Worldwide Sports News

Now that the Houston Astros have found the GM in Randy Flores, now they need to settle on a new manager.

While team owner Jim Crane has said that interviews began before the GM was even hired, Flores has now gotten immersed in the search. Several names familiar to Astros fans have been associated with the position, including former Astros catcher Brad Ausmus, former Cardinals 1B Albert Pujols, former Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, and former Astros 3B Morgan Ensberg.

Astros beat writer Brian McTaggart was on MLB Network today with the latest on the Astros search, including a timeline on the hire, which he described as they want to “move fast” and on Crane’s desire to make a “big splash” hire:

The Mets are retaining an arm and his brain. 

Robert Stock, a veteran who served as rotation and bullpen depth last season and is among the most data-literate baseball players around, will return on a one-year major league contract, the Mets announced Friday. 

Last season, Stock required surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome in March, pitched in eight minor league games while building up in June and July and then earned a major league look as the Mets sold at the August deadline. 

Stock’s stint was a roller coaster but apparently showed the Mets enough: He pitched in relief once and started seven times, with four excellent outings in which he allowed one or zero runs.

In the other three, he was hammered for 18 earned runs in 11 innings, which were to blame for his season-ending 5.93 ERA. 

His season ended early, hitting the injured list in mid-September with finger numbness that he did not believe was serious. 

“I have proven that my name should be in consideration for being a major league pitcher,” Stock said at the time. “There are a million things I want to do better.” 

A true journeyman who originally was drafted in 2009 and is turning 37 later this month, Stock has pitched for the Long Island Ducks, in the KBO, Mexico and plenty of spots in between and has been public about using the growing technology in the game to get better.

The calendar says November 6 but it’s Christmas around here at Lookout Landing HQ.

The New York Post reports the Mariners have reportedly finally pried Tanner Swanson away from the Yankees organization to serve as Jason Kanzler’s bench coach. The 44-year-old Swanson, who has deep roots in the Northwest, has been a long-time dream coaching candidate for many of us in the LL community, but he’s been deeply enmeshed in a high-profile role in the Yankees organization since 2019 as their primary catching coordinator; he’s also served as their quality control coach and field coordinator. Finally, with the bench coach job open under new head coach Jason Kanzler, the Mariners were able to bring Swanson home.

Swanson, who was born in Cle Elum and attended high school at Cle Elum-Roslyn (and still makes his home in Roslyn), played his college baseball in the Northwest, moving from local community colleges (Green River and Everett) before transferring to Central Washington. After graduation, he coached high school baseball in Sultan and at his various alma maters (almae mater?) as well as at the University of Washington, where he zeroed in on his true love of coaching catchers, founding his own catching development business, D1 Catching. He parlayed that into his first job in pro baseball, joining the Twins as a minor league catching coordinator in 2017. Swanson’s first big-league job came in 2019, when the Yankees hired him as their quality control coordinator and big-league catching coordinator, where he remained until the Mariners came calling with the bench coach opportunity.

This hire is very exciting for lots of reasons. Under Swanson’s leadership of the Yankees catching corps, they’ve improved from middling to one of the consistently best teams in catcher framing runs. Swanson oversaw Jose Trevino during his first Gold Glove-winning season in 2022, when he led the league in the metric. Swanson has also been credited for his work with Yankees catcher Austin Wells, who many scouts expected to move off the catching position post-college. Wells has ranked in the top five for catcher framing runs for each of the past three seasons.

More globally, Swanson was an early adopter of the one-knee-down catching philosophy, at the time regarded as controversial but now standard practice. Swanson advanced the technique way back in 2017 during his first year with the Twins, while working with minor-league catcher Ben Rodriguez, whose bigger frame caused him issues when he was trying to block balls. He’s a respected voice in the industry who has spoken at conferences, appeared on podcasts, and generally acted as a thought-leader in his field for the past two decades.

Swanson’s father was Jim Swanson, a left-handed catcher with the minor-league Portland Mavericks – made famous in the documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball – and is worth reading up on if you don’t know his story (left-handed catchers, I will forever dream of you). For those of you fans of a certain age, he also ran Swannie’s sports bar in Pioneer Square in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Catching development is Swanson’s calling card – and makes him a good fit for a team where one of the clubhouse leaders is the catcher – but ironically, he never played catcher in his career, instead playing as an infielder during his college career. But Swanson’s interests are beyond catching; he’s a student of all aspects of the game, often retweeting ideas he finds interesting about hitting or coaching in general (he’s a solid Twitter follow – @TannerSwanson. I’ve been following him for years and learned a ton). He is also passionate about sports in general – especially women’s sports, as the dad of four girls – and still deeply connected to developmental sports in the Northwest.

As far as experience, Swanson has direct experience being a bench coach – he served as Great Britain’s bench coach in the WBC this past year. (He also served as manager for one game in 2026 when both Aaron Boone and Brad Ausmus were ejected in a game against the Rays.)

As the Houston Astros look for a new manager, the idea of future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols getting the job has both fans and media abuzz.

Former Astros OF and World Series Champion Josh Reddick joined the Crush City Podcast and expressed he would like to see Albert Pujols get the job and laid out his case for why:

Pujols was known as a team leader with an incredibly high Baseball IQ. He was essentially another coach on the field, and had the respect of players, coaches and front office staff alike. Pujols was also known for his intensity, and could perhaps bring some fire to a team that has at times looked like it could use more if it.

The Dodgers have a designated hitter, and he’s under contract for seven more seasons.

His name is Shohei Ohtani.

Doesn’t matter how special of a hitter the Dodgers believe Josue De Paula is. Doesn’t matter how many evaluators say that De Paula reminds them of Yordan Alvarez in the batter’s box.

De Paula will not be the Dodgers’ primary DH anytime soon.

The 21-year-old knows what he has to do.

His team knows. His agent knows. Everybody knows.

He has to improve his defense.

“We’re going to keep working at it and come back better,” said De Paula, who is widely considered a liability as a corner outfielder.

When the Dodgers were eliminated by the Brewers in the National League Championship Series, De Paula said he would return to his native New York, then spend time at a training center in Miami run by his agent, Scott Boras.

“The focus is on him adapting to an outfield position,” Boras said.

Working with De Paula will be former major league outfielder Alex Ochoa, who now runs Boras’ Miami facility. A defensive standout as a player, Ochoa was a World Series champion with the Angels in 2002. He also played in Japan.

Boras said he also expects former Red Sox outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. to assist De Paula. Bradley won a Gold Glove in 2018.

De Paula isn’t being asked to transform into Willie Mays overnight. He just has to be competent enough to make the Dodgers unafraid to play him in the outfield. 

He does that and he could make Teoscar Hernández expendable. He doesn’t and he will remain an insurance policy for Ohtani at DH — or, perhaps, become a trade candidate himself.

With Ohtani on the injured list, De Paula was the DH in nine of the 10 games he started as a mid-September call-up. In the one game he started in left field, he was removed after six innings.

Nonetheless, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman argued that De Paula showed “marked improvement” as a defender over the last year.

Friedman said he believed De Paula benefited from being in a major-league environment in the month between his promotion from Double-A to the end of the Dodgers’ postseason run.

“For us, it was about the added benefit of him coming up in September, being on our playoff roster, being around,” Friedman said. “It’s one thing for us to say to the guy, ‘Hey, here’s your daily routine. Here’s what you have to do.’ We were all 21 at one point and thought we had all the answers, and it’s just hard to connect those dots in your brain.

“I think him coming up, the way our guys welcomed him in the clubhouse, him being around our players and seeing how they prepare and what they do before a game — I think really landed with him in a way that words from us or our minor league staff couldn’t have accomplished in the same way.”

De Paula worked on his defense daily with third base coach Dino Ebel. He also received pointers from manager Dave Roberts, a former major-league outfielder.

“I felt like I was in the best place to learn,” De Paula said.

General manager Brandon Gomes said he was encouraged by De Paula’s attitude.

“We’re not looking just to be like, ‘Oh, De Pau got pretty good,’” Gomes said. “Like, I think his mindset and our coaching staff and all of us is to make him as good of a defensive outfielder as he can to be a full player because that’s what we expect of all of our guys that step on the field.”

Gomes said he thought De Paula could be an above-average defender.

Shortly after he was promoted from Double-A, De Paula said he was driven by the negativity regarding his outfield play.

“I know that’s a big area of improvement for me,” he said. “I know I get a lot of hate on it. I’m that type, if I get hate on it, I’m going to focus on it more. So I’m gonna shut a lot of people up with my defense very soon.”

Becoming a solid outfielder will do more than silence criticism. It will open up a pathway into the Dodgers’ lineup.

It was exactly one week ago that I explained why the Mets might consider keeping Robert Stock around for the 2027 season:

“It takes guts to make it back to the majors after years away. It takes guts to perform under pressure with each outing potentially being the last of your career. And it takes good enough stuff and good enough command to show the glimpses of success that Stock did in August and September.

Injuries will always strike. Severe underperformance is always possible. (The current Mets brass should know those two principles better than anyone). If by May 2027, the Mets are already in emergency need of a spot starter or even a full-on rotation replacement, Stock is certainly a more attractive option than someone with zero command, zero experience, or zero ability to meet the moment.”

Well, on the seventh day, the baseball gods answered my prayers. On Friday afternoon, the Mets announced they had signed Stock to a one-year major league contract. 

Once a member of the 2021 Mets, Stock spent three years away from the majors while playing in international leagues. The 36-year-old underwent thoracic outlet surgery last March, but leveraged a summer spot start opportunity into a two-month stint with the Mets, posting a 5.93 in 30.1 innings across eight appearances. His 3.92 FIP suggests poor batted-ball results, and a couple of egregious outings overshadow the fact that he allowed one or zero runs while pitching four or more innings in four of seven starts, including one against the American League champion Rays.

The right-hander offers another veteran presence at the back of a projected pitching staff brimming with young talent. Nolan McLean, Christian Scott, and Zac Thornton all put their potential on display last season, with Jonah Tong waiting in the wings for another shot at the starting rotation. Sean Manaea will look to provide stability in the final year of his three-year contract. The Mets may also look to add outside reinforcements, even if that doesn’t mean signing two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal.

Stock also has experience out of the bullpen, including in his breakout 2018 season with the Padres under current Mets manager Andy Green. Should the Mets’ rotation slots become occupied, Stock can slide into a multi-inning relief role, providing flexibility for Green in his first full year at the helm in Queens.

It appears the Red Sox and Sonny Gray are heading their separate ways.

The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier suggested earlier this week on NESN’s “310 to Left” podcast that the franchise is unlikely to prioritize re-signing Gray despite his dominant 2026 season.

“My guess is that the interest on the part of the Red Sox in reupping with Sonny Gray is going to be muted, at least in the short term, and that they’re likelier to try to use any resources that they have elsewhere,” Speier said.

The veteran right-hander officially became a free agent last week after declining his side of a $30 million mutual option for 2027, instead collecting a $10 million buyout.

Gray, who turns 37 on Saturday, is coming off one of the best seasons of his 14-year big league career, posting a 2.72 ERA across 29 starts for Boston. 

The three-time All-Star was believed to be considering retirement before deciding to come back for the 2027 season. 

Last month, Gray told Speier he would be open to a Red Sox reunion while leaving the door open to departing this winter. 

“I still want to win a World Series, whether that is [with] Boston or with whoever wants me,” Gray said.

If that’s it for him in Beantown, Gray will be leaving on a sour note, having been pulled after 4 ⅔ innings in Game 2 of the AL Wild Card Series against the Yankees, and later expressed his displeasure with the early hook. 

“I’m the best pitcher in the American League going through the order for a third time. I think that’s a fact,” Gray said after the game. “I would’ve liked to live or die with me in that moment but that’s the competitor I am. Yeah, I think you can probably ask the guys and they felt the same way.

“I felt strong. I felt confident. I felt convicted … but what can you do, you know?”

Gray is expected to be one of the most coveted starting pitchers on the free-agent market, joining Tarik Skubal, Michael King and Freddy Peralta among the top available arms this offseason.