing prescription-lensed glasses, and christened the new eyewear with a home run in his first game using them.

Read more:Far from their best, Dodgers find a way to beat Royals and move into MLB wins lead

“It’s not necessarily something that I need,” Muncy said. “But just any chance at all it evens out both eyes for me, I’ve been taking it.”

Yet, in his first week using them, he still went just six-for-28 with nine strikeouts and only five walks. He was still grinding through his adjustments to his mechanics. He was still waiting for one swing where everything would feel synced up.

When Muncy came to the plate in that May 9 game against the Diamondbacks to face Ginkel, he surveyed the situation, put his swing mechanics out of his head, and tried to focus on only one objective.

“It was guy on second, no outs,” Muncy recalled, “so I was trying to give up the at-bat, get the ball on the ground to the right side of second base, and move the runner from second to third.”

Throughout his career, this is when Muncy is at his best. When his mind isn’t clouded by the pressure to produce, or the particulars of his swing. When he’s “going out there and just trying to play the situation,” he explained. “Like, ‘What is my at-bat calling for in this moment?’ ”

And on that day in Arizona, with the Dodgers trailing by one run in the ninth, that simplified mindset gave Muncy his moment of long-awaited clarity.

Ginkel threw a 95 mph fastball up near Muncy’s chest. The slugger hit it with the kind of quick, level swing he’d spent all winter attempting to craft.

As the ball rocketed through the right side of the infield for a game-tying single, Muncy felt a light bulb go off as he pulled into first base.

“I was so short and direct to it, it just triggered something in my head,” Muncy said. “It kind of took all the stuff I’d been working on, even going back to the winter, and was like, ‘OK, this is how I’m trying to get it to feel.’ ”

Muncy hasn’t looked back ever since.

By being able to cover the top of the strike zone, he hasn’t had to cheat on fastballs or hunt on tougher pitches to hit around his knees. When coupled with the glasses that have helped him better differentiate velocity from spin, he’s been able to be selective and wait out mistakes.

“There’s been spells in his career where it was the three [true] outcomes and that was it,” Roberts said, long a believer in Muncy’s ability to be a more potent hit collector, rather than just a high-powered, high-strikeout slugging presence. "Now, I think he’s a complete hitter. So you see the runs batted in, the homers, the quality of at-bats all tick up."

During this torrid two-month stretch, highlights have come in bunches for Muncy. He’s had two seven-RBI games and another with six. He hit a game-tying home run in the ninth inning against the New York Mets on June 3. He had two grand slams in the span of three games last week.

He has gone from the subject of trade deadline rumors to a fan-voting finalist to make the All-Star Game.

Read more:Dodgers pursue record for most MLB All-Star starters as voting resumes for 48 hours

He knows it’s still only been two months; that, in a sport as fickle as baseball, the feeling he has discovered at the plate can just as quickly disappear again.

But for the first time in years, he’s healthy, in sync and possessing total clarity — in both vision and mind — every time he steps to the dish.

“This is definitely more of what I was envisioning,” Muncy said this weekend, reflecting back on the early-season struggles and laborious swing work over the winter that preceded his two-month tear.

“Now, I have the confidence to know I can accomplish pretty much anything I want to do for that situation. Whereas, before, you don’t always have that.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.