Worldwide Sports News

Diamondbacks News

(MLB.com) What to know as D-backs gear up for Cactus League play

Look for young arms early

The names of the starting pitchers for the first three games of Cactus League play will likely not be familiar except to the diehard fans. Right-hander Tom Hatch will start the opener and there won’t be a veteran going until Michael Soroka following the weekend slate.

“We’re just going to slow play some things,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. “Everybody is going to be ready and built up to six innings and 85 pitches by the time they take their last spring start.”

(12News) Arizona Diamondbacks to play starters in first Cactus League game

With a dozen D-Backs players set to represent their countries in the 2026 World Baseball Classic at the beginning of March, Lovullo is making sure those players get the game reps they need to prepare.

“Normally they wouldn’t be, but I’m trying to fast forward this as much as possible because the entire infield is going to play in the WBC, so I want to get them on the field,” Lovullo said Thursday. “I wouldn’t be playing [Alek Thomas] in the outfield tomorrow, but I’m going to, so he can get ready for Team Mexico.”

(SI.com) Diamondbacks Reveal 8 Free Spring Training Broadcasts

On Thursday, the Arizona Diamondbacks revealed their 2026 spring training broadcast schedule for their upcoming Cactus League games.

Eight games will be broadcast free of charge to fans, and will be accessible on D-backs.TV and local TV providers. Fans will not have to pay for a D-backs.TV or MLB.TV subscription in order to view these eight games. All that will be required is a free account, set up with an email address.

(Arizona Sports) Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick wants CBA that makes MLB more competitive ‘top to bottom’

“Right now, it really is clear that we have a group of teams at the bottom and we have some teams at the top,” Kendrick said. “We are in neither of those groups, to be fair. A model that would allow those extremes to not be what they are, I think would be good for the fans, and honestly, I think it would be good for the players.”

Congrats to all of us on making it through another long, dreary winter! Baseball is finally upon us once more, hope springs eternal, and already the hot dogs, cracker jax, and beer is calling my name. Here’s to another season, and maybe, just maybe this team can surprise us again.

Every year we get excited for the start of the Spring Training schedule of games. A long winter without baseball finally ends, even if the games don’t count. Then we quickly remember that the spring games are usually for the players we’ve never heard of or may never hear from again, as anyone important is extremely limited in their playing time.

But those limitations for regular starters allows for some fun or interesting stories to arise over the course of the spring season. Sometimes a player comes out of absolutely nowhere, tears up the Grapefruit League, and captures the heart of Phillies fans everywhere. Perhaps none embody this idea more than Scott Kingery.

Kingery may not have come out of nowhere, as he was a well-regarded prospect in the Phillies system, but he impressed in his first taste of MLB camp in 2017, hitting .286 with two home runs in ten games before going back to Reading. Kingery then burst onto the scene in 2018 when he hit .411 with five home runs in 22 games during the spring. His performance was so impressive that it earned him not only a call up to the Majors after just three years in the Minors, but general manager Matt Klentak awarded Kingery with an unprecedented six year, $24M contract extension. It was a large commitment to a player who had never appeared in the Majors to that point, but Kingery had put together two impressive camps, and it looked clear he was ready for the Majors.

But things didn’t work out that way, as Kingery struggled to ever come close to his torrid springs and had his career derailed by mismanagement, bad advice, COVID-19, and injuries. The once promising prospect hit only .229 with a .667 OPS across parts of five seasons with the Phillies. He returned to the minor leagues in 2022 and stayed there for the next two full seasons before being traded to the Angels in November of 2024.

Another name that comes to mind when thinking about spring training legends is Brock Stassi. The lefty first baseman did actually come out of nowhere and tore apart the Grapefruit League in 2017, hitting .306 with 6 home runs in 25 games. The Phillies had a spot on their bench, and Stassi earned a spot on the 2017 Opening Day roster, getting his first crack at the Majors at the age of 27 after six seasons in the minor leagues. He even earned his own fan group, as “Brock’s Crocs” started to appear at Citizens Bank Park. Unfortunately, the Cinderella story ended there, as Stassi lasted just 51 games with the Phillies, hitting .167 with a .573 OPS. He was sent back to Triple-A and ultimately designated for assignment in August. Stassi bounced around between organizations after electing free agency, but he never again appeared in a major league game. Stassi ultimately wound up back with the Phillies organization after his career, coaching with their minor league affiliates in 2023 and 2024 before being hired by the Mariners as a hitting coach for their low-A affiliate in 2025.

These are just two names of players who were the MVPs of spring training but never found much success in the majors. But we’ll always have that time in late February and early March where it looked like they might be something. Who is your favorite Phillies Spring Training MVP?

The storied history of the Yankees is dominated in the popular perception by the team’s legends, from Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, to Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, to Derek Jeter and Aaron Judge. But baseball is played with nine to a side, and even these superstars couldn’t raise the Yankees to fantastic heights on their own. There have always been great supporting players anchoring each great Yankees squad, players that may not have dominated the spotlight, but made important contributions all their own.

One of those players was Tommy Henrich, who we ranked 37th on our Top 100 countdown a few years back. An outfielder who played during a time when mythical figures like DiMaggio and Mantle roamed the grass at Yankee Stadium, Henrich was a superlative performer in his own right, one who was invaluable as the Yankees piled up championships in their glory years.

Thomas David Henrich
Born: February 20, 1913 (Massillon, OH)
Died: December 1, 2009 (Beavercreek, OH)
Yankees Tenure: 1937-50

Thomas Henrich was born in Massillon, Ohio, a city 50 miles south of Cleveland. Massillon was a football town, and Henrich’s high school, St. John’s Catholic High School, didn’t even have a baseball team, so Henrich grew up largely playing softball. Henrich would play semipro ball after graduating and caught the eye of a Detroit Tigers scout, spurning Detroit’s advances but eventually signing with Cleveland in 1933.

In Cleveland’s system, Henrich didn’t look like a man who played little baseball growing up. He hit .325 in his first year in the minors, and hit .337 in 1935. He was one of the best players in the minors by 1936, hitting .346/.411/.560 with 15 homers and 100 RBI across 157 games.

Yet Cleveland didn’t show much interest in promoting Henrich to the show, as the team tried to sell his contract to the Milwaukee Brewers. He and his father wrote to a letter Commissioner Kenesaw Landis, arguing that Cleveland was denying Henrich a shot at the majors that he obviously deserved. Landis ruled in Henrich’s favor, and Henrich became the first free agent in MLB history.

Given Henrich’s stellar record in the minors, there was quite a bidding war for his services when he suddenly hit the open market. The New York Giants offered Henrich a $15,000 bonus, a hefty sum for 1937. But Henrich had eyes for a different New York club. Despite growing up in Ohio, Henrich had been a Yankees fan, awed by the exploits of Babe Ruth. The Yankees offered him a staggering $25,000, and Henrich was off to the Bronx.

The little kid from Massillon arrived in New York confident. He told Arthur Daley and the New York Times, of the time he checked into his hotel in Manhattan:

I still have a vivid memory of coming to town for the first time and checking into the Hotel New Yorker. The bellhop took my bag and discovered who I was before we even reached the room. ‘So you’re the new Yankee outfielder,’ he said, sneering at me. ‘How can you break in ahead of—let’s see, who we’ve got—Joe DiMaggio, Jake Powell, Myril Hoag, George Selkirk and Roy Johnson? Did you ever see them guys hit?’ Not yet,’ I said bravely, ‘but they never saw me hit either.’

After a brief stint with the Newark Bears, Yankee manager Joe McCarthy called for Henrich, and he made his major-league debut on May 11, 1937. Plugged into a lineup that included a late-career Lou Gehrig and a second-year player named Joe DiMaggio, Henrich more than held his own when his number was called. Henrich would play 67 games as a rookie, hitting a robust .320 with a .972 OPS. The Yankees would win the World Series that year, though Henrich didn’t appear. He would make his first appearance in the Fall Classic the next season, following a similarly strong sophomore campaign that saw Henrich post an .882 OPS. Henrich doubled in his first World Series game, and in the deciding Game 4, Henrich hit a solo home run that would prove to provide the winning run as the Yankees swept away the Cubs for their third-straight title.

Henrich cemented himself early in his career as one of the Yankees’ most consistent producers behind their stars, earning the nickname “Ol Reliable” from Yankee broadcaster Mel Allen. However, a knee injury he picked up as a rookie returned to plague him in his mid-20’s, and though he posted an .800 OPS in 1939 and a .947 figure in 1940, he played in fewer than 100 games each season. He didn’t appear in the 1939 World Series, which the Yankees won to make it a four-peat, before the club finally saw their streak end without a pennant in 1940.

In 1941, Henrich put together the finest overall season of his career to that point, hitting a career-high 31 home runs with an .895 OPS, and adding another World Series home run as the Yankees reclaimed the crown by defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers. Amusingly though, his most memorable play came on a strikeout that should have ended Game 4 in a Dodgers win to tie the series at 2-2. Brooklyn catcher Mickey Owen couldn’t handle Hugh Casey’s low curve and it skipped away from Owen for an error. DiMaggio and company promptly started a rally and by the time the dust had settled, the Yankees had won, 7-4. They won the World Series the next day.

Henrich’s breakout spilled over into the next season as he made his first All-Star team, but his run was cut short as the United States entered World War II. Henrich joined the U.S. Coast Guard in August 1942 and served three years primarily stationed in Michigan.

Henrich returned to the Yankees in 1946 and, at age-33, began an uninterrupted run of success. From 1946 to 1948, Henrich made two All-Star teams and received a smattering of down-ballot MVP votes each year. He appeared in at least 142 games each season, the longest stretch of decent health of his career. And he raked, his .858 OPS over that span 35 percent better than league average, all while providing the excellent outfield defense that he so prided himself on.

He was no longer a role player, a nice background piece behind the Yankees’ cast of legends. Even if the likes of DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, and other future Hall-of-Famers took most of the shine, Henrich was a celebrated player in his own right. Casey Stengel, having taken over as manager of the Yankees in 1949, said of his outfielder:

He’s a fine judge of a fly ball. He fields grounders like an infielder. He never makes a wrong throw, and if he comes back to the hotel at 3 in the morning when we’re on the road and says he’s been sitting up with a sick friend, he’s been sitting up with a sick friend.

Stengel’s praise encapsulated what Henrich’s teammates liked most about him; that dependability and reliability. Though injuries finally caught up to him at the end of his career, Henrich produced all the way to the end, as he always had. He dealt with back and toe injuries in 1949, which limited him to 115 games, and his balky left knee, always a lingering issue since he was a rookie, kept him to 75 games in 1950. When on the field, Henrich was still at his best. He managed a combined 680 plate appearances across 1949 and 1950, his final two seasons, and in that span he hit 30 homers, drove in 119 runs, and ran a .936 OPS.

Henrich threw in one more World Series homer in 1949 as the Yankees trumped the Dodgers again — a game-winning clout off Brooklyn’s Don Newcombe to break a scoreless tie and win Game 1. It was the first walk-off shot in the history of the Fall Classic.

Henrich would retire after the 1950 season, having appeared in four World Series, all wins, and having contributed to eight different pennant-winning teams. He hung around baseball for a time, spending a year as a Yankees coach in 1951, going into broadcasting for a couple seasons, and doing a tour as a base coach with the Tigers and Giants. He ultimately seemed more content to stick to the sidelines in retirement, speaking of those golden years when he won ballgames alongside the likes of Gehrig and DiMaggio and Berra. He would become a fixture at Old-Timers’ Days, and wrote two books, The Way to Better Baseball and Five O’Clock Lightning: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle and the Glory Years of the NY Yankees.

Looking back decades later, it’s easy to wonder about what could have been for Henrich, had he not injured his knee his rookie year, or if he hadn’t lost three prime years to war. It’s not hard to imagine a world where Henrich pushes closer to the inner circle of Yankee greats, or even compiles a reasonable Hall-of-Fame case. But Henrich authored a more than fine career as played. He passed away in Ohio in December of 2009, and was born on this day 113 years ago. Happy birthday to Old Reliable!

References

Baseball Reference

Edelman, Rob. SABR Bio.

Goldstein, Richard. “Tommy Henrich, Yankees Clutch Hitter, Dies at 96.” New York Times, December 2, 2009.

FanGraphs

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.

Every spring, baseball hands us a fresh stack of reasons to believe. The weather is warm, the innings are low-stakes, and everyone is in the best shape of their life. So when Heston Kjerstad steps into the box at Ed Smith Stadium and rockets a home run off a live-arm pitcher, the correct response is probably measured skepticism.

And yet.

Something feels different this February. Maybe it’s the swing. Maybe it’s the words coming from the manager’s mouth. Maybe it’s Jackson Holliday — not exactly a disinterested observer, but also not a guy prone to empty flattery — saying that when Kjerstad is healthy, he’s “seriously one of the better hitters that I’ve seen.” Whatever it is, the optimism around Kjerstad this spring has a texture to it that feels harder to dismiss than the usual “he looks focused in camp” boilerplate.

Let’s try to figure out whether any of it is real.

You probably know the story all too well. In 2020, the O’s made Kjerstad the second overall pick out of Arkansas, where he’d been one of the best pure hitters in college baseball. Within months of signing, he was diagnosed with myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — and missed essentially all of 2021. A hamstring strain pushed his professional debut further into 2022. When he finally showed up to play, he hit. He won the Arizona Fall League home run derby. He slashed .303/.376/.528 with 21 home runs across the minors in 2023. He hit .253/.351/.394 in 39 big-league games in 2024 before Clay Holmes drilled him in the helmet with a 97 mph fastball in July.

Then 2025 happened. He hit .192. He posted a .566 OPS. He got optioned to Norfolk in June, went on the IL with fatigue, and then disappeared from game action entirely in late July with what the organization vaguely described as an undisclosed medical issue. Mike Elias confirmed Kjerstad had been undergoing treatments for a medical condition but declined to say much more. The season was over.

That’s a lot of history for a 27-year-old who has still never played more than three games in a row at the major league level.

So what’s new? A clean bill of health, maybe. A new swing adjustment. Kjerstad has ditched the large leg kick — the signature piece of his always-unorthodox mechanics — in favor of a simpler toe tap as his front foot lands. It’s the same change Jackson Holliday made late in 2024, and Holliday’s offensive improvement in 2025 is well-documented. The theory is straightforward: less moving parts, more contact.

Manager Craig Albernaz, who is still finding his voice in his first full spring as a big-league manager, didn’t sound like a man offering polite encouragement when he talked about Kjerstad. He said Kjerstad is “physically in a great spot,” that he’s “moving so efficiently in the box,” and that the new mechanics would “allow that whippiness [good word] to work in the swing.”

And Kjerstad has already gone deep twice in live batting practice — a 410-foot left-on-left shot off Keegan Akin and another off righty Trey Gibson. He hit a line drive to left off Shane Baz. He had singles off Kyle Bradish. His exit velocities have always been elite when he’s healthy; the 46.5% hard-hit rate and 9.3% barrel rate from his 2024 major league stint were genuinely impressive numbers buried inside a limited sample.

Now, here’s the uncomfortable question: is Kjerstad still in the Orioles’ outfield plans? The team brought in Taylor Ward and Leody Taveras this offseason, and they still have Colton Cowser, Tyler O’Neill, and Dylan Beavers in the mix. That’s five outfielders with reasonable claims on roster spots before you even get to Kjerstad. Opening Day roster is almost certainly not happening for him. But a strong start at Triple-A Norfolk could make Kjerstad a roster contender — or a valuable trade piece.

He’d need to show some sustained success, but if Kjerstad is genuinely healthy and hitting, there are worse things a contending team could do than sign a left-handed bat with plus raw power, pre-arb through 2031, still only 27 years old.

Then again, the Orioles scenario isn’t hopeless either. O’Neill has his own lengthy injury history. Beavers hasn’t yet proven he can handle a full season. Ward and Taveras are one-year rentals. Cowser had a brutal 2025 and is entering the year with something to prove himself. The outfield picture in Baltimore is more volatile than it looks on paper, and one or two DL stints from the incumbents could open a door Kjerstad has spent five years waiting for.

There are two honest ways to view Heston Kjerstad in February 2026. The first is as a cautionary tale about what happens when you keep watching a talented player get mowed down by things outside his control, until eventually the career opportunity cost adds up and you can’t get it back. The second is as a player who has never actually gotten a real chance — never started three games in a row, never been healthy for a full season — and who might finally be about to find out what he can do.

The swing change is real. The spring results are real. Jackson Holliday working out with him all offseason in Stillwater is a good sign. The medical situation remains a mystery, but “full health” from the man himself and from the organization is the best available information we have.

Do I fully buy the optimism? Let’s say I’m cautiously in. We’ve been burned before, but the version of Heston Kjerstad that shows up healthy and locked in, with a more efficient swing and something to prove, is the kind of player worth paying attention to. If this spring turns into what it might be, we’ll be saying we saw it coming. And if it doesn’t — well, we’ve had plenty of practice at that too.

We made it, everybody. In what feels like the shortest off-season I can remember, today spring training games start for the Mariners. We’ve been busy working all off-season to keep you updated on what the Mariners have been up to this winter, but in case you’re checking in for the first time after taking some time off (welcome back!), here’s a speedrun recap of the off-season content, with links, to help bring you up to speed fast:

• 40 in 40 series: Where we preview every member of the 40-man roster, from the fringiest reliever to the biggest stars.
• This year’s NRIs: Non-Roster Invites are players who get invited to big-league camp despite not being on the 40-man roster. If you’re wondering who the player on your screen wearing a number in the 80s is, the answer is probably here.
• The off-season tracker: This includes not only a list of the moves the Mariners made this off-season, from major to minor, but also links to the stories we wrote about them, where applicable.
• Top prospects countdown: We’re only about halfway through our top 20, but you can keep checking back.
• Spring training broadcast schedule: Bookmark this one, because it will give you a handy list of all the games and whether they’re on TV or not, as well as how to watch them.

Starting next week, we’ll also have a preview series of all the teams in the AL West that will carry us straight through to Opening Day, if you’ve been using the 40 in 40 series as a way to count down to the start of spring training.

But today is all about the opening of spring training. The Mariners open spring as they always do, playing their complex-mates the Padres. The game starts at 12:10 PT and you can watch it on Mariners.TV for free, provided you make an account. If you have Xfinity, you can tune in on the old ROOT Sports channel, 629, at least according to the channel guide I checked.

Check in here at LL (most) every day this spring around 11 AM PT (12 when we move to daylight savings time) for a game thread that will give you important information like start times and broadcast information, as well as starting pitching matchups, which minor-league players are being brought over from minor league camp, or other things of note. If you can’t watch the game because your “boss” insists you “work” during the day and you have to do things like “feed your family” when you get home at night, we’ve got you covered with a daily recap that will run down the important bullet points of the game.

No matter how you consume spring baseball, we hope that you’ll come and talk about it with us, whether in the game threads or later in the recap comments. Our goal here is to provide authentic conversation around the team we all love, to learn with each other and from each other, and to be in communion with people who understand why “that’ll never hit” is the most cursed string of words in the English language. In a time where it feels like human conversation and community mean more than ever – and are vanishingly rare – our community is what makes us who we are.

If you’ve been a LLurker in the past, I hope this is the year you take the leap from “future commenter” into “active commenter.” If you’re brand-new here, welcome! Please sign up and join us. Before you jump into the conversation, do take the time to read over the site guidelines. Basically, they boil down to this:

• No politics, no religion, treat each other with respect. Part of that respect is understanding not everyone shares your same viewpoints. We are an inclusive staff and an inclusive community, and comments that insult someone’s identity, directly or indirectly, will not be tolerated. We think that’s one of the things that will make this community a place you want to come back to again and again. That, and all the volcano facts.
• Make comments that are additive, not subtractive. Ask questions, share observations, respond to something someone else said, make a joke (but not a joke that punches down at others. We are not diss comics here.). Subtractive comments are things like excessive complaining or negativity, piling on, or other comments made for no reason other than the person commenting is having a bad time and wants to make it everyone else’s problem. That’s selfish! Don’t do that. Or try not to, at least. We understand sometimes the Mariners will Mariner.
• Don’t use chatspeak. This is a rule I myself have trouble following all the time (I tried to title this section the “tl;dr”) but it really is necessary to keep us all on the same page, and also serves as a reminder that there’s real thought and care that goes into these conversations. Similarly, these are authentic conversations, so we have a strict no-AI rule for comments. We are all smarter than ChatGPT about the Mariners, that’s the whole point of the site, so your ideas only, please.
• Sometimes you’ll make a mistake just because you don’t know better, and at that point you’ll get a helpful message from the mods. Please take this in the spirit in which it’s intended: not to make you feel small, but to make your understanding of the world bigger. Our expectation is once you know better, you’ll do better.

Okay, that’s enough of that. Really, it’s a fun place to come and chat baseball provided you follow the most important rule: Be A Person. So sign up and join us today! One of us…one of us…

I guess I could’ve worded this, “Do you actually watch Spring Training games,” too.

Today marks the start of Grapefruit and Cactus League action. There are a few games against unaffiliated teams, too. But the full slate really begins tomorrow.

Me, I’ll watch pretty much any MLB baseball. Though the pitch clock made it somewhat harder in some ways, I’m still aiming to watch about three games a day this upcoming season. Spring Training games, though… they’re too unserious for me to pay real attention to. Not that I begrudge them this, as the point is really just for players to get up to speed — but it’s just too divorced from what resembles competition to be interesting for me. So I’ll usually turn it on, and lose interest when the re-insertions or full-scale substitutions start happening. I’ll leave ‘em on in the background, sure, but it’s not appointment viewing time, like the new regular-season-with-pitch-clock is now forced to be.

What about you?

Happy Friday, everyone! We’ve made it through the week, thank goodness, and our reward is the official return of baseball games! Sure, you can say Spring Training doesn’t matter, but tell that to a fan who has been starved for live games since October. The Tigers won’t have their first game until tomorrow, but hey, something to look forward to! In the meantime, the Tigers have unveiled their new home and road alternate jerseys and they’re pretty darned slick!

The other biggest news of the week is that MLBPA executive director Tony Clark, who has led the Players’ union since 2013, stepped down amid a sea of scandal (personal, not baseball-related) and his interim replacement Bruce Meyer has been announced. This is a terrible time for the players to be shifting leadership as debate over salary caps and the CBA is running rampant. We’ll have a bit more on that below.

So let’s get into the news bites for the day and prepare ourselves for baseball tomorrow!

Detroit Tigers News

• Jim Bowden looks at rookies to watch in Spring Training. Here’s what he had to say about the Tigers. Of Kevin McGonigle, he said:

Last season, McGonigle, 21, dominated the Arizona Fall League, slashing .362/.500/.710 with six homers and 19 RBIs, winning the league’s MVP award. That performance came after he hit .305/.408/.583 with 19 homers and 80 RBIs in 88 games split between Low A, High A and Double A during the regular season. He projects as a future batting title winner with 20-25 home run power. He’s selectively aggressive at the plate, is very quick on inside pitches and goes the other way extremely well on tough pitches down and away. He’s also solid defensively and is a good base-runner. If the Tigers give him a legitimate shot to make the roster this spring, he should, given his polish and talent.

Of Max Clark, he said:

Clark, 21, leads all potential rookies in swag and speed. He profiles as an elite leadoff hitter who will reach base consistently and steal bases at will. He has solid bat speed and above-average plate discipline and he makes good swing decisions. Clark is a tremendous defensive center fielder with solid first-step quickness and well above-average range in all directions. He also has the arm to stop base-runners from taking the next base. He’ll be a fan favorite quickly in the Motor City and, along with McGonigle, should give the Tigers an extremely fun and bright future. He’d be higher on my list but he’s likely to start the season in the minor leagues as he has just 43 games of Double-A experience.

• Cody Stavehagen looks at what he’s seeing in the early days of Spring Training. ($)
• Oh ho ho…

• A piece breaking down the new Tigers’ alternate home and road jerseys (and yes, the City Connects will be sticking around, just very scaled back)
• In case you missed our story on the new jerseys, here’s a look at the new duds. Which do you prefer?

• Love to see this.

• Get yourself ready for the first games of the season.

AL Central News

• Steven Kwan will annoy the Tigers from a different position this season as the Guardians shuffle him to centerfield.

MLB News

• Michael Baumann looks at the scandal that rocked former MLBPA head Tony Clark, and why this is the worst time for the players to lose a leader they can rely on.
• A look at the MLBPA’s interim executive director Bruce Meyer.
• Meyer claims to be “passionate” about protecting players’ rights.
• The scandal that led to Tony Clark’s exit.
• Apparently, nothing says “official soft drink of MLB” like Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
• A vital question during the Olympics: which MLB players would make the best ice dancers?
• Fun with meaningless splits!
• Jazz Chisholm Jr. is gunning to join the 50/50 club.
• Are we selling Paul Skenes short with the “ace” label?
• Is the AL East the most stacked division in baseball?
• Freddie Freeman would like to play until he’s 40 and retire with the Dodgers.
• ESPN will replace Sunday Night Baseball with a full slate of women’s sports coverage.
• These are the best first basemen in baseball at the moment, according to Buster Olney.
• How Team USA finally managed to convince the best players in baseball to participate in the WBC.
• The Brewers and manager Pat Murphy are in agreement on a new 3-year contract.
• We’re big fans of these odds.

• Love a good hype video.

• Puppy BFFs!!!

For a team that has considerable questions defensively at multiple positions, catcher may be one of the Pirates’ strengths.

2021 No. 1 overall pick Henry Davis is in line to be the Pirates’ lead catcher in 2026.

Drafted for his bat rather than his defense, Davis has transformed his game into a considerable defensive player, while he tries to catch up offensively.

Despite a .167 average in 87 games, Davis registered a 0.7 WAR and a 28% caught-stealing rate last season.

Davis emerged as Paul Skenes’ primary catcher, securing him a roster spot on the Pirates as the trusted confidant for the 2025 NL Cy Young winner.

He is also expected to catch Mitch Keller and Bubba Chandler, the No. 11 prospect in baseball, per Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

If, and it’s a big if, Davis can improve at the plate, the Pirates will be in a considerably better position on the bottom third of the lineup.

Davis slashed .167/.234/.278 with only a .512 OPS in his third MLB season. 

This season will be a significant line of demarcation for what Davis could be moving forward. He was drafted as an elite hitter, rushed to the big leagues, and thrown in right field for his bat. 

Pirates pitchers trust him; it’s past time he trusts himself and figures it out at the plate to stay in the majors for good. 

Joey Bart is in line to be the backup catcher to Davis. Despite frequent trade rumors surrounding the former No. 2 pick by the San Francisco Giants, Bart remains on the Pirates roster and is a key offensive threat against left-handed pitching.

Bart’s power numbers dipped significantly last year, hitting four home runs in 93 games compared to 13 in 80 contests during the 2023 season. 

He hit .249 overall with a .340 slugging percentage, but ballooned to a .306 average and .472 slugging against lefties. 

Signing Marcell Ozuna likely takes at-bats away from Bart in the DH spot, primarily keeping his role behind the plate. 

The Pirates created a logjam at first base with Spencer Horwitz and free-agent signing Ryan O’Hearn.

Bart hasn’t played an inning at first, but is an intriguing option to add another right-handed bat to the lineup if the Pirates pursue the opportunity.

He drove in 45 runs with a near .800 OPS in 2024 as one of the Bucs’ best offensive players. The Pirates have potential at catcher from two players taken in the top two picks of the draft, but haven’t fulfilled their true potential offensively and defensively.

Acquired in the David Bednar deal at the 2025 MLB trade deadline, Rafael Flores is the biggest wild card of the group.

Flores, 25, made his big league debut on September 17 and recorded three hits in 15 at-bats.

He only caught one of his seven games, playing first base in six as a right-handed stick in the lineup.

The 6-foot-4, 232-pound catcher is a career .275 hitter in the minor leagues and hit over 20 home runs the past two seasons.

In 36 games with Triple-A Indianapolis following the trade, Flores clobbered six home runs and drove in 28 runs, slashing .281/.363/.459 in the process.

Flores has potential, but needs the opportunity. Trading Bart would open the door for him, but keeping Bart likely means Flores will begin at Triple-A.

Endy Rodriguez has dealt with injuries the past two seasons that cost him all of 2024 and limited him to 18 games last year.

Now listed as a first baseman on the Pirates website but still described in camp as a catcher, Rodriguez’s role remains a mystery.

He could return to Triple-A to get himself right and regroup with roster spots on the MLB roster, hard to come by this campaign.

GM Ben Cherington said before camp that he believed this is the best roster the Pirates have had in his tenure, looking to make the postseason for the first time in over a decade.

The former Pirates Minor League Player of the Year is still only 25 years old, a valuable switch hitter, and a lifetime .292 hitter in the Minors. 

Rodriguez hit .323 with 25 home runs and 95 RBIs in 2022 and looked to be one of the next solid bats in the Pirates’ lineup for many years to come.

The Pirates play the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday at 1:05 p.m. in the first Spring Training game of the season.