Worldwide Sports News

CHICAGO — It sure looks as if another impressive group of prospects could have a major impact on the majors this year. Baseball’s next big star could be part of this year’s rookie class.

Here is a closer look at some of the majors’ most intriguing rookies this year:

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki

The rich got a little richer when the World Series champions signed Sasaki to a minor league contract in January that included a $6.5 million signing bonus. The 23-year-old right-hander with a fastball that tops 100 mph had a 29-15 record with a 2.10 ERA over four seasons with the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan’s Pacific League. The star-studded Dodgers could employ a six-man rotation during parts of the season to help with Sasaki’s transition to the majors.

New York Yankees outfielder Jasson Dominguez

Juan Soto’s departure in free agency should clear the way for regular playing time for Dominguez with New York. Nicknamed “The Martian,” Dominguez was signed for a $5.1 million bonus as a 16-year-old in 2019. He made his major league debut in 2023, but his development has been hampered by elbow and oblique injuries. He hit .314 with 11 homers and 35 RBIs in 58 games over three minor league stops last year.

Washington Nationals outfielder Dylan Crews

The sweet-swinging Crews was taken by Washington with the No. 2 pick in the 2023 amateur draft, right after his LSU teammate Paul Skenes went No. 1 overall to Pittsburgh. Crews can do it all, batting .270 with 13 homers, 68 RBIs and 25 steals in 100 games in the minors last year. He was brought up by Washington in August and swiped 12 more bags while hitting .218 with three homers in 31 games in his first stint in the majors.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Jackson Jobe

The 22-year-old Jobe steps into Detroit’s rotation after tossing four scoreless innings over two relief appearances in his first big league stint in September. He also worked 1 2/3 innings of three-run ball in the playoffs. The right-hander was selected by the Tigers with the third overall pick in the 2021 draft.

Chicago Cubs infielder Matt Shaw

Shaw takes over at third base for a Cubs team hoping to return to the playoffs for the first time since 2020. The 23-year-old Shaw was selected by the Cubs with the No. 13 pick in the 2023 draft. He hit .284 with 21 homers, 71 RBIs and 31 steals over two minor league stops last year.

Boston Red Sox outfielder Roman Anthony

The Red Sox have a solid outfield with Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu, but the 20-year-old Anthony — one of baseball’s top prospects — is pushing for a spot. He finished last season with Triple-A Worcester, batting .344 with three homers and 20 RBIs in 35 games, to go along with a .982 OPS. He could make his big league debut this summer.

Arizona Diamondbacks infielder Jordan Lawlar

Lawlar, the No. 6 overall pick in the 2021 draft, was hampered by thumb and hamstring injuries last season. But there is still a lot to like about the 22-year-old shortstop. He played in just 23 minor league games last year, but he hit .318 with two homers and 20 RBIs. He is going to begin the season with Triple-A Reno so he can receive regular playing time.

Athletics infielder Jacob Wilson

The son of former big league infielder Jack Wilson is a key building block for the A’s in the runup to their planned move to Las Vegas. Jacob Wilson made his major league debut in July, and the 22-year-old shortstop hit .250 with three RBIs in 28 games. The No. 6 overall pick in the 2023 draft also batted .433 (90 for 208) with seven homers and 39 RBIs in 53 games in the minors last year.

San Diego Padres outfielder Tirso Ornelas

Ornelas is coming off an impressive season with Triple-A El Paso, hitting .297 with 23 homers and 89 RBIs in 128 games. The Mexico native was signed by San Diego as part of its 2016 international signing class. He was sent down to minor league camp late in spring training, but he could make his big league debut this summer.

Baltimore Orioles pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano

The 35-year-old Sugano agreed to a one-year, $13 million contract with Baltimore in December. He is coming off his third MVP season in Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League, going 15-3 with a 1.67 ERA for the Yomiuri Giants. With Corbin Burnes’ departure in free agency, the Orioles are hoping Sugano can provide a lift for their rotation.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Bold decisions to change Major League Baseball’s longstanding rules quickened the pace of games and revived the popularity of stealing bases over the last few years.

A similarly creative move may be needed to help starting pitching regain the relevance it enjoyed as recently as a decade ago.

Only four pitchers (Seattle’s Logan Gilbert, Kansas City’s Seth Lugo, San Francisco’s Logan Webb and Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler) threw as many as 200 innings last season, down from 34 in 2014.

During that same 2014 season, all 30 major league teams got over 900 innings from their starting pitchers and five had over 1,000. Last year, only four teams had their starters pitch at least 900 innings, led by Seattle with 942 2/3.

While this shift has been years in the making, the numbers themselves provide a cold slap of reality to longtime fans who remember seeing Bob Gibson throw three complete games in the 1967 World Series or Jack Morris pitching 10 shutout innings in Game 7 of the 1991 Fall Classic.

Going back to the days of Cy Young and Walter Johnson, part of the game’s beauty was watching a pitcher work his way through a lineup three or four times.

With every team having multiple relievers who can come out of the bullpen and throw in the high 90s, what could prompt teams to let their starters work deeper into games?

Managers and players struggle to come up with a solution.

“Outside of just changing rules to incentivize managers to keep guys in games longer,” Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.

Roberts’ Dodgers exemplified the bullpen emphasis during their run to the 2024 World Series title. Their starting pitchers worked as many as six innings in just two of their 16 postseason games.

Texas’ Nathan Eovaldi went 5-0 with five postseason quality starts (defined as going at least six innings while allowing no more than three earned runs) a year earlier while helping the Rangers win their first World Series championship. Yet even he understands how much things have changed for starting pitchers since he made his big-league debut in 2011.

“Bullpens are a lot different now than they were back then,” Eovaldi said. “You’ve got a lot more guys who aren’t just eight- and ninth-inning guys. They can come in, in the sixth or seventh, go multiple innings. They all have multiple pitches now as well. I think that’s one of the fascinating things about the bullpen. You don’t have guys who are just a two-pitch mix anymore. They’ve got three or four pitches coming out, and two of them are really, really elite.”

And that’s why there seems only one way to get starters working more innings.

“Putting in rules that you have to,” San Francisco Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “We’ve created our own monster. It is what it is.”

What rules could MLB create to promote starting pitching?

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred says it’s too early to explore rules changes.

“Our focus right now is training methods, particularly offseason training methods,” Manfred said. “It’s going to be somewhere between education and recommendations. It’s very hard to tell people you can’t do X, Y and Z, right? They’re grown men and there’s no way to monitor it during the offseason.”

One problem is the lack of a clear consensus on what rule changes could work best.

For instance, MLB had the Atlantic League experiment in 2021 and 2023 with a rule change that would force a team to lose its designated hitter if its starting pitcher didn’t finish at least five innings.

Instituting that kind of rule could be a tough sell in the majors, where some of the league’s most bankable stars such as Shohei Ohtani and Bryce Harper have received ample playing time at DH the last few years. Fans paying to see those stars likely wouldn’t be happy to see them get removed as collateral damage from an early pitching change.

MLB hasn’t announced any similar types of rules experimentations in the minors this season.

The maximum number of pitchers allowed on MLB rosters was lowered from 14 to 13 in 2022, though that limit rises to 14 when rosters expand from 26 to 28 on Sept. 1. A more extreme rule change would be to require starters to work at least five or six innings unless they get injured, throw a certain number of pitches or allow a particular number of runs.

Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said he wouldn’t mind seeing the minor leagues try out more rule changes designed at lengthening starting pitchers. He wants those pitching prospects to get accustomed to working deeper into games.

“That’s the way it used to be with starters,” Bochy said. “Now I think the mentality can be, ‘Hey, I’ve done my job. I’ve thrown four or five innings.’ “

Giants pitcher Robbie Ray says the history of the game shows that starters can adapt to longer outings.

“I think starting pitchers are capable of doing it,” said Ray, who won the 2021 AL Cy Young Award with Toronto. “It’s just a matter of kind of training our bodies to do that again because what’s been expected of us has changed over the years.”

Restoring endurance as a valued skill

A 62-page MLB study released in December showed how the focus on rising velocities and maximum effort on each pitch had resulted in more injuries among pitchers. That study also revealed that starts of five or more innings dropped from 84% to 70% in the majors from 2005-24 and from 68.9% to 36.8% in the minors.

“Because we’re trying to create this engine and this repetitive thought of just pure stuff each and every pitch, yeah, starters are going to fatigue sooner,” Cleveland Guardians pitching coach Carl Willis said. “And at the same time, we’re training them that way. We’re training them to do so.

“Everybody still talks about wanting to go out for the sixth, wanting to go out for the seventh and getting deep into games. I don’t know that we’re training them to do that, and I don’t know how we are kind of teaching nowadays can allow that to happen.”

A change in approach could allow those starters to get that endurance. Right now, it’s the older guys who seem more used to that workload.

The MLB leader in quality starts last season was the 34-year-old Wheeler, who had 26. Lugo, 35, had 22 quality starts to tie for second place.

Even so, the 2024 season did offer some encouraging signs for the future of starting pitching.

MLB pitchers threw 5.22 innings per start last season. That represented the most since 2018, though it was still far off the 2014 average of 5.97.

The 2024 season also featured an MLB average of 85.5 pitches per start, the highest since 2019. Starters haven’t thrown as many as 90 pitches per appearance since 2017.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that the pendulum swing at least a little more toward getting starters to work longer. The recent focus on relievers puts more pressure on them, causing bullpens to break down.

There’s one obvious method to change that.

“I don’t think necessarily the game is going to all of a sudden turn back the other way, but there’s a huge push to understand how you can keep a bullpen healthy,” Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “And one of the biggest ways is those starters getting through that first bulk and getting you into the sixth or seventh.”

Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how those starters can pitch deeper into games more often.

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Giants outfielder Jerar Encarnacion will undergo surgery on his broken left hand.

The team announced that Dr. Steven Shin in Los Angeles would perform the procedure and a timetable for Encarnacion’s return would be determined after surgery.

Encarnacion broke the bone in his left hand while attempting a diving catch. He batted .302 with two home runs and 14 RBIs in spring training after hitting .248 with five homers and 19 RBIs in 113 at-bats in 2024.

The Dominican Republic native made his major league debut with Miami in 2022. He signed with San Francisco as a free agent last May.