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Zack Wheeler’s absence from the 2026 MLB All-Star Game isn’t sitting well with some folks.

After Wheeler wasn’t named to the National League’s All-Star roster for the Midsummer Classic at Philadelphia’s Citizen’s Bank Park despite an impressive comeback from thoracic outlet syndrome, his agent B.B. Abbott ripped the snub. 

“It’s just tone deaf,” Abbott told The Athletic Sunday. “I think the whole thing is tone deaf.” 

“Major League baseball knows (about Wheeler’s injury recovery),” he added. “Everybody knows what he’s been through. And to not do what you needed to do to let this guy be honored in his home ballpark, it’s ludicrous.” 

Wheeler’s Cy Young-caliber 2025 season ended abruptly in August after the discovery of a blood clot near his right shoulder. 

Following thoracic outlet surgery in September, Wheeler missed the first few weeks of 2026 before returning April 25. He’s been just as dominant as he was before the injury. 

Across 13 starts this season, the 36-year-old has gone 8-1 with a 2.36 ERA and 0.93 WHIP. He also has 84 strikeouts in 80 innings. 

Wheeler has also held hitters to a .580 OPS this season, ranking fourth in the NL behind All-Stars Jacob Misiorowski, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. 

But it still wasn’t enough for an All-Star bid, as Wheeler wasn’t one of the five NL starting pitchers on the players’ ballot. 

“They’re going to think that I’m grandstanding and on a soapbox,” Abbott said. “Quite frankly, I don’t care because it’s the right thing to do on this particular player. To be able to come back from something that not a lot of players can come back from – and certainly can’t return to the level of excellence that he has – it shows a real lack of acknowledgement by Major League Baseball to what he’s done up to this point.” 

Although Wheeler didn’t make the cut, the Phillies still have five All-Stars in Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Brandon Marsh, Christopher Sánchez and Jhoan Durán. 

Along with Wheeler, they’ve all been instrumental in turning around the Phillies’ season after a 9-19 start to a 50-41 mark — good for second in the NL East — entering Monday’s slate.

After finishing off a sweep of the Angels last night, the Red Sox are suddenly 8-2 in their last ten contests. Not only has this nearly cut the number of games they’re below .500 in half (from 14 to 8), but it’s also left them in a significantly better place in relation to the third Wild Card, even if it doesn’t appear that way on the surface.

With a quick glance, the only headline this hot stretch lends is Boston cutting the number of games they trail the third Wild Card by two, from six behind to four behind. But in terms of traffic? They’re in a whole different world. For more on that crucial detail, let’s take a look at the standings at the end of play on June 24th (just before the aforementioned ten game stretch began):

When the Red Sox left Colorado after that mortifying series loss to the Rockies, they not only had the worst record in the American League and trailed a Wild Card spot by six games, but they also trailed teams not holding a playoff spot like the Astros, A’s, and Rangers by five games each. This is why I’ve included that final column on the right side of the table: It puts into context how the Red Sox aren’t just chasing the Blue Jays; they’re chasing an entire pack of tightly bunched teams.

More specifically, we can add up all the cumulative games they trail the third Wild Card spot by at any given moment. For instance, on that June 24th snapshot, if you add up all the games the Red Sox trailed, there were a cumulative 30.5 games between them and a playoff spot.

So the obvious question becomes, “how does that compare to now?” Well, let’s take a look at the current Wild Card standings using the same format:

Game changer! Despite that top number not dropping all the much, the cumulative games the Sox trail the third Wild Card by has plunged from 30.5 to 11. In other words, in terms of distance they trail, they’ve only made up a third of the ground they need to cover in relation to the third Wild Card. But in terms of density and traffic? This 8-2 stretch knocked out about two thirds of the task at hand.

If this were a NASCAR race, they’ve gone from nearly losing the lead draft to being right in the middle of the big, gnarly pack. They still have plenty of work to do and more cars to pass, but they’re solidly in the race for the first time all summer. (Also, if you believe in run differential, they probably have a better engine under the hood than anybody around them as they’re the only team in the first seven spots on that board sporting a positive run differential.)

Oh, and it actually gets even better when you look above the teams listed in the standings I posted here. Both the Mariners and the Guardian are only 1.5 games ahead of the Rangers, and the White Sox are just a game above that. In other words, there’s additional teams that can stumble and fall back into the pack even if the Rangers, Astros or Twins go on a hot streak and threaten to pull away. A few weeks ago, the traffic was nestled just below the line. But now? The traffic is more concentrated just above the line — A subtle, but extremely important change.

With the Mariners leading the AL West at 47-44 and the White Sox leading the AL Central at 47-42, there’s a pretty hard lid on the ceiling of each of those divisions. This works almost as an insurance policy to prevent the likelihood of the third Wild Card rising much above .500 all year. In order for that to happen, two teams from the same division would need to vastly outperform expectations between now and the finish line, and if you’ve watched as much late night American League baseball as I have this season, the thought of that should provide a nice chuckle. (As a collective group, these teams suck!)

For this reason, FanGraphs still projects the third AL Wild Card to come in at a historically disgraceful 80-82. Personally, I think it lands a couple of games above that with things being rearranged at the trade deadline and somebody breaking out a little bit, but overall, something drastic would need to happen to move the target in a significant way.

This is all a long way of saying that despite Boston’s horrific play for most of the season, a playoff spot is still right there if they get some guys back after the All-Star break and go on another small hot streak. Personally, I find it absurd MLB has lowered the bar this much and needs to address the issue in the upcoming CBA (add it to the list), but it’s the reality we’re looking at now.

Finally, I have one last thought rolling around in my head before we wrap this up: The next six games before the All-Star break might be Boston’s most vulnerable window. With the Contreras suspension looming, Connelly Early and Ranger Suarez banged up, and the continued lack of timelines for Roman Anthony and Garrett Crochet, they could get themselves in real trouble over the next few days and erase much of the progress they’ve made. However, if they grind things out and get into the break with say a mere 3-3 record from here, then all of a sudden they have time to regroup before they resume play on July 17th. If they’re still sitting just four games out of a playoff spot with a bunch of timelines on the table to get guys back, things could get interesting in a hurry!

Brody Bumila, the 6’9”, 255 lb. prep lefthanded pitcher out of Massachusetts who throws over 100 mph, has a damaged UCL, per multiple reports. Bumila had internal brace surgery on his elbow last May, and returned to throw as well as ever for much of the spring, though a decline in both velocity and command in his final few starts raised concerns about his health. Those concerns, it turns out, were valid.

I had debated about whether to do a draft write-up on Bumila, as the Rangers have generally stayed away from high school pitchers in recent years. However, I’ve seen him mentioned as a possibility with the Rangers a couple of times — including in the June 29 BA mock draft — and you have to think the Rangers’ president of baseball operations has a soft spot for giant pitchers who also play basketball (Bumila led his high school team to the state championship this year).

Bumila is a good athlete for his size, and has shown good ability to throw strikes and repeat his delivery for a prep pitcher with his build. He has a relatively low arm slot and great extension, which makes his fastball play up and gives him good rising movement at the top of the zone. His secondaries, though, are way behind his fastball. Jen McCaffrey has a write-up on him for the Athletic that came out today, hours before the news of his UCL injury came out.

Bumila had gone from a likely first rounder to someone who could slip into the second round, based on the reports from the prognosticators, even before the news of the UCL damage. The fact that Bumila will likely need UCL surgery — either another internal brace surgery or Tommy John surgery — is likely to exacerbate that slide.

Bumila is a University of Texas commit, and so has the opportunity to play for a top team in one of the top conferences if he doesn’t end up getting signed by a drafting team. However, he’d most likely be sitting out all of the 2027 baseball season for the Longhorns with a medical redshirt. He’d also be running a risk in regards to whether, and how well, he’d come back after two elbow injuries, with the possibility of getting a lower payday after three (or more) years in college. You also have the uncertainty surrounding the future of the draft — if you’re a high school player who is being offered top two round money right now, you have to consider the possibility that the landscape and bonus structure for the 2029 draft could look much different than it does now.

As we’ve discussed quite a bit, the Rangers have not shied away from taking pitchers who are injured, or coming off of injuries, in the draft in recent years. If the organization feels comfortable with his medicals and their medical staff’s ability to get him back to 100%, he could be a high risk, high reward selection in the second or third rounds.

Giants' Heliot Ramos joins small club with two blasts and Little League homer originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — Heliot Ramos did not have immediate access to Statcast data when he returned to the dugout in the first inning Monday night. But he didn’t need it. 

“I knew it!” Ramos said after the 10-1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. “Me and [Rafael Devers] were talking about it. I knew it.”

Ramos’ 399-foot laser while leading off the bottom of the first was an Oracle Park special. It would have been out of all 29 other ballparks, but Ramos had to settle for a triple and Little League home run when the ball was thrown into the home dugout as he slid into third. 

He wasn’t done, though. Not even close.

Ramos followed his near-homer with two actual ones, and both were impressive blasts. His fingerprints were all over one of the cleaner wins of the year for the Giants, who got a career-high eight innings from right-hander Landen Roupp and might have had their best baserunning game of the Tony Vitello Era. 

On another night, the story might have been Devers going first to third, or the Giants successfully executing a double steal. But Ramos stole the show in the second half of a quick game. 

His three-run blast to right in the sixth gave him a triple and homer in the same game for the second time in five days, and Ramos said that was his favorite swing of the night. His father, a pretty good player in Puerto Rico, taught him the opposite-field approach that he’s so proud of, one that once led to him becoming the first player in Oracle Park’s history to get a Splash Hit from the right side. 

In the eighth, Ramos blasted a 434-foot homer to left to clinch his first career multi-homer game. It was the third-longest homer by a Giant at Oracle Park this season, behind a couple on the last homestand from Victor Bericoto, who had two more hits Monday and drove in two runs.

The huge night gave Ramos four homers and two triples in eight games since he came off the IL and provided a reminder of what the Giants are missing when their energetic former All-Star isn’t in the lineup. While there are a lot of reasons why San Francisco is 14 games under .500 — most of them related to pitching — it perhaps hasn’t been discussed enough that Ramos missed six weeks with a quad injury.

Vitello keeps telling the same story about his return. He heard Ramos before he saw him, and that energy is always there between the lines. 

On this night, Roupp didn’t need much to work with. He pushed for his first career complete game but was pulled after 104 pitches. Still, he snapped a streak of 11 straight team losses in games that he started.

Roupp said that was a “heavy” weight he was carrying, but he gave up just three hits Monday. That was matched by Ramos, who joined a small club. He’s the first Giant since Johnny Mize to hit two homers and a Little League home run in the same game, and the first big leaguer to do it since San Diego’s Bubba Trammell in 2002.

The night was capped by a home run that left the bat at 110 mph. Vitello said the dugout was “in awe.”

“Everybody was thunderstruck on that one,” Vitello said. 

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Go Rays!

SAN FRANCISCO — In the eyes of Tony Vitello, it’s a shame the All-Star break is so late. 

In his past life as a college coach, his season would be long over by now. His new reality as the manager of one of professional baseball’s most disappointing teams, however, means he’s barely past the halfway point — and yet there’s still probably not enough time left to correct course.

“With the way the first half has gone, it’d be great if the All-Star break actually split the season in half,” the first-year San Francisco Giants manager said. “You might as well divide the season into halves and make sure we have a positive second half. Where that leaves us when you combine the two, you don’t have much control over it. But what’s in the past is in the past.”

That was the gist of the message the manager tried to get across when he called a team meeting over the weekend at Coors Field, where they emerged 15 games below .500 (37-52).

Ostensibly, it served the purpose of announcing the team’s two All-Stars — Logan Webb and Luis Arraez — but Vitello hoped to use the opportunity for something more.

“He said something good the other day,” Webb said. “I think we were at the midway point and to try to sort of pretend like the first half didn’t happen, which obviously you can’t. But try to. 

“Pretend you’re restarting the season a little bit. You’ve just got to put your head down and work and hope things will turn around.”

It seemed to resonate, at least initially.

The Giants responded by playing one of their cleanest and most complete games of the season later that evening, albeit against the lowly Rockies.

But when you’re stuck in the mud, taking that second step isn’t any easier.

“I think the entire first half, we’ve kind of been looking around, like trying to place our finger on, OK, how’s our offense doing well, how is the pitching doing well, and we can’t seem to put together wins?” catcher Eric Haase told the Post. “I think it was just a good reminder: We’re not playing bad baseball — we’re just not winning.”

It only took a day for that incongruency to come to a head again. The Giants slugged four home runs and their pitchers kept Colorado at bay for seven innings in Sunday’s series finale.

But in the end, they returned home nursing a 2-4 record on the road trip and a second straight series loss after their bullpen failed to protect the lead. Once again, a team that still hasn’t swept a series or won more than three games in a row proved to be allergic to momentum or motivation.

They didn’t have time to catch their breath descending from the mile-high altitude. They don’t have another day off until they get four in a row next week. They can only hope the All-Star break provides the ultimate reset button.

Since the actual midpoint of the season, they entered Monday at 4-4.

“We want to finish this half strong. We want to go into the break with that confidence that the next half is going to be better,” first baseman Bryce Eldridge said. “We all have confidence that that’s gonna happen. It’s just a matter of continuing to work and continue to put that together.” 

The cold reality is that even though their bats have begun to heat up — in particular Rafael Devers, who has 16 home runs and a .928 OPS since the start of May — wins haven’t followed.

And that means the task at hand is likely only going to get tougher, given that whatever parts of this oil tanker run aground still in working condition are expected to be sold off by the Aug. 3 trade deadline.

Given those circumstances, what would Vitello like to see his squad do differently in the second half?

“A little more attitude on the field, which is tough when times are tough,” he said. “Just the mentality, the verbalization of the word ‘attack.’ Attacking presence. Attacking even when you feel you caught a bad break or we didn’t make a play behind you. Setting the tone.”

That means attacking their pregame defensive drills, which he’s been pleased with. And on the bases, “I do think we’ve kicked up the aggressiveness a little bit,” he said. “It would probably be more beneficial to kick it up a lot.”

Primarily, his pitchers need to throw strikes.

Only two teams are in the zone less often than the Giants’ staff.

“We have a whole group of very hard-working players that want to win. I know the standings may not show it, but we do. We want to win,” said Webb, the one pitcher who hasn’t had trouble throwing strikes. “We’re trying our best to win. Not that it makes it any better. But I think when you do that and you have a group of talented players, things will turn around at some point. I don’t know when it will turn around. I can’t tell you that. But that’s the goal here.”

As for himself, Vitello didn’t offer much in terms of self-reflection.

“Just improve,” he said. “It can be a bunch of little different areas, but just improve.”