Worldwide Sports News

Worcester: L, 3-6 (BOX SCORE)

Twin Red Wings (Nationals AAA) home runs late in the game made the WooSox the only loser in the organization on Friday, and it’s also a shame that the first of those home runs was a direct response to a long ball Jason Delay hit in the top of the frame to pull the WooSox within one. The bottom of the WooSox lineup each reached base twice and Vinny Capra went 3-for-5, but earlier in the game, Raymond Burgos, who’s turned into a multi-inning work horse, kind of wore a tough start and was pulled in the fourth inning. Overall, the WooSox were peppered when they really couldn’t have afforded to be and it cost them.

Portland: W, 13-12 (F/10) (BOX SCORE)

The Sea Dogs almost had it locked up in Lehigh Valley (Phillies AA) especially after adding an insurance run to go up 12-9 heading into the bottom of the ninth, but the Phils locked it back up at 12 when Cooper Adams let a home run up. From the jump, both teams had the pitching figured out: Hayden Mullins and Cade Feeney combined for nine runs allowed and three home runs, and the game had thirty-one total hits. The good news: Portland didn’t have to wait long to stave the Phils off after blowing that save, and they had eighteen of those thirty one hits. Johanfran Garcia continues raking with another home run and Miguel Bleis reintroduced himself, if only for a night, with two doubles and a home run. That home run was thought to be the first turning point in the game, moving Portland’s expected winning percentage from just over 35 percent to 85 percent. Of course, the result had to wait, but Portland won nonetheless, thanks in large part to a prospect who simply hasn’t had the year many expected him to in 2026. I’m not about to say one night of nine total bases will turn the whole season around for the 22-year-old outfielder, who’s still batting just north of .200 with a 29% strikeout rate, but here’s hoping it’s the beginning of a second wind of sorts.

Greenville: W, 10-5 (BOX SCORE)

Greenville also didn’t pull any punches at the plate, as through two innings, they already had taken Winston-Salem (White Sox High-A) for a six-run ride. This didn’t keep Kyson Witherspoon from letting the Dash partially back into it, but he kept his own for the remainder of five satisfactory innings. Enddy Azocar is quietly (or not so quietly) proving that he is a bat to watch in the next couple of years: with a 3-for-4 night including a double Friday, he is now slashing .365/.411/.635 in 12 games since being called up from Salem. Azocar is quickly building onto his resume, spending the last year or so adding a bunch of muscle and adding onto that power tool. He’s still quick and has a nice arm, too. Azocar is just 19 still, so I’d expect him to stay in Greenville the rest of the season or enjoy a short call-up to Portland near the end before starting 2027 there, but right now, the sky is the limit if developed right.

Salem: Cancelled

Never to be made up, ending the Minor Lines abruptly just like the week seemingly did. Have a great Saturday!

This mostly has nothing to do with the subject of this article, but humor me for a few seconds.

You’re not a real sports fan unless there’s this one player that you irrationally believe can be something special. It can be in any sport, but it’s usually someone who just never gets to that certain level. For me, as a young Knicks fan who couldn’t have fathomed a world where they’re on the verge of greatness tonight, that was Willy Hernangomez. He never did much in the league, but his impressive rookie year as a beacon of light on a terrible team gave me hope.

It doesn’t have to be like that, though. My Yankees version of this is Albert Abreu. I saw that high-90s velocity and solid slider and changeup and thought this was the new Jonathan Loáisiga. Of course, that wasn’t too a high a bar due to ol’ Johnny Lasagna’s inconsistency, but I thought he had the stuff to be something special. As is the case with a lot of pitchers though, he never put it together and fizzled out. That’s not at risk to happening to Camilo Doval, who’s much more accomplished than any of the three players I’ve talked about so far, but there is some level of connection that he has.

Picture a reliever who can throw triple digits effortlessly with his cutter and sinker. He has an elite walk rate, almost never giving up a free pass. He gives up very few barrels. Most of the balls in play against him are pounded into the infield dirt. You’d imagine this reliever would be a tremendous high-leverage option, one that you would trust to hold a lead by not handing out free baserunners and frequently rolling double play balls when in trouble. While relievers are noticeably volatile and prone to small-sample variance (ahem Jeff Hoffman), more often than not, this is a winning archetype.

And then you look at Doval’s stats. In 29 appearances and 24.2 innings, his ERA is 5.47. He opened the season as the team’s primary set-up man, but has repeatedly been yo-yo’d into lower leverage, medium leverage, and back into big situations. He’s frequently on a short leash from Aaron Boone, something that’s problematic in a shallow bullpen.

So how is this possible? Well, it’s based on a few things.

Some of it is luck. While he doesn’t run an exceptionally high BABIP, he’s still allowing opponents to hit .260 off him, the highest rate of his career. Batters are hitting .261 on ground balls against him compared to the .246 league average, but all of this is within the regular realm of possibility.

The real culprit, in terms of luck, is his ridiculously high HR/FB%. A whopping 20 percent of his fly balls allowed have gone over the fence, a rate far above the major league average of 11.2 percent. Now, it’s not quite the highest in baseball, but he has by far the highest ground ball rate of any pitcher in the top 30 (min. 20 innings pitched). Well, except for his teammate, Tim Hill.

That’s not all bad luck, as sometimes you just get absolutely tagged, so let’s look at the four home runs he’s allowed this season.

A 3-2 slider at the knees that’s obliterated by a future Hall of Famer. This wasn’t a cheapie, this was a legend of the game getting exactly what pitch he wanted.

It was pretty chilly in the Bronx in mid-April, so Doval’s sinker was down a few ticks here. Vinnie Pasquantino grooves a ball in a similar spot, but it barely sneaks out over the short porch. This is something that, with better luck, is only a double. Instead, it’s a blown save.

Another slider at the bottom of the zone crushed to center field, this time by Joc Pederson.

Yet another slider that ends right down Broadway to a perennial Yankee killer.

Only one of these pitches I’d describe as truly terrible, but only one of these would also be classified as a wall-scraper. The clear trend here is just how flat and hittable his slider has been, which has been, by far, the worst pitch in his arsenal this season. Batters are 9-for-25 with three home runs and five extra-base hits against the pitch. He’s surrendering an average exit velocity of 92.6 mph and a .493 wOBA, but interestingly enough, the xwOBA is just .322. As a whole, Doval’s differential of 40 points between his xwOBA and wOBA makes him the second-unluckiest pitcher on the roster behind David Bednar (42 points).

Reliever sample sizes are so small that this stuff might never even out. 2024 Clay Holmes and 2025 Mark Leiter Jr. similarly suffered from bad luck, but theirs were more concentrated in grueling misfortune on ground balls and soft contact, while also suffering from bad defense. Defenders do have a -3 Fielding Run Value behind Doval this season, the worst on the team, but it isn’t Leiter-esque… yet.

While sometimes it just feels like a reliever’s struggles are something that feels unnecessarily cruel from the baseball gods, Doval can absolutely improve some things. For one, here’s a heat map of his pitches:

He’s been throwing his slider less and less lately after how much it got pounded in April, but his struggles have remained because of both location and his inability to change speeds. Some pitchers can make throwing almost exclusively fastballs work (hello Cam Schlittler), but when a hitter can equally time up an entire arsenal because of how close they are in velocity and spin, location becomes paramount.

And as you can see, you can probably gear up for 100 at the bottom of the zone when facing Doval. When it’s not at the bottom of the zone, his sinker creeps too much towards the belt, while his cutter spins towards the top. Being too predictable is the vice of every major league pitcher, and Doval isn’t exempt. His inability to properly locate or sequence has plummeted his strikeout rate, putting him at the whim of the defense behind him and Lady Luck herself.

I’m confident he’ll eventually stabilize as one of the better relievers in this bullpen, but the results aren’t there right now. I don’t really see a world where he gets to where he needs to be without that slider becoming a real weapon again, so until that happens, it’ll continue to be a maddening work in progress.

The tension built steadily over a two and a half day window. That’s how long we had to wait to see the Cincinnati Reds blow a game on Friday night in a way so uniquely their own after the last time they blew a game in a way so uniquely their own.

There’s blowing a late 2-run lead only to then serve up a walk-off homer to a guy who forgot to hit homers all year. There’s doing that with a newly-promoted starting pitcher on in a relief role in the Bottom of the 9th inning, doing so in the most packed-house road stadium he’ll ever see.

Then, there’s simply dropping the ball. That’s what happened on Friday night in Great American Ball Park, and it happened to the guy who’s perhaps the best defender the Reds have on the field most nights.

Blake Dunn’s 9th inning foible got most all of the headlines from last night’s 5-2 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, because that’s the easy way to do it. It was the oh no play in a big spot, and that’s when the 2-2 score on the scoreboard changed.

But the way the Cincinnati Reds lost on Friday night cannot at all be simply defined by that drop.

They walked 9 times on the night and scored just twice. Nine times.

They forced the opposing starter to throw 40 pitches in a single inning…and still managed to not score a single run that inning. Meanwhile, the guy on their roster who’d faced that starter more than anyone else (and was 5 for 10 with a walk and a double against him) didn’t even get put in the starting lineup to face him.

As a team, they own the 12th most PA on the season with runners in scoring position. Their collective 81 wRC+ in those situations is the worst among all MLB clubs. Their .295 wOBA in those positions is the worst among the 30 teams, too.

Today, they’re going to willingly roll out a starting pitcher whose last three outings have seen him throw just 7.1 IP combined. In that time he has walked 13 batters and allowed 11 earned runs.

The bullpen blew the game in San Diego when Fernando Tatis, Jr.’s bat woke up. Lack of any sort of timely hitting and a horror show bit of defense at the worst of times last them last night’s game. So often with this bruised and broken starting rotation, it’s been the starting pitching that’s put this team in a hole from the very beginning of games.

That’s just about every facet of the game right there. Add in keeping Nate Lowe on the bench last night despite his history against Eduardo Rodriguez, and you get to add managing to the list, too.

The Cincinnati Reds are simply running out of ways they can lose games this year. That they’re in last place again cannot come as any surprise.

When Jasson Domínguez and Giancarlo Stanton began to take major steps towards their return to the starting lineup this week, people began to wonder how the Yankees were going to solve the roster crunch. Would the struggling Anthony Volpe be returned to Triple-A, handing the shortstop position back in its totality to José Caballero? Would Spencer Jones, who only made his debut because of an injury to Domínguez and returned because of an injury to Aaron Judge, make the trek back to Scranton? Maybe it would be Max Schuemann, the utilityman who has hit well in a very small sample size this season? Perhaps the Martian himself would remain in the minors, getting everyday reps in right field, in order that Cody Bellinger could stay in left?

As Joe Torre always said, the baseball gods have a way of making these decisions for us, and in the end, the answer would be, “None of the above.”

During last night’s loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, Trent Grisham pulled up limping on the basepaths and had to be removed from the game. Now, he’s headed to the injured list with a right hamstring strain, swapping places with Domínguez, who is returning from the shelf.

The injury comes at a particularly inopportune time, as Grisham has really been heating up over the last couple weeks, and the team has needed his bat in the lineup with Judge on the shelf with a stress fracture. Hopefully, Domínguez recaptures his hot start to the season and is able to make up at least some of that difference; for what it’s worth, he was 5-for-18 with two homers and two stolen bases during his five-day rehab assignment. (Oh, and that earlier aside about Stanton? He suffered a setback. So.)

At the moment, it remains to be seen how the Yankees will line up their outfield in the near future. Last night, the team opted to shift Jones from right to center, rather than move Cody Bellinger, who has arguably been the best defensive left fielder in baseball this season. It’s clear to me that they want to keep Bellinger there if at all possible, as evidenced by the fact that Domínguez spent the last three days in Scranton playing right field, a position he had exactly one game of professional experience at prior to this week. Will the Yankees decide to let him learn the position on the fly, or will they put him back in left field? Only time will tell.

Update

The Yankees will indeed put Domínguez in right today, with Bellinger in left and Jones in center. Here goes nothing!

Despite the loss last night, Nationals fans still got to see the James Wood show up close and personal. The Nats 23 year old slugger hit one of his majestic shots off of Bryce Miller. Unlike most of his home runs, this ball was pulled and got out of Nationals Park in a hurry.

As you can see, James Wood has been one of the best players in all of baseball this year. It is only June 13th, and Wood has already matched his WAR total from last season. Despite Wood’s insane power and freakish size, it still does not feel like he gets talked about enough around the league.

Once the Nats climb up the standings over the next few years, I am sure that will change. When Wood is at his best, he is a truly breathtaking player. That elite version of Wood is exactly what we have gotten for most of this season. He looked all out of sorts the first week and a half of the season, but since then he has been consistently dominant.

In his last 30 games, Wood is hitting .316 with a .996 OPS. We all know that the 6’6 slugger has crazy power, but he has been a truly elite all around hitter lately. There will always be strikeouts in his game, but similarly to Aaron Judge, the quality of contact is so good that he can also hit for average. 

Aaron Judge is not a name to throw around lightly, but I think Wood is the closest thing we have seen to Judge. As we know, Judge has been the most dominant hitter of the 2020’s, with an OPS over 1.100 from 2022 to 2025. Reaching those heights could be a tough ask, but I think Wood can be a guy who posts OPS marks over 1.000 in his prime.

A big reason for that is how often he barrels up baseballs. Right now, Wood has a barrel rate of 25.3%. That is comfortably the best mark in the league, with Judge being the closest with a 21.7% barrel rate. In the statcast era, Wood currently has the 4th highest barrel rate of all time, only trailing 3 Judge seasons.

For context, a barrel is a ball hit at least 98 MPH at a certain launch angle threshold. The harder the ball is hit, the wider the threshold is. Here is a link to MLB’s definition of a barrel. It is a somewhat weird definition, but the point is that barrels are the best contact a hitter can make. The batting average on a barrel tends to be in the .700 range and those hits tend to go for extra bases as well.

In an era where power is as important as ever, being the best at finding barrels is incredibly valuable. James Wood finds the most barrels in all of baseball. Among players 25 or younger, the barrel gap is enormous. Wood has 42 and the next closest players have 28. This just shows you why Wood has the highest offensive ceiling of any young player in the game.

There were times last season and to start this year where I was tough on Wood. The strikeouts were worrying, and he did not look like the same guy we saw in the first half of last year. However, as I probably need to remind myself more, patience is required for these young players. This version of Wood is the best we have seen yet. I think he is at a higher level than he was in the first half of last year.

A big reason for that is his batted ball profile. Even when Wood was rolling last season, he was hitting a lot of ground balls. In the first half of 2025, Wood’s ground ball rate was 50.2%. This year that number has been cut to 38.5%, which is a massive cut. Fewer ground balls means more barrels and more damage.

The fact Wood is hitting more balls in the air makes me less concerned about him having a power drop off in the second half again. Even if he goes through some stretches where the strikeouts pile up, he will have more chances to go deep when he does hit the ball.

Watching Wood hit all these line drives and flyballs is a glorious thing. He has the best opposite field power I have ever seen in a player. Over half of his home runs go to left center, with many of them being in near identical locations. Here is a video of all his home runs, at least through May 26th, and I loved watching it.

From Bryce Harper to Juan Soto to James Wood, Nationals fans have been blessed to have some of the best left handed bats of the 21st century on their team. While Wood still has work to do to get into that category, he certainly has the ability to do it. At just 23 years old, Wood has a .953 OPS and is underperforming his xwOBA by 25 points.

The last thing Wood has to do before he can truly be anointed as one of the game’s best is to keep this up for a full season. Last year he hit a wall, but I think Wood will have learned from that. There is only one way to find out for sure though. For now, let’s just sit back, relax and watch the big man hit.

After exiting Friday's game against the Toronto Blue Jays early, the Yankees have placed OF Trent Grisham on the 10-day injured list with a right hamstring strain, the team announced Saturday.

In a corresponding move, the team returned Jasson Dominguez (AC joint sprain) from his rehab assignment and reinstated him from the 10-day injured list.

Grisham left the game with hamstring tightness in the sixth inning, appearing to injure himself while rounding first base and making an awkward slide into second on a throw home after hitting a two-run single.

New York replaced Grisham on defense with Max Schuemann, who moved to right field with Spencer Jones shifting to center field.

Dominguez, who has been out since May 7, was scheduled to play in another rehab game in Triple-A on Saturday before Grisham's injury forced the team to bring him back sooner than planned. He will start in right field for the first time on Saturday, joining Jones and Cody Bellinger in the outfield.

Over 66 games this season, Grisham is hitting .232 with eight home runs and 35 RBI while manning CF on a daily basis. On the other hand, Dominguez has played in just nine big league games this year (30 at-bats) and owns a .200 batting average with one home run and four RBI.

Stanton suffers minor setback

Aaron Boone told reporters Saturday ahead of their game against the Blue Jays that DH Giancarlo Stanton felt a tweak in his calf while running bases this week and may get more imaging.

Stanton was expected to return to the team during their upcoming homestand, but that is now up in the air.

The veteran slugger has been sidelined since April 24 with a right calf strain.

In their return to the baseball field after mounting a historic comeback against the Nationals on Wednesday, the San Francisco Giants — you guessed it! — were nearly shut-out by the Chicago Cubs.  

You know how when you come back from the store and you want to speed-up the cool-down process on some room-temperature beverages because you’re throwing a party, so you pop a couple cans into the freezer…and then inevitably forget about them. That’s what happened here: the offense forgot to take their bats out of the freezer. Their heads were lost in the clouds after the walk-off grand slam. They were buzzin’. The off-day on Thursday turned into a weekend — two days where no real baseball happened. The lineup managed just four baserunners over 6 innings against Cubs starter Javier Assad, who has thrown 12.1 scoreless frames against the Giants within the past five days.  

When the rest of the line-up went 1-for-26, Bryce Eldridge, batting second, went 3-for-4 — the only who reached scoring position, made it to third base, and finally touched home after his solo shot in the 9th inning.

Luis Arraez led off the game with a single, extending his hitting streak to a dozen games, but Jung Hoo Lee’s 18-game tear was unfortunately wrapped with him standing in the on-deck circle as Rafael Devers went down looking to end the night. 

Lee didn’t go down quietly. With two-outs and Eldridge standing on third, he pulled a 96 MPH grounder that chased after a single between first and second, but Gold Glover Nico Hoerner closed the hole. In the 7th, turned on an inside fastball from southpaw-slinger Hoby Milner that off the bat looked like it could be a double in the right-center gap — but the extra-bases liner was easily run down by Seiya Suzuki patrolling the alley. 

Thus ends a remarkable streak dating back to May 14th in which Lee transformed into the hottest hitter in the league. In 78 at-bats, Lee bagged 36 knocks (29 singles), good for a .480 average, as he saw his season batting average balloon from .265 to .333, currently the second highest in MLB. Perhaps if there was a little more pep in his teammates’ steps, Lee might’ve got another crack at keeping the streak alive. 

And then there’s the pitching. If you look at this game in a vacuum, you can’t blame the SF arms for a loss in which zero runs were produced by the bats until one-out in the 9th inning. Fair — but this game does not exist in a vacuum. Fans dragged their feet into this game knowing, feeling in their gut the facts that Bryan Murphy spelled out for us. The 2026 Giants pitching staff is historically bad, and their weaknesses were on full display Friday night: self-inflicted stress and fatigue, the inability to close out innings, or have one reliable fireman able to throw a wet-blanket on a fire. Starter Landen Roupp worked his way into 8 full counts, threw 100+ pitches, and didn’t complete the 5th inning. The Cubs scratched their first run across in the 4th after Roupp walked leadoff man, Michael Busch, and scored from first on a hit-and-run double by Suzuki. Roupp walked another to start the 5th and was pulled after Alex Bregman’s two-out double put runners at second and third. Tony Vitello went to lefty Erik Miller to face the lefty Busch, who spit a hanging slider out into the cove for a three-run homer.   

Life is all about context. It’s about relationships and interactions that get so haphazardly colored and re-colored by one’s actions and decisions. The dominant emotions felt by fans towards the Giants pitching staff right now is distrust and dread. Those emotions have been earned and reaffirmed many times over the season so far, and reached a new low for many after some of the pitching staff’s pointed protest of Pride Night. The choices made by Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker to chalk a Bible reference onto to their SF Giants Pride logo hat, or in the case of Sam Hentges, not wear the hat at all, will have a much, much longer shelf-life in the community’s collective memory than their pitching performances on Friday night, or throughout the year. 

Some were quick to praise those players’ choice. Some have mourned it, wishing that God changed their God mind, scrapped the covenant made with Noah and sent the rains again. Throw Logan Webb on the new ark and let the rest of the pitching staff be swept up in a flood. That’s kinda how I’m feeling this Saturday morning as I frustratingly and bitterly turn my Bible to Genesis 9 and read the words: “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.” (NRSV) 

Hmmm… Every living creature… All flesh… A big ol’ rainbow splashed across the sky… Sounds like Pride Night to me. 

Perhaps, for the pitching staff specifically, a new covenant is needed. Let’s plop a massive Ten Commandments-like statue right in the middle of the bullpen at Oracle and chisel some reminders into the stone tablets: Thou shalt not walk the lead-off hitter in an inning.Thou shalt control the running game. Thou shalt maintain count leverage and be efficient with thou pitch count. Thou shalt not become predictable with your pitch selections. Thou shalt not hang sliders. And most importantly: Thou shalt love others because if God is anything worthwhile, then God has to be love, and thou shalt think about how love is not just an emotion you feel, but the emotion you make other people feel by your actions.

We’ve reached the point where these Cubs now feel like someone you dated some time ago. You see a couple of good things, but your brain just keeps reminding you of all of the painful moments from the past. Even against two teams that have already played themselves firmly into wait til next year territory, two nice looking road wins isn’t nothing. A couple of strong pitching performances back to back and some signs of the offense coming back to life wants to feel good. But of course, before these two nice games were three losses to these same two teams right before it. And before that, it was pretty ugly for a while. And so, it’s going to take an awful lot of this to get us to start leaning back into it.

And so, we friend zone this team. We don’t want to hear it talking about this time is going to be different. We’ve been burned. Hard. They tried in April and into early May to show us that not only could this team be a playoff team but a team that could win at least a series after it gets there, like its predecessor did. But we’re savvy baseball fans. We’re not going to be fooled so easily. Yeah, these games looked good. But we’ve been fooled before, only to get burned. Nothing has really changed. These are the same players that were losing all of those games.

I mean, I guess Matt Shaw came back. I don’t think that’s nothing. But I didn’t have Shaw on my scorecard as locker room leader. He’s one of the youngest guys on the team. I just think he’s a key bat against left handed starters. The Cubs haven’t faced one this week and he hasn’t started a game. And they lost the first couple of games after he got back. So that isn’t a change. At least not yet. None of the wounded starters is back. I mean, Edward Cabrera is. And he started one of the wins. But he’s been back for a little while now. He was also here for some of the losing. So that isn’t a change. He hasn’t been all that good as a Cub. The potential is there. But will he put it together?

Then Seiya Suzuki had that grand slam on Thursday. That’s proof of concept in that it qualifies as an actual hit with runners in scoring position. He crushed that double on Friday that started the scoring in that game. Not RISP, but still scored a run. Then Michael Busch added a three-run homer. You can’t have a grand slam or a three-run homer without them being hits with runners in scoring position. All those runners aren’t on first. Big hits with RISP. Two days in a row. A good start from Cabrera and a very good start from Javier Assad.

Doubles. Homers. That’s slug. Why did this team stop slugging? Every position player on this team has the potential given ample playing time to hit 15 homers. Many of them have the potential to hit twice that. Why did the slug go away? Whether or not you like OPS as a simple barometer of offensive prowess, it does have some value that way. It’s a really simple stat, even if it’s a weird one for us to add two numbers that have different denominators together into one number. Also, it still has some predictive value for a player or a team. It’s a simple metric. On base. Plus slug. That slug is important. I would argue that it’s the more important part of the two. It’s hard to beat teams with walks and singles alone. You’ll do it a handful of times per season. But it just isn’t sustainable.

This team was a lot of fun back in April and early May, no? We had a lot of good times together. So many walk-offs. I wish we could get back to the way things were back then. Those were the best days. Maybe it would be different this time? Maybe we’ve learned from our mistakes.

Three Positives:

• Javier Assad threw six innings. He allowed three hits and a walk. He struck out five. This is Javy when things are good. Worked into some trouble, but so elusive and evasive. Feels like a second generation championship era pitching offspring. Managing and inducing weak contact.
• Michael Busch had the big three-run homer and also drew a walk. Made the game comfortable.
• Seiya Suzuki doubled his first two times up. Both were smoked, the second one just didn’t have the kind of lift to get out of the park, particularly to center. Drove in the first run.

Game 70, June 12: Cubs 5, Giants 1

Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.

THREE HEROES:

• Superhero: Javier Assad (.258). 6 IP, 21 BF, 3 H, BB, 0 ER, 5 K (W 4-1)
• Hero: Seiya Suzuki (.217). 2-4, 2 2B, RBI, R
• Sidekick: Michael Busch (.199). 1-3, HR, BB, 3 RBI, R

THREE GOATS:

• Billy Goat: Ian Happ (-.067). 0-4, R
• Goat: Moisés Ballesteros (-.049). 0-4
• Kid: Dansby Swanson (-.039). 1-3

WPA Play of the Game: For the second straight day, the big hit is a Seiya Suzuki fourth inning extra-base hit. This one, an RBI double with a runner at first and one out. Scored the game’s first run. He ended up on third himself (and later scored the second run) after a throw towards the plate. (.178)

Giants Play of the Game: Bryce Eldridge singled to right leading off the fourth inning for the Giants with the Cubs up two. (.048)

Cubs Player of the Game:

Game 69 Winner: Seiya Suzuki received 124 of 145 votes.

Rizzo Award Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)

The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.

• Michael Busch +23
• Ben Brown +11.5
• Pete Crow-Armstrong/Michael Conforto +10
• Ian Happ/Trent Thornton, Carson Kelly +7.5
• Caleb Thielbar/Phil Maton/Jameson Taillon -8
• Matt Shaw -10
• Dansby Swanson -12
• Seiya Suzuki -23.5

Up Next: Game two in San Francisco Saturday night. It’s Ben Brown Day for anyone who celebrates. Ben is 2-2 with a 1.74 ERA and has been the bright, shining star of this team. They ended up needing extra innings to do it, through no fault of Ben’s, but the one game the Cubs won against the Giants in Chicago was Ben’s start. The Cubs are 11-7 when Ben Brown pitches in a game, 4-2 when he starts.

Trevor McDonald (2-3, 4.15) threw five innings, allowing a run on four hits and three walks while striking out six last Sunday in Chicago. The Giants eventually won that game. Despite a relatively pitching friendly home park, he’s been better on the road (3.27 in four starts) than at home (5.29 in three starts).

I’m not going to lie, three straight wins would be cool. It’s going to take more than that for me to be over the last month or so of baseball, but you know. It’s a start.

Sports are a part of our lives that provide us with the best human stories. While we don’t have access to the everyday lives of players we see on the field, court, ice, or diamond every night, those with more access than most have the responsibility to tell their stories. And one of the most curious Yankees stories is David Parrish.

Selected twice by the Yankees, Parrish never took the field in pinstripes despite donning them in the dugout. But his story is still one of the most interesting (and, for many, potentially sad or disappointing): working his way up to the minors, coming up to the major leagues, and sitting in the dugout without any playing time.

David Michael Parrish
Born: June 13, 1979 (Ypsilanti, MI)
Yankees Tenure: 2000-06 (minors); 2004 (called up but didn’t play)

Parrish was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and moved to Yorba Linda, California, at a young age. The son of Lance Parrish, an eight-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glove Award winner, six-time Silver Slugger Award winner, and 1984 World Series champion with the Detroit Tigers, David played high school baseball at Esperanza High School. After a successful high school career that put him on the map for plenty of scouts, he was initially drafted by the Yankees in the 10th round of the 1997 MLB Draft, but instead chose to return to Michigan to play for the Wolverines in Ann Arbor.

He didn’t play much in 1998 and 1999, but in his 2000 season, he was the starting catcher for the Wolverines—where future well-traveled big-leaguer Rich Hill was his batterymate—and posted some excellent numbers, including a .432 on-base percentage and a .621 slugging percentage. Along with his .356 batting average, his OPS came out to 1.409 that season, putting him amongst the best college baseball prospects.

The Yankees decided to dip back into the well again under general manager Brian Cashman and select Parrish again, this time in the first round (28th overall) of the 2000 MLB draft, hoping to fare better than they had with their last batch of first-round picks, which were absolutely abysmal. However, he was still considered a reach at the time.

Parrish was a touted pick selected between 1996 (Eric Milton, who was traded to the Twins in the Chuck Knoblauch deal) and 2004 (Phil Hughes). But it would be another pick in a string of many that would turn out poorly for the Bombers. David would never achieve much above A-ball. He finished with a .664 career Double-A OPS and .644 career Triple-A OPS between 2002-08. However, the real story for Parrish comes from his time on the Yankees’ roster from May 13-16, 2004.

On May 12th, Yankees starting catcher and the year prior’s third-place finisher in American League MVP voting, Jorge Posada, suffered a broken nose when he was struck by a thrown ball while trying to break up a double play. Parrish was then called up and assigned uniform No. 57, providing insurance behind backup catcher John Flaherty.

Despite his hopes and dreams of stepping into a major league game, Parrish never got the chance. Yes, he got to exit the Yankees clubhouse and sit in the dugout for major league games. But Posada returned to the lineup on May 18th. And while he was in the dugout for the Yankees through a series with the Seattle Mariners, one of his father’s former teams, his dreams were short-lived. He never appeared in a game, and, according to our site manager who covered those 2004 Yankees with extreme depth, he doesn’t even remember Parrish making a TV appearance. As such, he became a “phantom player.”

The Yankees and Parrish eventually parted ways early in 2006. The team was set with Posada for the foreseeable future, and considering Parrish’s production in the minor leagues, or, rather, lack thereof, there was no reason for them to keep him around with a new crop of players coming in (including Francisco Cervelli). The Pittsburgh Pirates, Colorado Rockies, and San Diego Padres organizations all took a flyer on him, but despite those teams giving him a chance, he never returned to the majors. Parrish eventually retired in 2008 following his age-29 season in Long Beach in the Golden League, where he played only 10 games. In fact, in the last three seasons of his minor league career, he played only 111 games with a collective batting average of .187, almost solidifying that his time playing any sort of professional baseball had come to a close.

Since the selection of Parrish in the first round of 2000, there was mostly a string of disappointing picks for the Yankees. There were picks who drew plenty of hype from the media and those outside of baseball spheres but didn’t end up signing with the men in pinstripes, including Mark Prior and Gerrit Cole, the latter of whom obviously ended up signing with the Yankees as as free agent later in his career, and exciting minor leaguers who never seemed to truly put it together for them in pros such as the aforementioned Hughes, Ian Kennedy, and Joba Chamberlain. But, it’s also important to remember what happened the majority of the time, which was players who just weren’t great picks at all by the Yankees front office and its scouting staff, increasing scrutiny from the fanbase.

Parrish’s story is one that is disappointing, but it’s also a good reminder that not every sports story is glamorous. There are plenty of those who see the light of day for just a moment and are eventually dragged back to what is viewed as the doldrums. Sure, it’s still professional baseball, but it’s very different than walking through the tunnel and into the Yankees dugout donning the pinstripes. Additionally, as the son of a decorated MLB player, there was somewhat of a legacy to live up to. However, Parrish made it as far as he could, and he will forever have the story of sitting in that Yankees dugout for a series, experiencing life as a Yankee in front of fans in The Bronx.

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

This week, we asked you the question about what kind of grade you would give Don Mattingly on the job he’s done this season. You answered.

It’s pretty funny that both times the team has made a managerial change in the early part of the season, the team has gone on a run and gotten themselves right. There hasn’t been much he has had to do in his tenure so far since a lot of the team’s improvement has been the players simply playing better.

It doesn’t hurt that his arrival as manager almost perfectly coincided with the return of Zack Wheeler from the injured list.

There is still a lot of questions to ask about what Mattingly will ultimately do differently when the chips are down. He’s clearly not afraid to use Jhoan Duran often, but what about in the dog days of summer? Will he start to save some bullets for a possible postseason run? One thing Mattingly did do differently was sit down Alec Bohm for a few days when he was struggling. Will Mattingly do the same with players like Trea Turner or J.T. Realmuto, players with a bit more cash in the bank account?

So far, though, he has done a fine job. No complaints about it.

This post was brought to you FanDuel.

In a bit of a rough patch of play and missing two of their best bats in Ronald Acuna and Drake Baldwin, the Braves are hoping to be able to beat the Mets in game 2 of their series behind Martin Perez.

It appears likely that Sean Manaea will get some bulk innings for the Mets, though he came in after an opener in his last appearance before eating 4.0 innings. Manaea has been pretty good in this non-starting bulk innings role, with an xERA, FIP, and xFIP right around 4.00. He’s working with a pretty low-velocity arsenal at this point, but does have some pretty good extension. He’s working with some very horizontally moving stuff, primarily pitching off of his four-seamer, sinker, and sweeper, with a cutter and changeup sprinkled in on occasion. His walk and strikeout rates have been quite average, with a below average ground ball rate. Manaea is pretty average but not bad and a rough equivalent in quality to what Martin Perez has been this season. The hope is that the Braves’ offense can make something happen in the absence of a few of their stars.

Martin Perez will look to continue his relative success this season, as he has a great 3.00 ERA but an xERA, xFIP, and FIP all around 4.00, much like Manaea, but as a totally acceptable number for the fifth starter. He’s been getting it done with his changeup, using his sinker and cutter with a few four-seamers and curves mixed in. This feels like advantage Mets on paper, without Acuna or Baldwin and with roughly equivalent pitchers on the mound. Here’s hoping that some combination of a good/lucky Perez start and some real offense can make it happen.

Game Info

Game Date/Time: Saturday, June 13, 4:10 p.m. EDT

Location: Citi Field, Queens, NY

TV: BravesVision

Streaming: MLBTV

Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan