It had been 715 days since Missouri baseball had last tasted a Southeastern Conference victory at Taylor Stadium. 1,491 days marked the last time the Tigers had bested Arkansas. Both of those streaks ended in Mizzou’s 6-0 victory on Saturday afternoon at Taylor Stadium.

Another monkey off the Tigers’ back? Their recent nine-game losing streak, which included eight losses in SEC play and one to in-state opposition, SIUE, reached its ultimate conclusion.

Based on this series alone, it would be easy for Tigers fans to anticipate or even triangulate what could go wrong after the first inning. After all, the Tigers’ 5-4 defeat in the series opener came after an early inning that included a pair of homers from Jase Woita and Blaize Ward. This game was different.

Right out of the blocks, Missouri’s offense sprinted out like Usain Bolt, starting with back-to-back singles from Woita and Durnin. A walk surrendered to Blaize Ward loaded the bases with nobody out, and Mateo Serna was hit by a pitch, which was not the most conventional way to put the first run of the game.

Kaden Peer reached base on a fielder’s choice, and Donovan Jordan’s groundout drove two more runs across the plate, giving the Tigers more hits and runs than they accumulated all of Friday evening against the Razorbacks pitching.

SEALS AND MAISONET MAKING IMPACT IN STYLE

The second inning came along, starting with an infield single by Eric Maisonet. Then walked up Pierre Seals. It had been one month and three days since the last time he had gone yard. That changed two pitches into his at-bat against Colin Fisher.

Seals watched, stood, and flipped his bat, and he slowly moved down the first-base line, knowing he had gotten much more than enough of the ball for it to travel out of Taylor Stadium. 425 feet over the left field wall to be exact, giving Mizzou a 5-0 cushion in the bottom half of the second.

“We all come up with all of these cool celebrations to do, and that’s great,” Jackson said. “The thing that was most important for me, he finally got the barrel on it. He’s a guy who’s constantly hitting things to the backside. When you have that power that he does and the bat speed he does, if he can get the barrel out more consistently, you’re gonna see more of that.”

As Jackson pointed out post-game, Seals, despite having hit four homers this year, has proven to be a power bat for the Tigers in Blue, Memphis. 10 home runs, 65 hits, and 33 RBI prove Seals can be a potent hitter when aggressively hitting towards the middle of the field.

On a day where the Tigers broke lots of negative streaks, Seals’ home run drought ended, as well as collecting a hit a piece over the last two games. after previously going hitless in his previous five.

“[Hitting the homer] was definitely big, because I feel like I’ve been hitting balls hard in the past couple of weeks and I didn’t have anything to show for it,” Seals said. “I kept going and kept my approach, and it was good to see it pay off.”

Eric Masionet, who wasn’t necessarily high in the home run column for Missouri this season coming into Saturday afternoon, made his mark in the bottom of the fourth. After connecting on a 1-0 pitch from Gabe Geckle, which admittedly didn’t look like it was leaving the yard, kept carrying.

Damian Ruiz jumped at the left field wall, the ball hit the top of the padding, and then the left field scoreboard. The Tigers were well and truly in the driver’s seat, up 6-0 in the bottom half of the fourth and hitting like a team that hadn’t been at the plate in nine games. No trepidation in the box, aggressive and having nothing to lose and everything to gain from besting a top-25 team in the country.

GONZALEZ AND VILLAREAL PUT UP ZEROS OVER 7.2 INNINGS

Gonzalez and Villareal stepped up not to the plate, but to the mound after an early re-aggravated injury occurred to Missouri’s starting pitcher JD Dohrman in the top of the second inning. 

“Its a groin injury,” Jackson said. “If it’s something you keep messing with it’ll never heal and he wasn’t quite feeling 100 percent so it’s better for us to pull him out and try to continue to put him on that rehab stretch and get him completely healed.” 

Gonzalez took Mizzou fans back to his outing earlier this month against an offensive powerhouse in Missouri State. Similar to his performance against the Bears, Gonzalez allowed zero earned runs and struck out a multitude of batters.

Gonzalez also became a U.S citizen earlier in the week and earning the victory after tossing five shutout innings capped off the series of good events for the right-hander.

“Its been a long process, Gonzalez said ”I came from Cuba, and, you know, got here to United States, and it was a long process, but being able to become a US citizen, it’s great. This country’s giving me everything, so I’m super happy and proud.“

Villarreal took over for Gonzalez after the sixth inning and continued the dominant outing from the Tigers relief staff. Villareal struck out three Razorbacks and pitched into the bottom of the ninth inning before surrendering a run and the bases being full of runners.

Jackson made the switch to the right-hander Sam Rosand, who’strikeout officially ended the long negative runs but not the work of playing more consistent baseball for Jackson.

“The relief for me is that we played good baseball, ”That’s the relief, regardless of if we would have not won or, like, I felt good on Thursday night because I thought we played good baseball. For me its ultimately it did we play good baseball, and by playing good baseball, can we continue to play good baseball… Yes I’m glad the streak is over but at the end of the day you can’t control whether you win or lose. If we do this consistently we’re going to win more than we lose.“

In five games, few pitchers in baseball have been better than Nolan McLean the first two times through an opposing order.

Among 116 qualifiers entering play Saturday, when the Mets were rained out, his .143 batting average against ranked fifth, his .211 on-base percentage against sixth and .248 slugging percentage against ninth with a 2.67 ERA.

The third time through the order, however, one of the best pitchers in baseball morphs into one of the worst in the early going.

Among 100 pitchers who had logged at least four innings of work against an order a third time through, his .348 average against ranked 88th, .375 OBP against 78th and .609 slugging percentage against 91st with a 10.80 ERA.

The next step for McLean’s ascent has become obvious: He needs to maintain his stuff and keep opposing hitters guessing deeper in games.

“At the end of the day, I just got to execute pitches a little bit better,” McLean said Tuesday. “Maybe do a little more homework on how guys are adjusting to me.”

The 24-year-old, technically a rookie, was speaking after taking a perfect game into the sixth inning — for a second time this season — in a matchup with the Twins, who then began to figure him out.

In the sixth, Minnesota recorded its first hit, a Matt Wallner single, before turning the order over.

Leadoff hitter Byron Buxton, in his third time seeing McLean, smacked a two-run homer.

Further trouble awaited McLean an inning later, when a Kody Clemens double and RBI single from Luke Keaschall ensured that on a night McLean’s stuff was excellent, his stat line (6 ²/₃ innings, three runs) was ordinary in what became a loss.

Every pitcher becomes more hittable the more he sees an opponent, whether due to familiarity or fatigue.

McLean — whose breaking pitches often seem inhuman, such is his ability to spin a baseball — can begin making his adjustments when he pitches Game 1 of the doubleheader against the Rockies at Citi Field on Sunday.

“These [opposing] guys are getting paid to play baseball for a living, too,” McLean said last week. “… But I’ve got to execute better at the end of the day.”

Sunday’s single-admission doubleheader will begin at 1:40.

Game 2 will start 30-45 minutes after the end of Game 1.

Tickets to Saturday’s game are not valid for admission to the makeup doubleheader.

Fans holding a ticket in their account for Saturday’s game will receive a digital voucher that will be accessible Sunday morning.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about this game from a White Sox perspective is that, according to the TV folks, it was only the second time since 1901 that four switch-hitting catchers appeared in the same game. Not much to that, you say? Well, it’s better than considering what happened on the field.

Want another anomaly? In the sixth inning, the Sox struck out not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times, the first a case of Miguel Vargas getting on via a third strike passed ball.

Noah Schultz pitched well, but not well enough. He did a terrific job getting out of a jam in the third, following a leadoff walk and double with two strikeouts and a grounder to short. But when Schultz started the fourth with two more walks and a wild pitch, both runners scored on a single by .179 hitter Nasim Nuñez to give Washington a 2-0 lead.

Schultz made it through six innings on a (very short) career-high 85 pitches, giving up four bases on balls and an equal number of hits and just the two runs while striking out a (very short) career-high eight. Meanwhile, though, Jake Irvin, who came into the game with an ERA of 6.00, was even better, walking none and allowing four hits and no runs while whiffing 10. He even had the first three K’s of the four-whiff inning.

Three Sox relievers kept it close, including new call-up Tyler Davis, who got two strikeouts in his first major league appearance. He did walk one, but maybe he just wanted to be part of the group. The fourth Sox reliever? Uh, well, we’ll get to that.

Nationals relievers did their best to try to hand the game back to the Sox via walks and hit batters and misplaying a bunt, which was to no avail until the eighth. It was then that Mitchell Parker walked Vargas and hit Colson Montgomery. Ex-Sox Gus Varland came in to give up an RBI single to Everson Pereira.

Chase Meidroth followed with a sac fly to knot the game, 2-2.

The Sox got two on via walks in the ninth — another attempted gift by the Nationals pen — but Montgomery struck out to end the threat. No matter how many gifts you’re offered, going 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position won’t help you much.

Then we arrive at the 10th, with Jordan Leasure on the mound. This is an apt time to scream, as usual, “Oh, no! Not him!” Leasure issued a walk and a single to load the bases, Manfred Man pushed to third. A passed ball by Drew Romo (just up from Charlotte to replace the DFAed Reese McGuire), on what looked like a cross-up from Leasure, let in one run. An intentional walk loaded the bases again. Leasure then walked Joey Weimer to force in a second run and make it 4-2, then gave up a two-run single to Nuñez, giving the shortstop (and No. 8 hitter) four RBIs on the afternoon.

Down 6-2, the Sox scored the free runner without any Washington effort to stop him, and 6-3 it ended.

It was a jammed house despite very cold weather thanks to a really cool jacket giveaway, but by the bottom of the 10th everybody had headed for warmth.

Thus, the White Sox are 11-16 and the series is tied at 1-1, with the decider at 1:10 p.m. Central tomorrow, Sean Burke and lefty Foster Griffin the scheduled starters.

For the last few weeks, the Nationals offense has been heavily reliant on James Wood and CJ Abrams. However, with Abrams out of the lineup, and Wood not having the best game, it was on the supporting cast to get the job done. Led by Nasim Nunez, the Nats were able to put six runs on the board and win the game in extra innings.

Nasim Nunez does a lot of great things on the baseball field. He is an incredibly smooth defender and is one of the best baserunners in the league when he gets on base. However, he is not known for his bat, and has gotten off to a pretty dreadful start at the plate. Even after this game, he is just hitting .195 with a .505 OPS. 

The great thing about this Nats offense though is that different guys have stepped up when needed. Today was Nunez’s time to shine. He drove in four runs on two ultra-clutch hits, including one in the 10th inning to break the game open. 

There have been times this season where Nunez seemed like he was trying to do too much. After shockingly hitting four home runs last September, Nunez may have fallen in love with his power too much. You could tell during some at bats that he really wanted to lift the ball. Today, he was not trying to do too much, which is when he is at his best. 

Nunez should be trying to get on base whatever way he can. Whether that is bunting or selling out for contact, putting the ball in play should be Nunez’s main focus. He still struck out twice today, but in the biggest moments, Nunez was staying within himself.

This game was not all about Nunez though. The other big hero was Jake Irvin, who had his best start of the season. Coming into this game, Irvin had an ERA of 6.00, but I thought he was pitching a lot better than he was last year. Today, the results matched his improved stuff. He had 16 whiffs, the most he has had in a game since June of 2024.

Seeing those whiffs is a great sign for Irvin. When he was at his best in the first half of 2024, he was getting solid whiff numbers. He was not overpowering, but he had enough in the tank for hitters to respect him. Irvin has actually been a big strikeout guy to start this season, with 34 in 29.2 innings. He was not even striking guys out like that in his big first half a couple years ago.

Today, his curveball was a whiff monster. He got 11 of his 16 whiffs on the hook. You do not see a ton of big slow curve’s like Irvin’s anymore, but they are so nice to watch. Irvin’s command of the curveball was absolutely outstanding today. He was putting it right at the bottom of the zone or putting it slightly out of the zone. It was just too much for hitters not to swing at and he had White Sox batters fishing all afternoon.

Honestly, I think Blake Butera’s hook for Irvin was pretty quick. After a disastrous sequence from Keibert Ruiz turned a strikeout into having a guy on second, Irvin buckled down. He got two more strikeouts, but Butera had seen enough. With a lefty coming up, he went to Mitchell Parker. While Parker got out of the inning, I would have preferred to see Butera stick with his starter.

It was another shaky game for Butera today. He stuck with Mitchell Parker for a bit too long and Cionel Perez almost gave me a heart attack. However, I do like that he went to Brad Lord for a single inning high leverage spot in the 10th inning. Lord is more than a long man, and should be treated as such.

It was a gritty win for the Nats. They drew 10 walks, and consistently had guys on base. The floodgates did not truly open until the 10th inning, but the Nats pressure eventually paid off. It was a nice win, and now they will go for the series win tomorrow.

HOUSTON — Giancarlo Stanton avoided an immediate placement on the injured list after leaving Friday’s game with a tight right calf.

That hardly means he is in the clear.

As of Saturday afternoon, the Yankees were trying to give Stanton more time to see if he could improve enough to steer clear of the 10-day IL, though landing on it still seemed like the most likely scenario just to make sure it did not turn into a longer-term injury.

“I feel better than [Friday],” Stanton said before the Yankees’ 8-3 win over the Astros on Saturday night. “I’m going to try to get to 24 hours or maybe [Sunday] to see where we’re at and then decide what to do.”

Stanton had not yet undergone any tests on his calf, though he could in the coming days. In the meantime, he was spending his day in the training room getting treatment.

“It’s not ideal,” Stanton said. “That doesn’t mean great or terrible.”

Manager Aaron Boone acknowledged that the Yankees could err on the side of caution and put Stanton on the 10-day IL to give him time to recover, even if the calf injury does not rise to the level of a strain.

“And G’s on board with that too, but we also don’t want to race to the IL 12 hours after when hopefully something isn’t too serious,” Boone said. “We’ll be smart about it, G knows that, that we don’t want this to turn into a long-term situation. So we’ll proceed accordingly.”

• CHECK OUT THE LATEST MLB STANDINGS AND YANKEES STATS

As of two hours before first pitch Saturday, the Yankees did not yet have a player on the way from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre just in case, though Jasson Domínguez would be the likely candidate to be called up if Stanton ends up on the IL. In that scenario, it may just be a temporary call-up until Anthony Volpe is ready to return from the IL, likely at some point next week.

The 36-year-old Stanton, who is all too familiar with lower-body, soft-tissue injuries, sustained the calf tightness on a trip around the bases in the sixth inning Friday. He said he felt it while jogging from first to second on a walk by Jazz Chisholm Jr.

“It felt weird,” Stanton said. “Then my secondary [leads] at second kept feeling weird.”

While at second base, Stanton motioned to the dugout in an attempt to get attention and exit the game, though it did not happen until he got to third base on J.C. Escarra’s single off the left field wall.

“If I felt weird, let’s [not] wait and sprint and make it feel worse,” Stanton said. “So I just wanted to get out [of] there before any more hard steps to set me back if it was something.”

Boone remained hopeful that Stanton caught it before it turned into something more severe.

“Whether that turns into a day-to-day situation or a short IL, we’ll see,” Boone said. “We’ll let the next several hours play out and see where we’re at.”

Stanton, meanwhile, quickly shut down any talk of him being frustrated about another injury despite doing everything in his power to try to avoid this.

The Yankees had been giving him regular days off in an attempt to keep him healthy – which worked last season after he missed the first two and a half months to deal with tennis elbow in both arms, which he is still managing on a daily basis.

“None of that matters, really,” Stanton said. “It’s just, what’s the deal with me and then decide what’s best for the team.”

A potential IL trip would allow the Yankees to push back a decision on whom they would remove from the roster to make room for Volpe when he finishes his rehab assignment, which could come by the time they return home next Friday.

But the more pressing concern was Stanton’s health.

“I’m sure there’s a part of him that’s ticked off about it,” Boone said. “But there’s also, one of the great things about G is he’s very honest and deals with what’s in front of him. He’s very good at compartmentalizing everything. Regardless, hopefully this is something that’s a short-term thing.”

The Mets have been hit hard by injuries, but not in their rotation.

Consider their starting pitcher options: the four currently in the group; David Peterson, who finds himself in a kind of rotation purgatory; Sean Manaea; Tobias Myers (if stretched out); a just-optioned Christian Scott; and Jonah Tong, whose swing-and-miss stuff has begun to tick up with Triple-A Syracuse.

A team with many issues — including maximizing what is a talented crew of starting pitchers — does not have a depth issue.

Which is one more reason Kodai Senga needs to figure himself out quickly.

The leash cannot be long for Senga, whose turn manager Carlos Mendoza would not guarantee after his last blow-up, although the club decided to give the right-hander another start and a few more days of rest.

That start will come in Game 2 of Sunday’s doubleheader against the Rockies at Citi Field, where Senga will be under as much pressure as can exist April 26.

The Mets, losers of 13 of 15, cannot continue to trust Senga if the duds keep mounting.

A season that began with hope — two solid outings with better velocity than last season — has quickly derailed, with Senga allowing 13 earned runs in 5 ²/₃ innings in his past two starts.

“We’ve seen flashes from Kodai. We haven’t seen the consistency,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said Friday. “We’re banking on the flashes and him continuing to get into the rhythm of the season, but we need some more consistency.”

The flashes have included those nine strikeouts in six two-run innings against the Cardinals in his season debut.

There are times, even within poor games, that he looks like the All-Star and potential ace he was in 2023. And there are reasons — really, there are — to be optimistic that he is still that pitcher.

Senga’s stuff itself continues to trend the right way.

His four-seamer averaged 95.7 mph when he pitched to a sub-3 ERA in ’23 and 94.7 mph last season.

Through four starts this year, he is registering 96.3 mph with the pitch.

He has pitched to an 8.83 ERA with an expected ERA of 3.92.

That 4.91 ocean of a difference ranked as the ninth highest in baseball entering play Saturday, when the Mets were rained out.

In 2023, opposing hitters averaged an 89.0 mph exit velocity against Senga.

This season, the ball has left their bats at 89.4 mph. Despite the numbers and especially the ERA, he is not exactly getting crushed.

More discouraging, though, is Senga’s recent command and seeming inability to pitch through adversity.

In 5 ²/₃ innings of disasters against the A’s and Cubs, Senga walked five.

With plenty of traffic — made worse by poor fielding behind him in Chicago — a pitcher accustomed to simply turning to his forkball and striking his way out of danger has folded.

Opposing hitters are hitting .333 with a 1.176 OPS against him with runners in scoring position.

• CHECK OUT THE LATEST MLB STANDINGS AND METS STATS

Some of that, surely, is due to poor luck.

Some of that, surely, is on Senga.

“I’m not getting ahead, not getting first-pitch strikes, getting to hitter’s counts,” Senga said through an interpreter last week at Wrigley Field. “It’s obviously not a good sign, but at the same time I am not all that far off.”

The Mets, too, believe he can turn a corner — or else Manaea would have been saved for this turn or maybe Myers would have been stretched out or Tong would have been summoned.

There is a lot riding Sunday for the Mets and a pitcher who is making $15 million this season and $15 million next season.

“This is a guy that’s very meticulous about his work and his mechanics and things like that,” Mendoza said, “but he’s just got to go out there and do it.”

The Civil War that’s been bubbling beneath the surface between Alex Cora’s and Craig Breslow’s philosophies on how to run the Boston Red Sox finally came to a head on Saturday evening. The rumbles started with this tweet from Jared Carrabis …

… And were confirmed within the hour across the baseball universe.

Noticeably not on this list is pitching coach Andrew Bailey, who aligns with the Breslow / Sabermetrics side of the coin.

The timing of this seismic shakeup is very much worth noting. It comes just hours after the club’s most complete win of the year — A 17-1 beatdown over Baltimore — and has shades of the Rafael Devers trade, which occurred right after a sweep of the Yankees last June.

Zooming out a little more, the horrific 10-17 start the Red Sox got off to also feels like the perfect opportunity for those in the front office to clean house of the guys who didn’t see eye to eye with them. Despite all the struggles, the strong starting pitching is still very much in tact, and eventually that’s going to start to matter. So this could be a very tactical move from the front office to time Cora’s departure with what they see as the nadir of the early season. If so, it will be viewed as both brilliant and diabolical, depending on which side of the war you find yourself.

In the meantime, the Red Sox still have another game to play tomorrow in Baltimore, and taking the helm will Chad Tracy, who is getting promoted from his post in Worcester to interim manager. This makes sense as the roster is both filled with young guys who are very familiar with Tracy (Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Connelly Early, Payton Tolle, ect), and Tracy also seems very dialed into the in game details. Just today in Worcester he caught the Mets batting out of order:

We’ll have much more on this and everything else that comes with it here at Over The Monster in the coming hours and days.

The next big item appears to be a press conference scheduled for tomorrow morning that will include both Sam Kennedy and Craig Breslow. (Have your spiked coffee ready!)

Long-term, only time will tell if today marks the turning point in a fun, memorable season, or the beginning of a total circus act.