First of all, cheers to the Venezuela for winning the WBC. It seemed like the odds were stacked against them, having to play for the second night in a row and now being able to lose the reliever who got them past Italy. The reaction of their players and the Venezuelan fans make the whole WBC worth the effort.

I wonder if Daniel Palencia glove has fallen to the ground. He threw it so high. Eduardo Rodriguez had such a terrific start. And they got just enough hitting.

On the US side, they got just three hits, two of them from Bryce Harper. Their offense never really got going throughout the WBC. I can’t say I’m sorry for Mark DeRosa.

John Schneider told reporters that José Berríos has a stress fracture in his elbow. He also went on to say that José has been ‘remarkably’ pain-free. He won’t be on the roster opening day and there is no time line suggested, just that he’ll rest the arm for a bit and then start back up. How long ‘a bit’ is we have no idea.

He went so many years in a row getting his 32 starts that it’s not a surprise his arm is asking for some time off.

I guess I shouldn’t have laughed at how many starting pitcher the accumulated this off-season.

The Jays have announced their starters for the next few days:

• Today: Josh Flemming. Eric Lauer will start in a minor league game today. With the Berríos news, Lauer is likely to have a starter’s role at the start of the season.
• Thursday: Cody Ponce.
• Friday: Max Sherzer.
• Saturday: Kevin Gausman.
• Sunday: Dylan Cease.

Today’s lineups. The game is at 1:00 Eastern. I interested to see Eloy play first base. Too bad Andrés Giménez isn’t back yet (though I’d imagine his nursing a hangover today), the back of the lineup could have been Giménez, Jiménez, Jiménez.

We already had this confirmed directly to us, but hey, have a very long press release:

Basically, Brandon Gaudin and C.J. Nitkowski are coming back as the main booth lads, Jeff Francoeur will be there when he feels like it (a 30-game commitment), while Wiley Ballard and Paul Byrd will chip in from the sidelines.

Former Braves Peter Moylan, Nick Green, and Charlie Culberson will handle pre-game and post-game stuff, which I can’t comment on because I will always just switch to a different game rather than bothering to watch someone talk about the game I just watched where I already know what happens.

On a personal preference level, it’s basically impossible for me to complain because the current broadcast situation is so many leagues better than what existed in the Chip Caray era that I’m eternally grateful for not having to mute the game within the first few batters each time. Gaudin and Byrd definitely enhance my experience, and this crew seems to work well together.

And, before you fill up the comments on the same topic, no, we don’t know of any other carrier deals with BravesVision yet… so if you’re looking to get it via cable or a streaming service, you’ll still have to stay tuned until we do know.

This might be the easiest, low-stress, high-joy article I write this season.

It’s just so much fun to research the Houston farm system. It’s kind of hard to even come up with sections or headers for this one, so let’s just jump into it. 

Baseball America: 27th in organizational rankings, 0 Top-100 prospects (hell yeah)

Baseball Prospectus: 27th, 0 Top-101 prospect (Hell Yeah)

FanGraphs: Org rank not updated, but ended 2025 ~29th, 0 Top-100 prospects: (HELL YEAH)

MLB Pipeline: 29th, 0 Top-100 prospects: (can i get a big fat “hell yeah” in the chat?)

The Good:

The pride of Northwest Washington State, shortstop Xavier Neyens is, in most evaluators eyes, the top prospect for the Astros. Before being Houston’s 2025 1st draft pick, Neyens played for Mount Vernon High School in Mount Vernon, WA, just a 25 minute drive down the road from little ole’ me up here in Bellingham. 

He spent his senior year terrorizing the Northwest Conference, leading the Bulldogs to a 20-game win streak, a 25-3 record, and a 2025 3A state title. A bat-first player, he hit .456 with eight home runs, had an on-base percentage of .689 (buoyed by a state championship game where he was intentionally walked four times), and racked up 35 stolen bases. That’s nothing to say of his heroics as the Bulldogs’ closer, where he went 6-for-6 in save opportunities, delivered 11.5 K/9, and flashed 95 mph and 22”+ of IVB on the fastball. 

He was that guy. Neyens is a high-floor prospect with five strong tools whose power has the potential to carry him. Expect for him to break the top-100 prospect drought for Houston by the end of the season.

The Rest:

This concludes the end of the high-floor and high–ceiling section of the Houston farm system. From here on out, it’s all risk/reward calculations, baby. 

Kevin Alvarez is MLB Pipeline’s top prospect for Houston, but he only comes in at no. 5 for Baseball America, as BA heavily weighs his high-risk profile and how early he is in his development process. 

Baseball America describes the system’s 3rd-best prospect (Brice Matthews) as a likely utility player with a 30 grade on the bat. Not what you’re looking for from the number 3 spot. 

Almost none of the rest of the top 10 of this system have what can even be described as a medium floor. They range from low-floor, high-ceiling at best, to low-floor, lowish mediumish ceiling on average. 

Now, for the being fair and not purely gloating section: the Astros have been very successful at development over the last 10 years. It’s fair to think that many of these players may reach the higher end of their profile. This is not the first time that we’ve looked at their farm system and not thought there was any gas left in the tank. 

In conclusion: I wish a million risk upon the Houston Astros, and a zero reward upon them as well. I think my wish will be coming true.

Certain segments of American baseball fans and the American baseball establishment are struggling to accept an increasingly obvious reality: The World Baseball Classic matters a lot, even if it doesn’t matter all that much to them.

Prior to last night’s championship clash between the USA and Venezuela, Derek Jeter, who played in the first iteration of the WBC back in 2006, dismissed the tournament in a typically American way, which is to say a typically arrogant way:

It’s not at all surprising that Derek Jeter values the World Series over the World Baseball Classic. And I would never tell him he is wrong to do so. Meaning does not inherently exist in anything. Meaning is not something that can be objectively measured like the weather or the decibel level of the crowd in Miami last night. The meaning of anything in the world — whether we’re talking about a baseball tournament or a favorite tee-shirt — is determined by what’s in someone’s heart.

But while I would not tell Derek Jeter that he is wrong to value the World Series over the World Baseball Classic, I would tell him that he is objectively wrong to say that anyone who has played in a World Series finds more meaning in that than in the WBC. We already know this is not the case. Kiké Hernandez, who has played in more World Series than any other active player, directly told this to to all of us, Jeter included:

Hernandez’s sentiment is plainly shared by the vast majority of non-American ballplayers. Anyone who watched these games could see that. They tried to tell us this with every bat they flipped, with every dugout rail they hopped, with every tear that they shed on the field — whether those tears came from Shohei Ohtani before the first game, or Salvador Perez after the last. That Derek Jeter refuses to listen to them is disappointing but not surprising. Indeed, the dismissal of these players’ own feelings is foundational to how the global baseball industry works.

The economic system that controls global baseball is a product of American economic imperialism. As with bananas in the Caribbean, pineapples in the Hawaiian islands, or oil in the Middle East, America has used its economic might to shape the way that baseball is both produced and consumed around the world, ensuring that the vast majority of money spent on baseball flows into the pockets of American ownership interests.

Venezuelan big leaguers are not victims under this system. Far from it. The exploitation of their talents by American capitalism has made many of them millionaires, far more financially comfortable than just about anyone else in their home country, where the median annual income isn’t enough to cover one month’s rent for a studio apartment in many parts of the United States.

But Venezuelan baseball culture is a victim of this system. Venezuela does not have a thriving and independent domestic baseball league that provides full-time jobs for coaches, groundskeepers, statisticians, scouts, writers, TV personalties, and social media influencers, like we have here in America. Venezuelan fans cannot take the train to the ballpark and buy a ticket to watch Ranger Suárez pitch to Ronald Acuña, Jr. Venezuelan ballplayers cannot make a living in their home country. They are instead given no other option but to ply their trade in a foreign land — one that is increasingly hostile and unwelcoming to them, one that sees them as lesser and now harasses and intimidates them as a matter of government policy, as the hero of last night’s game, Eugenio Suárez, has frankly and honestly discussed.

That Venezuelans do not have a viable baseball industry of their own is not because Venezuelans care less about baseball than Americans do. On a per capita basis, they almost certainly care a lot more. It’s because might makes right — whether that might comes in the form of the dollar or the gun. The economic realities of the world force Venezuelan ballplayers to not only leave their country to work, but to check meaningful parts of their culture and identify at the border in exchange for a paycheck. They do so largely without complaint, just as you and I likely would if the economic situation were reversed. But that doesn’t mean they don’t make real sacrifices. In order to do their jobs they leave all they know from birth behind and live a rootless life of baseball nomadism. They are forced to endure a kind of cultural loneliness.

What Derek Jeter can’t see is that it is precisely this cultural loneliness that gives the WBC so much meaning to many of these players. For one month every few years they are with their people. They don’t have to speak someone else’s language, eat someone else’s food, or adhere to someone else’s unwritten rules of behavior and decorum. For one month they are free to be fully Venezuelan and fully a ballplayer at the same time. Instead of sublimating their cultural identity in order to play baseball, they get to express their cultural identity through baseball.

The World Baseball Classic does nothing to break the American economic stranglehold over the global baseball industry. That was Rob Manfred handing out the medals last night, after all. The WBC is owned and operated by American ownership interests, and they do it for no other reason than it makes them even more money.

But what the WBC does do is break the cultural hegemony that America has always wielded over the game. This manifests itself not only in the way the game is played on the field during the tournament, but how the tournament is held in the hearts of those who are playing it. The American baseball establishment still controls the baseball industry, but it doesn’t control what baseball means. These players have decided that the WBC means more to them than the World Series. And because meaning is something that only exists in the heart, they are right.

The Houston Astros (10-10-3) travel to Jupiter to take on the St. Louis Cardinals (12-9-2) in Grapefruit League play.

RHP J.P. France will make his fifth appearance, including his first start of the Grapefruit League this season. RHP Kyle Leahy will be on the mound for the Cardinals facing the Astros for the third time this Spring.

TODAY’S STARTER: RHP J.P. France is set to make his fifth appearance, including his first start of the Grapefruit League this season. He last pitched on March 13 at STL, where he allowed one hit and one walk with five strikeouts in 3.0 scoreless innings.

He missed a majority of the 2025 season while recovering from right shoulder surgery, making only two appearances with the Astros in 2025.

TODAY’S POTENTIAL RELIEVERS: RHP AJ Blubaugh, LHP Steven Okert and RHP Kai-Wei Teng.

TODAY’S ROSTER MOVE: The Astros have reassigned C Collin Price to minor league camp.

Game Info

Game Date/Time: Wednesday, March 18, 12:05 p.m. CST

Location: Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium – Jupiter, FL

TV: none

Streaming: MLB.com (Cardinals feed, subscription required)

Radio: KBME 790 AM/94.5 FM HD-2

The Dodgers on Wednesday optioned pitcher Kyle Hurt to Triple-A Oklahoma City, getting closer to finalizing the opening day roster.

After Tuesday night’s win over the Royals in Surprise, manager Dave Roberts was asked by Kirsten Watson on SportsNet LA if, this late into camp, the team has seen what they needed to see to finalize the opening day roster.

“We have,” Roberts said. “We’re going to have some good conversations, some hard conversations over the next couple of days.”

Hurt had Tommy John surgery on July 30, 2024 and spent all of 2025 on the injured list. But unlike some of his returning-from-surgery cohorts in camp, the right-hander did pitch on rehab in Triple-A for the final month of the regular season, and was used during scrimmages during the postseason throughout October.

In seven appearances this spring, Hurt allowed three runs on six hits in 7 1/3 innings for a 3.68 ERA with two walks and 12 strikeouts, the latter representing a 40-percent strikeout rate.

After missing most of the last two seasons with injuries — he only pitched in .. games in 2024 — Hurt is back as a potential bullpen piece this season. Given that the Dodgers have used 39, 40, and 40 pitchers over the previous three seasons, if Hurt stays healthy this year he should get plenty of opportunities to contribute in Los Angeles.

Hurt getting options leaves only a few pitching roster decisions to be made to finalize the opening day roster. Blake Snell, Gavin Stone, Brusdar Graterol, Brock Stewart, and Bobby Miller all won’t be ready for opening day. That leaves only 15 available pitchers on the 40-man roster who haven’t already been optioned, plus two non-roster invitees in left-hander Antoine Kelly and right-hander Chris Campos.

In other words, only four more cuts to go to get down to 13 active pitchers for opening day.

Dodgers prospects play White Sox prospects on Saturday afternoon at Camelback Ranch, and on Wednesday all teams finalized their rosters for these spring breakout games.

This game on Saturday will be in the big league stadium at Camelback Ranch, and was originally slated for 3:30 p.m., after the Dodgers play the A’s. But due to excessive in and around Phoenix, everything was moved up one hour. The Dodgers Cactus League game will start at 11:05 a.m., with the prospects game coming at 2:30 p.m.

MLB Network will televise the Dodgers-White Sox spring breakout game, which will be streamed for free on the MLB app.

The Dodgers trimmed down from their preliminary list of 40 potential players for the spring breakout game to 27 players expected active on Saturday.

As expected, the slew of outfield prospects will be there, including all four top-100 prospects Josue De Paula, Zyhir Hope, Eduardo Quintero, and Mike Sirota, plus the slightly-older Zach Ehrhard and James Tibbs III who impressed in big league camp, plus 100-steal man Kendall George.

On the pitching side, Christian Zazueta and Adam Serwinoski stand out. Also active on Saturday are three of the Dodgers’ first four draft picks from 2025 — pitcher Zach Root, his Arkansas teammate outfielder Charles Davalan, and outfielder Landyn Vidourek.

Dodgers spring breakout roster

• Left-handed pitchers (4): Maddux Bruns, Cody Morse, Zach Root, Adam Serwinowski
• Right-handed pitchers (4): Cam DayPayton Martin, Marlon Nieves, Christian Zazueta
• Catchers (2): Francisco Espinoza, Victor Rodrigues
• Infielders (7): Moises Bolivar, Chase Harlan, Elijah Hainline, Kellon Lindsey, Emil Morales, Joendry Vargas, Logan Wagner
• Outfielders (10): Charles Davalan, Josue De Paula, Zach Ehrhard, Kendall George, Zyhir Hope, Eduardo Quintero, Mike Sirota, James Tibbs III, Brendan Tunink, Landyn Vidourek

Watching 42 on Friday’s movie night, I had forgotten that among shots of MLB players wearing 42 during the pre-credits montage, there is one at Target Field. That got me thinking about the Twins who have worn #42 outside of April 15 every year, and checking Baseball Reference, there have been just six. (Two of them were Senators, but they still count.)

They are:

Al Kozar
2B, 1950
Kozar spent all of 1948 and 1949 with the Senators, wearing #2 the first season and #1 the second. For the start of the 1950 season, he wore #42, an unusual number change for a player — players usually move to a lower number. However, he only wore #42 for 20 games before being traded to the White Sox, where he played 10 more games before his MLB career ended.

Cass Michaels
2B, 1950-1
Michaels came over to Washington in the Kozar trade and immediately claimed the vacated number. He wore #42 for the rest of 1950 and part of 1951 before switching to #7 (I could not find any further specifics as to when he switched), but in that new number, his Senators career ended the same way as his predecessor’s: a trade, sent to the Browns in May 1952.

Jim Manning
RP, 1962
The first Twin on the list, Manning wore #42 during his entire career: seven innings across five games at the start of the 1962 season.

Jack O’Connor
SP, 1982
O’Connor’s case is interesting. He wore #33 for most of his four seasons (well, three seasons and two games) in Minnesota, but he wore #42 for at least part of 1982, his only season as a primary starter. He ended that season with a 4.29 ERA, the lowest ERA of any full season in his career, walking 57 and striking out 56 across 126 innings.

Butch Huskey
OF, 2000
When MLB retired #42 across the league on April 15, 1997, the dozen or so players still wearing that number were allowed to keep it for the rest of their careers, including if they changed teams. Huskey was a Met in 1997, and three years and three teams later, he found himself wearing his usual number in Minnesota. He stayed with the team until mid-July, playing 64 games as a Twin, until the team traded him to Colorado, where he finished his career wearing #35.

Mike Jackson
RP, 2002
Another post-’97 holdover, Jackson had been with Cleveland at the time of the number’s retirement, and he pitched for that club for three seasons. After missing the 2000 season with injury and spending 2001 in Houston, he signed with the Twins as a free agent and spent 2002 pitching in the Metrodome. Jackson had a solid season, appearing in 58 games to the tune of a 3.27 ERA, but failed to make the bigs with Arizona the next season before finishing his career with the White Sox (wearing #38) in 2004.

And that is the entire list… until April 15 comes around again.