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After a rare disappointing series (against the Washington Nationals, no less), the Atlanta Braves had no choice but to lick their wounds and keep it pushing against their traditional (league-mandated) interleague rivals in the form of the Boston Red Sox. Considering that the top of the rotation was going to be in action, there was at least some hope that this meant that the pitching could at least keep Boston quiet over the course of the three games at Fenway Park.

The big question was whether or not the Braves could get over the funk that their lineup was in. It’s one thing to only score one run over two games — both losses. It’s another to do so against a Nationals pitching staff that had performed very poorly up until that date. It was now time to see if that was just an inevitable blip that all teams will have to deal with over the course of a long baseball season or if the Braves had what it took to bust out and get back to smacking the ball all over the place. In the end, we got a mixture of results but one that ended up being an ultimately successful one for the Braves. Let’s get into it, y’all.

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Tuesday, May 26

Braves 7, Red Sox 6

This one started very inauspiciously in the first inning for the Braves as they went down in order very quickly against Ranger Suárez while Spencer Strider gave up back-to-back homers to start things off. Atlanta would be forced to come from behind yet again and while it took a while for things to get really interesting as far as the Braves were concerned, the road team appeared to be up for the task of making it happen.

Suárez was seemingly cruising until the fifth inning, which is when he was suddenly jarred out of that false sense of security by Matt Olson hitting a lightning bolt of a two-run homer that tied things up. The Braves went on to run Suárez out of the game in the next frame, as an Austin Riley triple off of the Monster and an RBI ground rule double from Michael Harris II gave the Braves the lead and Suárez the hook. They made sure that it was a bad day for him after a productive out from Dominic Smith and an RBI single from Ronald Acuña Jr. gave the Braves some breathing room and put all five runs on Suárez’s line for the night.

The sixth inning was also the end of the line for Strider, as he eventually ended up with five innings pitched and three runs allowed after his leadoff walk in the sixth eventually made it home while he was in the dugout. From that point forward, things got topsy turvy to the point where the Braves were in clear survival mode once this game ended. Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit a solo shot in the seventh inning to cut the deficit but Michael Harris II’s fourth hit of the night was a two-run dinger in the eighth that gave the Braves some vital insurance runs. They ended up needing those insurance runs because Raisel Iglesias had a rare rough outing where he got dinged for two runs while trying to close out the game. He eventually did so and the Braves escaped with a series-opening victory.

Wednesday, May 27

Red Sox 8, Braves 0

All due respect to the lovely TV production that BravesVision brings to us fans for nearly every game but also, you know it’s bad when C.J. Nitkowski catching a foul ball was the highlight of the night for the Braves.

For the second time in four games (and the third time in about a week-and-a-half), the Braves got shut out. A six-run fourth inning for the Red Sox (aided by two costly errors from Matt Olson and Chadwick Tromp) ended up being the turning point since Atlanta had little to offer against Connelly Early and Ryan Watson on the mound for the Red Sox. Boston added two more runs late and this ended up being a pretty lame one after the Braves went down in extremely short order following the big fourth inning for the Red Sox.

Thursday, May 28

Braves 10, Red Sox 2

The pitching matchup between Chris Sale and Payton Tolle promised to be a good one and as it turned out, both pitchers kept their promise. While both pitchers “only” made it into the fifth inning in this one, Chris Sale got the slight edge as he ended up actually completing five innings while Tolle got pulled following 4.2 innings of work.

It came down to which team would be able to put in the work after the starting pitchers exited the game and boy, oh boy, the Braves certainly put in the work once Tolle was gone. The game turned Atlanta’s way in the sixth inning, which is when the Braves took the lead on a bases-loaded walk from Mike Yastrzemski and then broke the game wide open after Ronald Acuña Jr. hit his first dinger since April 24 (!!!) in grand fashion. Acuña’s grand slam put Atlanta up by five runs and thanks to the bullpen clamping down from that point forward, the Braves ended up cruising for the rest of the way.

Michael Harris II added another home run for good measure in the seventh inning to put a cap on a lovely series for Money Mike and then Ozzie Alies bopped one out in the ninth inning for two runs that pushed the Braves into double digits on the day. I’d say that avenging an eight-run loss with an eight-run win is a pretty solid way to clinch a series, right? Their 15th series win in 57 games, no less. Pretty good, huh!

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For this to be a series win, there wasn’t really a ton of time where it felt comfortable for the Braves — or a least that’s how I felt watching this series. The only times I really felt completely relaxed while watching this series was after Raisel Iglesias got the final out of the first game and after Acuña’s grand slam in the series finale. Outside of that, Boston was tough to deal with and it’s hard to believe that they have such a poor record at Fenway Park.

Still, it speaks to the resiliency of this Atlanta squad that they were able to turn this into a series win. It got really hairy in that first game and the second game was tight for a bit as well but ultimately the Braves did themselves a lot of credit by proving themselves as the better team and taking the series.

Seeing Michael Harris II rake over the course of this three-game series was certainly encouraging and it was truly a sight for sore eyes to see Acuña send one flying over the Green Monster in order to put Atlanta well ahead in the rubber match. While it’s obvious that this lineup is missing Drake Baldwin a little bit, it sure would be nice to see the current face of the franchise start to get hot at the plate, himself. Hopefully this’ll be the start of seeing Acuña get on a heater, which is something that pretty much everybody across Braves Country would love to see. Jorge Mateo even did some serious work when he was called upon, so that was lovely to see in what ended up being a pretty positive series for the Braves.

Now, the focus turns to Cincinnati where the Braves will hopefully be able to keep things going in Cincinnati against the Reds. It’s always a bit concerning going into that ballpark with the bottom part of the rotation set to take on all the challenges that come along with playing against the Reds in that stadium. At the same time, the Reds have struggled against teams who are over .500 and the Braves lineup will also get to hopefully benefit from those dimensions as well. Hopefully we’ll continue to see the version of Atlanta’s lineup that did some serious work in the two wins in this series at Fenway Park rather than the one that has been intermittently showing up and getting shut out. We’ll see what happens.

Mets starting pitcher Kodai Senga made his first start for the organization's Triple-A ballclub, the Syracuse Mets, on Thursday night.

Senga took the mound against the Rochester Red Wings, the Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals. Senga's workload saw a massive boost tonight, though his effectiveness and efficiency left a lot on the table.

He came out of the gates firing, beginning his start against the top of the Red Wings order by striking out the side, all swinging.

However, he ran into some trouble during the rest of his start, losing control of the strike zone on multiple occasions. 

He threw 80 pitches through 3.2 innings, allowing three runs on four hits and two walks.

Just two of those runs were earned, as in the fourth inning, the baserunner who eventually scored (Robert Hassell III) reached base on a fielding error by highly touted first base prospect Ryan Clifford.

Senga was removed from the game, having recorded five strikeouts with Syracuse leading 6-3. His signature forkball was his best pitch all night, especially when it came to generating whiffs.

While the Mets are clearly ramping up Senga's workload at a rapid pace, it remains unclear as to what role he will have on the team's pitching staff, as well as when he will return to the big league roster.

Senga made his first rehab start last Friday, completing 4.1 innings and throwing 58 pitches at Single-A St. Lucie.

The righty was placed on the IL on April 28 with lumbar spine inflammation.

The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani is the best player in baseball now. But is he the greatest baseball player of all time?

Former National League MVP Joey Votto went on “The Dan Patrick Show” on Thursday morning and voiced his opinion about the two-way superstar.

“I really think we might be in the middle of one of, if not the greatest, season in the history of baseball,” Votto said.

"I really think we might be in the middle of one of, if not the greatest, season in the history of baseball."

– @JoeyVotto on Shohei Ohtani pic.twitter.com/YyAxOxJNvz

— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) May 28, 2026

After making his MLB debut with the Angels in 2018, Ohtani has done plenty of incredible things. He’s the first player to collect more than 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a season, he’s a four-time MVP, five-time All-Star, four-time Silver Slugger and two-time World Series champion.

But it seems the best is yet to come.

After returning to the mound last season and collecting 62 strikeouts with a 2.87 ERA, Ohtani is the front-runner to be the NL Cy Young Award winner this year.

Through nine starts, he’s nearly replicated last season’s strikeout production by collecting 61, has a 0.82 ERA and has pitched five or more innings in each start.

Ohtani is second in WAR (4.1) behind the Phillies’ Cristopher Sanchez.

When May began, Ohtani’s bat went cold, and his average dropped to .233. Through his last 15 games, Ohtani started to heat up, hitting .321 with three home runs and 14 RBIs.

Votto, who earned the NL MVP Award in 2010 with the Reds, believes the Dodgers superstar is on his way to winning his fifth MVP and is putting himself in the conversation as the greatest baseball player of all time.

“It’s gonna be five in six years if he wins it. It’s gonna be unanimous if he wins it,” Votto said. “We’re talking about one of the great athletes of the 21st century.”

Mets right-hander Clay Holmes has seemingly avoided a worst-case scenario. 

The Post's Jon Heyman reports that the Mets starter will not need surgery on his fractured fibula. It remained unclear what Holmes would need to recover from the injury, but even the right-hander believed he would avoid surgery when asked, although he could not rule it out. If Heyman's report is correct, then it's good news for Holmes and the Mets.

However, Heyman points out that the latest guess for Holmes' return is early August. 

If the Mets can right the ship, getting Holmes back for the home stretch would be a bonus. When he went on the IL, Holmes was arguably the Mets' best pitcher. 

In nine starts, Holmes pitched to a 2.39 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP while consistently going deep into games. 

His shortest outing was the May 15 game against the Yankees when he pitched 4.1 innings. That was the same night he fractured his fibula.

Holmes suffered the injury when he took a 111.1 mph liner from Yankees prospectSpencer Jones.

The San Francisco Giants are dead. Long live the San Francisco Giants. They were killed by one of the funniest cases of oversteering in the history of professional sports when a former jock bound for the Hall of Fame roundhouse kicked an overhyped nerd into baseball oblivion to make sure the team stopped letting computers make decisions for them. The team instead became a creation sprung from Buster Posey’s memory of what his championship teams were like. Last season was rocky and this season has been an unmitigated disaster, another losing season (their 7th of the last 10 seasons) locked in before June! With the franchise firmly rebranded as a loser, what can we look forward to these next four months?

Just how bad can this bad team be?

Yesterday afternoon’s loss was certainly a microcosm of the season, but going 0-6 against the Diamondbacks over the past week has really started to create some separation from the early season and as the weather changes and other teams improve, it stands to reason that as bad as the Giants have been… it can be a lot worse.

With 56 games played, we can look at the current season in 14-game chunks.

Games 1-14: 6-8 (.429)
Games 15-28: 7-7 (.500)
Games 29-42: 5-9 (.357)
Games 43-56: 4-10 (.286)

So, the Giants scuffled when teams were still trying to get their bearing after launching from Spring Training and then once they did, the Giants were relegated to batting practice for the opposition. There are 106 games remaining in this season, which on the one hand is quite sad because the Giants are so bad, but on the other hand… well… I suppose there’s a chance we could see some improved play. That’ll be the tension opposing the “Yeah, but they’ve been so, so stinky to start the season that it would make sense if the stench was unwashable.”

Let’s just look at their schedule through the end of June. Tomorrow kicks off a 3-game series in Colorado. Then they play 4 in Milwaukee, then 3 against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Host the Nats and Cubs then travel to Atlanta for 3 and Miami for 3. Host the Athletics for 3 and Atlanta for 3 before traveling to Arizona for more Diamondbacks. That’s 18 on the road and 12 at home. If you just apply their current winning percentages for their home/road split to this schedule (.357 road / .429 home), that’s 11-19 or 12-18, which would put the Giants at either 33-53 or 34-52 entering July. Here are the ten worst records in Giants history through the team’s first 86 games:

10. 2005 SF Giants: 37-49
9. 1900 NY Giants: 35-50
8. 1994 SF Giants: 36-50
7. 1943 NY Giants: 34-51-1
6. 1976 SF Giants: 34-52
5. 2017 SF Giants: 34-52
4. 1984 SF Giants: 33-53
3. 1956 NY Giants: 32-54
2. 1985 SF Giants: 31-55
1. 1902 NY Giants: 28-57

So, 16-14 just to stay out of the top 10 worst starts to a season and 13-17 to avoid paralleling the 2017 or 1985 seasons. But we’ve seen how these jabronis play and, well, when they’re not being overmatched talent-wise, they are impossibly stupid in the field. It’s your right as a fan to hope they turn things around, but there is no evidence to suggest that a turnaround is in progress and based on aging curves for the core hitters plus the current results about the same amount of evidence to start building a case that one might be possible. That schedule doesn’t obviously present the pathway to a nice winning streak, either.

The Giants have told us for 56 games that they’re a bad team out to dispense bad times. We should believe them.

The trade deadline.

Obviously. It’ll be like an organ donation, right? Which parts of the Giants’ corpse can help another team thrive down the stretch or even beyond? Buster Posey’s moves at last year’s deadline shows that he’s not afraid to purge a roster when he feels it’s due for improvement. The problem is, he’s running out of the previous guy’s guys to move… unless Logan Webb miraculously returns to form this season; and then, there might be an opportunity for a big move.

Robbie Ray, it feels like we hardly knew ya, but appreciate watching you pitch most of the time. Luis Arraez, way to play your way into being the Giants’ lone All-Star representative. Tyler Mahle, Harrison Bader, Adrian Houser… you think they’ll be sticking around? I have never understood the compulsion by some fans to do a Rain Manesque “Trade Chapman. Trade Chapman. Trade Chapman.” every day and I can’t understand why the Giants would try to convince Chapman to waive his no trade clause in order to facilitate a deal, but that might be the move a lot of people want to see and will really be paying attention to as the calendar turns to July.

The Giants can’t formally “rebuild,” but watching them remodel this termite-infested, water damaged house that was once the centerpiece of China Basin will be at the very least interesting to watch as the summer goes on.

The farm system’s success.

Winning is good, even when it’s just in the minor leagues. That all of the levels are finding success with age appropriate prospects is heartening to see, too. There aren’t a lot of Chase d’Arnauds leading the groups. Pick some players or pick a team to follow the rest of the year and you probably won’t be disappointed. Personally, I’ve staked my mental health to Jhonny Level’s success.

When I wrote up the Chicago White Sox series preview, I learned that the White Sox’s GM Chris Getz was previously their Director of Player Development (2017-2020), and it got me wondering if maybe Randy Winn, VP of Player Development, might take over as President of Baseball Operations once Buster Posey moved on. If most of the minor league teams win championships this year, I’d think that’d be a pretty big plus on his resume, and it’d be hard to argue against him being a pivotal part of the front office.

The palace “intrigue.”

Recently, I had to change a baby in an airplane bathroom. The changing table was more like a bowl in that it had a divot in it, presumably to make laying the baby down easier. It was not easier. The changing table was also very smooth, so the baby — who likes to stand when being changed — kept sliding around… along with all the items needed to facilitate the diaper change. This led to the following sequence: diaper off, baby steps then slides into discarded pajama pants, bringing them back underneath baby just as baby urinates, soaking the pajamas. While cleaning all that up, baby poops and while trying to hold the baby in one arm to clean up with the other, the baby keeps trying to move and slides around, stepping in the poop, stepping back onto the pajamas. The baby peed again. It was 15 minutes of pee-pee-poo-poo nightmares in a 3 ft by 5 ft space and once I left I felt like Buster Posey must feel every day trying to run a baseball team: confused, angry, annoyed at having to jettison stuff that cost a decent amount of money, and covered in human waste.

Each change he has made has led to more pee, more poo, and more stepping in both. Should he have boarded this particular plane? Probably not. For most of us who suspected we’d be seeing him learn on the job, all we get is the satisfaction of knowing that there’s no use getting worked up about the team’s record anymore. It’s going to take him a long time with many lessons learned the hard way in order to turn the franchise around. Which is why I advocated for him sticking around longer than 3 years. It’s why it’s worth keeping tabs on the minor leagues. This could be very painful for a long time but then turn around overnight.

But already we’re seeing discontent seeping onto the floor of this Dilettantes’ Ball. Posey’s slightly tense conversation with Brian Murphy on KNBR the other week was interesting in that he repeated “baseball is hard” more than I’d like to hear from an exec whose team isn’t so much losing to other teams as being embarrassed by them. Farhan Zaidi was a notoriously poor interview, too, and that Buster Posey has wound up sounding like him more often than not in such a brief time is funny and troubling. But Andrew Baggarly has pivoted to questioning the wisdom in hiring Hector Borg to the coaching staff. Tony Vitello has put it out there that he wasn’t as involved in the staff hiring as we were led to believe in the offseason. Buster Posey takes the blame for the team’s performance to this point and so this effort to hang some of that on the third base coach stinks, too.

Unrelated to the coaching stuff, but related to the Giants being bad, I enjoyed this posting from the other day:

It has all been amateur hour, and in an organization where Larry Baer won out over Peter Magowan and Bill Neukom, it’s pretty clear that things aren’t going to be getting “better” behind the scenes anytime soon, either. If the Giants were playing better, it probably wouldn’t matter too much, but with everything on the field able to be safely ignored, this front office and ownership group will probably get more stories written about them than they expected heading into the season.

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You’re probably screaming at me for leaving out something about the young players developing. What of Bryce Eldridge? Or Jesus Rodriguez? Is Landen Roupp the Logan Webb replacement the Giants didn’t know they had until this year? Is Trevor McDonald? Will the bullpen be able to evolve into something above average? These are the obvious questions that should feel very heartening to see because it means the Giants have developed some potential major leaguers alongside all the failure and that’s before considering the players at the lower levels who are generating most of the excitement about what Randy Winn and the player development group have been doing (all of which you can track through Brady’s reporting here or at Roger Munter’s excellent There R Giants site). But I can’t help but think about the past 10+ years of Giants player development and conclude that while it’s nice to imagine a world in which the Giants draft and develop their own players who can serve as more than 20th to 26th on their depth chart, the reality is that we should keep our expectations low until proven otherwise.

That goes for everything related to the team. The championship era ended a long time ago, but now we’re past those era re-definining teams of the 80s/90s/00s/10s, too. You could maybe characterize those decades this way: Prospects/Bonds/Ballpark/Championships. What are the 20s? Disappointing? Disaster? Forgettable? Skip? Bust? Whatever it winds up being considered, what’s clear is that the Giants as we knew them are dead and gone. Nobody wanted to be in this situation on May 28th. I was hoping for a disappointing season that unraveled in August or September, as has been the custom for many years now. Was looking forward to sneaking away to catch a game and spend that time in Schrödinger Stadium, where the team could be either good or bad. But we know they’re just bad.

What’s next for the franchise is anyone’s guess, but a rebirth during this season is the only thing certain to be out of the question.

After exciting rookie Kendry Rojas got scratched from his start with elbow soreness (sigh), Simeon Woods Richardson (sigh, again) stepped in for a spot start which went about as well as expected. Also bad for the Twins, they were facing current AL Cy Young candidate Davis Martin (triple sigh). Let’s get into it.

Woods Richardson got some hopes up, but almost immediately lost the faith of Twins fans and coaches alike. He struck out the first two batters of the game before walking Miguel Vargas, allowing him to steal second, and then scoring on a Colson Montgomery single. SWR then allowed a double to start the second inning, but escaped scoreless thanks to a nice throw home from Tristan Gray with the contact play on. Then, things really fell apart.

With two outs and a runner on in the third inning, Sim allowed the next five batters to reach base, culminating in a bases-clearing double from 4,000 year old (pretty sure, don’t fact check me) Randal Grichuk to put the White Sox up 5-0. Wanting to limit the damage, the Twins turned to Andrew Morris who finally ended the inning and allowed everyone to move on with their day.

I would now like to gripe about the worst scoring rule in baseball. The concept of runs being earned vs unearned is, in essence, completely up to the official scorer. It’s what makes ERA less predictive of future performance compared to FIP or xERA, and is somewhat a relic of a past era. However, ERA is still important given it’s historical significance and as such, these rules do carry a lot of weight. A pitcher shouldn’t be punished for a bad defense, but what if the bad defense was from the pitcher himself?

All this is to say that the run Andrew Morris allowed should have been an earned run because the error was committed by Morris. If he didn’t earn that run, then who did? Pete Maki? Tom Pohlad? God? Please get back to me soon, Mr. Manfred. My family is starving and I cannot rest until this quandary is resolved. I’m just a man standing in front of an MLB commissioner asking him to artificially raise Andrew Morris’ ERA.

Anyway, the bullpen was actually nails the whole way, which was nice to see after Woods Richardson’s awful start. Morris, Travis Adams, Taylor Rogers, Anthony Banda, and Yoendrys Gomez combined to throw 5.1 innings while allowing no earned runs (though an unholy unearned one) and just four baserunners, and two of those from Morris.

Unfortunately for Adams, he was optioned after this game with Minnesota in need of a fresh arm. The Twins will likely need two pitchers with Rojas likely ending up on the IL as well. A corresponding move has yet to be announced, but Kody Funderburk and John Klein are healthy and on the 40-man, though neither has been particularly sharp of late. Cody Laweryson appears to be near the end of a rehab assignment, though his results have been less than encouraging as well. We could be in line for Marco Raya’s debut as he has been very good in May.

And, as you know by now, we’re taking detours to bad relief options and inane scoring rules because the Twins offense didn’t have almost anything to give this afternoon. The Twins finally got a second run after Martin left the game in the seventh inning, but were never able to get a big inning in this game or really any point this series. Minnesota never had more than one hit in an inning in this game, which simply won’t cut it.

The Twins lost the series 1-3, with two of those losses being very winnable. The non-SWR pitchers stepped up in a tough spot, but the lineup is missing some juice with Ryan Jeffers’ injury and Royce Lewis’ and Matt Wallner’s overdue demotions. The Twins need someone to step up alongside Buxton and there’s lots of talent to do that still.

STUDS

• The bullpen (Morris, Adams, Rogers, Banda, Gomez): 5.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R (o ER), 1 BB, 6 K
• Tristan Gray: 2-4, 2B, SB

DUDS

• Simeon Woods Richardson: 2.2 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 3 BB, 4 K; moves to 0-7 with a 7.74 ERA on the season
• Middle of the lineup (Lee, Larnach, Clemens): 0-12
• Every hitter: 0-6 RISP