Worldwide Sports News

Watching the Braves’ first six games of the year, it’s hard to really seize on any one thing that cements their identity as distinct from other teams, or the Braves teams that have come before. Not that these things have to come in the first six games, and sometimes, even if they do, it’s not clear that they’re going to be a throughline for the entire season. But, it’s certainly possible — Nick Markakis’ Opening Day walkoff in 2018 was I guess an early sign of the ridiculous team of destiny that particular Braves squad was going to be, the Braves clobbered their opponents in three of their first four games in 2023, Sean Murphy got hurt on Opening Day 2024, the 0-7 start to 2005, you get the idea.

This team so far, though… I don’t know. Any ideas? They’re top ten offensively in both outputs and inputs, but that’s come due to a lot of walks and barely any strikeouts… and the guys that are walking a ton aren’t hitting, except for Drake Baldwin. I guess “Team of Drake Baldwin” is an early contender, as he’s been scorching through these first two series. Another standout aspect so far has been the defense, but that’s about it. The Braves are also a top-ten pitching team, but not in a remarkable way, unless you factor in the defensive contribution to run prevention. And, of course, there’s a potential identity to be mined in “has absolutely no idea what they’re doing on the bases,” but I hope they course-correct there soon.

There’s also the overarching narratives of the pitching staff being barely held together, but that at least hasn’t gotten worse yet. Reynaldo Lopez and Grant Holmes both looked rough here and there, but the Braves didn’t really suffer for it, not yet — and Bryce Elder had a patented Good Elder (Bryce Eldar) start.

Anyway, I guess you can make your predictions here. How will we remember this team in terms of what it did, whether on the field or off?

Here are five things to watch and predictions as the Mets and Giants play a four-game series in San Francisco starting on Thursday night...

5 things to watch

Will Nolan McLean hit the ground running?

McLean didn't have a great feel for his pitches at the outset of his first start of the season last Sunday against the Pirates, walking the first two batters he faced. The young right-hander was searching a bit over the first three innings, with manager Carlos Mendoza saying McLean didn't really find it until the fourth inning.

Even without his best stuff, McLean performed well, allowing just two runs on four hits while walking two and striking out eight in five innings.

As the game went on, McLean got more comfortable and his stuff started to overwhelm Pittsburgh. 

Five of the last seven outs McLean recorded came via the strikeout -- four swinging and one looking.

On the day, McLean threw 84 pitches (generating 12 swings and misses) while mixing in his full six-itch arsenal. 

Power outage

With Pete Alonso departing for the Orioles, it felt likely that the Mets might not hit as many homers in 2026 as they did in 2025, when they smacked 224 -- good for fifth-most in the majors.

It should also be noted that aside from Opening Day, when the temperature was in the low-70s, the Mets have not played in weather that is optimal for the ball carrying.

Still, they entered play on Wednesday having hit just three home runs in their first five games -- one each by Carson Benge, Francisco Alvarez, and Luis Robert Jr.

It hasn't just been the Mets when it comes to low home run totals in the early going.

Fifteen teams (exactly half the league) entered play on Wednesday with five home runs or fewer, including the Tigers, Yankees Red Sox, and Phillies. 

Is there a bullpen conundrum?

Of the eight pitchers in New York's bullpen, one of them (Sean Manaea) is a starting pitcher whose usage won't be regular, while another (Tobias Myers) is a multi-inning weapon who will often need multiple days off between appearances.

Myers, who has been terrific in his role, is obviously going nowhere.

But it's been a bit of a challenge early on for Mendoza while trying to juggle the rest of the bullpen. 

Add to the above the fact that Brooks Raley is not yet being used on back-to-back days, and the struggles of Richard Lovelady, and you get a bit of a conundrum.

If the Mets' starting pitchers don't regularly start giving the team six or seven innings, it feels like there will have to soon be another arm added to the mix who can pitch far more often than Manaea or Myers are able to, or be a lot more effective than Lovelady.

The Giants' offense has been anemic

San Francisco mustered just 13 runs over the first five games of the season, better than only the Padres, Royals, and Twins.

That included only four runs total in their first four games before erupting for nine runs against the Padres on Tuesday.

The Giants were especially hapless against the Yankees, scoring one run in three games as they were swept in the season-opening series in San Francisco.

Against the Yanks, San Francisco was shut down by Max Fried, Cam Schlittler, and Will Warren. Fried and Schlittler both have great stuff. Warren, not so much. 

Can the Mets get to Logan Webb?

Webb was tagged by the Yankees on Opening Night, allowing seven runs (six earned) on nine hits in five innings.

He was better his second time out, allowing three runs in six innings against the Padres, but struggled with his command as he issued four walks.

Webb had a 3.22 ERA (2.60 FIP) and 1.23 WHIP while tossing an MLB-high 207.0 innings in 2025, finishing fourth in NL Cy Young award voting. 

He has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since 2021, and has had his way with the Mets -- with a 3.21 career ERA in 42.0 innings over seven starts. However, he'll obviously be facing a version of the Mets that is much different than the one he went up against over the last five years. 

Predictions

Who will the MVP of the series be?

Juan Soto

Soto has been locked in at the plate early.

Which Mets pitcher will have the best start?

Kodai Senga

Senga's fastball was explosive during his first start of the year on Tuesday against the Cardinals.

Which Giants player will be a thorn in the Mets' side?

Luis Arraez

Arraez's elite contact rate means his ability to be a pest in any given series is high. 

The Yankees’ pitching staff as a whole has been magnificent, allowing six runs across their first six games and tallying three shutouts in the first five. Max Fried has been at the forefront of this staff-wide domination, not allowing a run across his first two starts and 13.1 innings. His second start of the year came against the Mariners and he looked even more in control than on Opening Day, limiting Seattle to three hits and a walk across seven shutout. His command was sharper at T-Mobile Park than it was at Oracle, allowing him to strike out six batters. While it was certainly encouraging to see the uptick in swing and miss, the moment we’ll zero in on today focuses on his ability to make exactly the pitch needed to induce soft contact and get out of a jam.

We join Fried with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Josh Naylor having erased a Julio Rodríguez leadoff single with a ground-ball double play. However, after cruising for most of his start, Fried now faces his toughest challenge, a Randy Arozarena HBP and Brendan Donovan single putting runners on first and second as Fried is fighting to hold off the fatigue long enough to complete seven strong.

Fried has already faced Victor Robles twice this game, getting him to fly out on a first-pitch cutter in the second before whiffing him on a changeup in the fifth. After deploying the cutter first pitch in those two encounters, Fried decides on a first-pitch four-seamer here.

Fried misses his spot low and away; reaching back for extra velocity caused him to pull this pitch inside for ball one.

Despite the imperfect execution of the previous pitch, Fried sticks with the four-seamer.

He misses his spot again, but this time over the plate enough to entice Robles to chase. It’s a smart miss, the elevation above the zone causing Robles to foul it back and level the count at 1-1.

After two straight four-seamers up and in, Fried chooses a different type of fastball, this time looking to bury the cutter in on Robles’ hands.

This is awesome pitch sequencing from Fried. Following a pair of consecutive four-seamers off the plate, this looks like a cookie right down the middle. However, unlike the four-seamer which stays on plane vertically while fading slightly to Fried’s arm-side, the cutter has late movement glove-side and down. Robles isn’t able to distinguish this pitch from the two four-seamers that preceded it and is unable to adjust his swing plane. Thus, the ball eats him up inside, Robles getting jammed while the late downward tilt takes the ball even further below the barrel causing him to pound it into the dirt foul at home plate.

Now that Fried has shown Robles a fastball that breaks in on his hands, he has a chance for the punchout looking if he can start a four-seamer in off the plate and tail it back across the inside corner. There’s even an opportunity to get Robles to whiff should he recognize the four-seamer late and still swing.

Fried locates this four-seamer perfectly on the inside edge of the zone. However, it’s just low enough that Robles is able to fight it off foul with practically the handle of the bat to stay alive.

Fried has shown Robles four straight fastballs up and in and has sped up his swing to the velocity of the fastball. That means it is the perfect opportunity to throw his first off-speed pitch of the encounter, Fried choosing a changeup off the plate away looking for the strikeout swinging.

Fried executes the pitch to his spot and is rewarded with a favorable outcome, Robles lining a lazy fly ball to the opposite field to strand the pair of runners. If we’re being picky, the location of the changeup is probably a few inches too high, which is what allowed Robles to make contact instead of whiff. However, this is the magic of managing your misses as a pitcher. Fried made sure that at the very least he commanded this pitch out of the zone away. The changeup is therefore too far away from Robles for him to pull it, while the movement down and away from his barrel prevents him from hitting it with authority to the opposite field. Fried is one of the masters in the game at limiting damaging contact, and pitch is a perfect example of how he does that.

Here’s the full sequence:

Outside of his lone ALDS start against the Blue Jays, Max Fried has been everything the Yankees could have hoped for when they signed him winter before last. He has been an invaluable stabilizing presence at the top of the rotation, giving the Yankees a consistently reliable ace in Gerrit Cole’s absence. If these first two starts are anything to go off, it looks like he is taking his game to an even higher level in his second year in pinstripes, setting the tone for the rest of the pitching staff.

He lands on every Astros fans list of top historical moments.  Game 4 of the 2005 NLDS lasted 18 innings until Chris Burke walked off the Braves with a 338 shot to left field.  This is the second installment of our Legends Series.   

Q: How often are you asked about that moment?

A: I don’t think a week goes by in my life, where somebody doesn’t bring it up.    What I remember most about that at bat was how electric the stadium was prior to my at bat, because Roger Clemens actually hit directly in front of me due to the way he entered the game and the crazy nature of an 18-inning game.  He was making only his second ever relief appearance in his career and he struck out in front of me.  When I got up next, I was actually going to bunt on the first pitch, but Joey Devine threw a slider for a ball which was way outside.  The count went to 1 and 0 and then with the second pitch, he almost hit me, and so I knew up 2-0 in the count, I could start thinking about a pitch middle in that I could drive and he threw me an inside fast ball on the inside corner.  I put my best swing on it and the rest is history.   

Q: Where is the ball now?

A: I don’t have it.  It’s actually in Cooperstown at the Hall of Fame.  Lance Berkman hit a grand slam that game in the 8th inning and the same fan who caught his shot, also caught my home run.  Each of them is in the Astros display portion of the hall.  The fan was gracious enough to give both of the balls to the Astros who sent them there.  I still have the actual bat and the batting gloves from that plate appearance.

Q: If that’s your most famous home run, what’s number two on your career list?

A: It would have to be my first ever career home run.  I hit it off of Pedro Martinez to break up a no hitter in New York in the 7th inning in his first year with the Mets.  It was of course a sell out with Pedro pitching and at that time, the Mets had never had a no hitter as an organization and he hung me a 1-1 curveball, and I hit it into the leftfield bullpen.  That was very surreal, being my first homer of vintage Pedro in New York.  I still have to pinch myself.   

Q: What do you love most about broadcasting now?   

A: I love college baseball.  I deeply cherished my time as a college baseball player, and I consider it one of the joys of my life.  Now I get to cover it as a career, and I just love it at this level.  The all-in nature, the way that coaches teach and compete and develop players and the buy-in they get from the players is just incredible.  I appreciate the urgency.  I love the environment and atmosphere.   

Here's what happened in Mets Land on Wednesday, in case you missed it...

• The Mets squandered numerous opportunities, as they were defeated by the Cardinals in extra innings
•  After going 0-for-11 with RISP, New York finds themselves in the midst of a familiar slump despite running out a completely different lineup than last season 
• Francisco Lindorowned his mental mistakes in the field and on the bases, saying he "should have been better"
• WATCH: Lindor, Carlos Mendoza, and Freddy Peralta discuss the loss
• Down in Syracuse, Jack Wenninger enjoyed a strong start to the season, throwing 4.2 scoreless innings 

Want to get more Covers content? Add us as a preferred source on your Google account here.

The Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals wrap up a three-game AL Central series with the wind gusting out at Kauffman Stadium this afternoon.

My top Twins vs. Royals predictions and MLB picks are calling for Minny to avoid the sweep.

Who will win Twins vs Royals today: Twins moneyline (+142)

The Kansas City Royals are saddled with a Cole Ragans tax on Thursday, despite the lefty surrendering 17 earned runs across 20 innings dating back to Spring Training. 

There’s pop coming from the Minnesota Twins, too. The Minny lineup paces the majors in hard-hit percentage while ranking sixth in exit velocity to start the year, so I’m anticipating statistical correction ahead of their middling, 18th-ranked BABIP.

Plus, Ragans served up a 58.3% hard-hit rate in his season debut, and the wind is forecasted to gust straight out at Kauffman Stadium this afternoon.

COVERS INTEL: Twins starter Taj Bradley had an elite 31.5% called + swinging strike percentage in his first start of the season.

Twins vs Royals Over/Under pick: Over 9.5 (+104)

In addition to the wind howling out at Kauffman Stadium this afternoon, both Ragans and Minny starter Taj Bradley struggled with control in their season debuts and combined for seven walks across 8 1/3 innings.

Bradley escaped major trouble by striking out nine batters, but the Royals had the lowest strikeout percentage in the majors against righties in 2025.

Additionally, both Minnesota and Kansas City rank above average in on-base percentage to start the campaign.

Ducks on the pond with favorable hitting conditions is a recipe for runs on the board.

Twins vs Royals odds

• Moneyline: Minnesota +144 | Kansas City -150
• Run line: Minnesota +1.5 (-138) | Kansas City -1.5 (+133)
• Over/Under: Over 9.5 (+113) | Under 9.5 (-117)

Twins vs Royals trend

The Royals have only covered the run line in 30 of their last 74 home games for -18.65 units and a -20% ROI. Find more MLB betting trends for Twins vs. Royals.

How to watch Twins vs Royals and game info

Twins vs Royals latest injuries

Twins vs Royals weather

This article originally appeared on Covers.com, read the full article here and view our best betting sites or check out our top sportsbook promos.

Funny thing about baseball. You usually don’t win the game when the other team scores more than you.

After sweeping the Arizona Diamondbacks to start the season, the Dodgers lost two-of-three to the Cleveland Guardians. Most concerning at the moment is the lack of production from the offense.

In Wednesday’s loss, the top six in the lineup went 1-for-21 with eight strikeouts. And the one hit came from Freddie Freeman who hit a solo home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Shockingly, that was not enough to mount a comeback when the other team had already scored four runs.

Before Wednesday’s game, a rare thing happened. Shohei Ohtani took batting practice on the field. As Doug Padilla of the OC Register points out, the last time Ohtani took batting practice on the field was Game 3 of the NLCS when he was in a slump, only having gone 2-for-25 in the playoffs to that point. We all know what he did in Game 4 of that series.

So far this season, Ohtani has a slash line of .167/.423/.167. If it weren’t for his pitching prowess, he wouldn’t be much of a show at all. So maybe if we extrapolate from that one occurrence, Ohtani is bound to have a breakout game in the first game of the Washington Nationals series that starts on Friday. That’s how that works, right?

Freeman mentioned that he hoped the off day for the team on Thursday would help the bats get hot again. Coincidentally, the Dodgers will be playing day games while in our nation’s capital, and the weather is expected to be in the high 80’s so something is guaranteed to be hot.

Looking even further ahead, Ohtani’s next pitching start is slated to be in Toronto, where the crowd is sure to be super friendly.

Mets 4, Mud Hens 2 (box)

So far, the Tigers’ Triple-A affiliate has mirrored the big league club to a degree. Wenceel Pérez has the sole home run through five games. Of course that’s a lot more understandable when you’re playing in upstate New York this time of year. On the pitching side, the bullpen has been taxed as several starters are still stretching out in the early going.

Veteran minor league starter Lael Lockhart Jr., who remains one of those solid southpaws with command who just lacks the extra 2-3 mph it would take to get him to the big leagues regularly, got the start on Wednesday. The Hens went in order in the first, and then the lefty got into a little trouble in the bottom half. Nick Morabito led off with a single back through the box and then stole second base. Ronny Mauricio flew out, and so did Ryan Clifford on a hard hit ball to Wenceel Pérez in right field. Christian Arroyo did better, ripping an RBI double to left to make it 1-0. Lockhart Jr. buckled down and got Jose Rojas to ground out, ending the threat.

Two out singles from Corey Julks and Gage Workman were squandered by a Tomas Nido ground out in the second, while Lockhart Jr. allowed a leadoff single to Vidal Brujan and then walked Ben Rortvedt. However, he bounced back to strike out Cristian Pache and Ji Hwan Bae and got out of the inning unscathed.

Max Clark doubled in the third but was stranded, and neither team scored in the fourth as Clark erased Jose Rojas with an accurate throw as Rojas tried to stretch a single into a double.

In the top of the fifth, the Hens got something started again with a one out single from Nido and a walk to Cal Stevenson, but Pérez and Clark struck out, the latter against RHP Joey Gerber, who entered in relief to face him.

In the bottom of the fifth, Lockhart Jr. issued a two-out walk to Mauricio, and RHP Tyler Mattison took over. He did not do well, allowing singles to Clifford and then Christian Arroyo to make it a 2-0 Mets lead. Mattison punched out Rojas to put a stop to any further trouble, and the Hens finally got the offense going in the top of the sixth.

Jace Jung led off with a drive to right that went for a double, then advanced to third on an Eduardo Valencia ground out. Trei Cruz walked, and after Julks struck out, Workman lashed a single to right to score Jung. Nido pulled an RBI single to left, and it was now a 2-2 game as the Mets went back to their pen. Anderson Severino came on to get Stevenson on a lineout to right field.

Mattison struck out Brujan and Rortvedt to start the bottom of the sixth, but his fastball velocity was down at 92-93 mph, still a long way from recovering his pre-TJ gas. A walk to Pache followed, but Bae flew out to Clark in center to send us to the seventh.

Jonathan Pintaro took over for the Mets and popped up Pérez to start the inning. Clark continued to swing a hot bat early on, smoking a line drive double to left field at 106.2 mph off the bat, but Jung grounded out and Valencia struck out.

Brenan Hanifee took over in the seventh and collecting three outs without much issue, though Clifford did hit another missile into the outfield that Clark hauled in.

With the right-hander Pintaro still on the mound in the eighth, Cruz got an 0-2 fastball on the outer edge and drilled a liner up the left center field gap, beating out a double by a hair. Julks was dusted by a good high fastball, and Workman and Nido grounded out to strand Cruz.

Lefty Sean Guenther took over from Hanifee in the bottom half. He got Arroyo to ground out, but walked Rojas. The Mets pinch-ran Jackson Cluff for Rojas, and while Guenther got Brujan to ground out to Workman, Rortvedt doubled in the run to make it a 3-2 Mets lead. Pache then dumped a flare into center field to plate Rortvedt. Guenther picked Pache off at first to end the inning, but the Mets had a 4-2 lead.

The Hens went down in order in the ninth to end it.

Clark: 2-5, 2 2B, K

Workman: 2-4, RBI, 2B

Jung: 1-3, R, 2B, 2 K

Lockhart: 4.2 IP, 2 ER, 4 H 3 BB, 5 K

Guenther (L, 0-1): 1.0 IP, 2 ER 2 H, BB, 0 K

Coming Up Next: It’s a 4:05 p.m. ET start on Thursday as the Hens look to re-take the lead in this six-game set. The other minor league affiliates will get underway on Friday.

Triple-A: Memphis Redbirds (Cardinals) 4, Norfolk Tides 3 – F/10

The Tides dropped their third straight game on Wednesday afternoon in Memphis. The pitching staff coughed up two different leads, the offense left 10 runners on base, and it was a mixed bag of results for the Orioles’ pair of rehabbing big leaguers.

Jackson Holliday led off, played second base, and went 2-for-3 with a double, a walk, and a strikeout. The former first overall pick is now 4-for-13 with an .862 OPS during his rehab. Creed Willems drove in two of Norfolk’s runs with a seventh-inning home run as part of his 1-for-4 game. Their other run came in on a Memphis error in the fourth frame. There was plenty of traffic on the bases for the Tides. They collected eight hits, four walks, and a pair of errors from the home team. But they wasted most of those chances, going 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position.

Brandon Young made his first start of the year. He was good, holding Memphis to one run on five hits, no walks, and four strikeouts over five innings. The short-term performances of Young and Cade Povich now hold added importance due to the injury to Zach Eflin, so it’s good to see a strong 2026 debut for Young.

The results from the bullpen were not as favorable. Andrew Kittredge made his first rehab appearance as he works through right shoulder inflammation. The veteran recorded just two outs, threw 19 pitches (nine strikes), struck out one, walked one, and gave up two hits. Cameron Foster impressed, striking out two over 1.1 perfect frames. Jackson Kowar allowed a run in his lone inning. And Enoli Paredes was handed the loss by allowing the extra-inning “ghost runner” to score after he walked the bases loaded, and then hit the next batter with a pitch to drive in the winning run.

Thursday’s Scheduled Games

Norfolk: at Memphis, 7:45 p.m. Starter: TBD

Chesapeake: at Hartford (Rockies), 7:10 p.m. Starter: Trace Bright (first start of the year)

Delmarva: at Salem (Red Sox), 6:35 p.m. Starter: Kiefer Lord (first start of the year)

On the night of February 13th, 2025, John Henry lit up a victory cigar to celebrate what would ultimately turn into one year of Alex Bregman’s services. Today, nearly 14 months later, Alex Bregman is gone, but the ashes from that cigar continue to catch fire and create new destructive flames on a seemingly daily basis.

Here’s where it all started:

Fast-forward to today and the 2026 Red Sox are out of a gate with an abysmal 1-5 record. Worse yet, the fingerprints of the failed Bregman negotiations can be found plastered all over it. Now, of course, there are many, many reasons for the Sox’ shameful start, but at least two of them are a pair of players who are on this roster specifically because the club didn’t want to commit to Bregman long-term at anything other than their price this past winter. And that’s really the point I want to get at here: The Red Sox need Ranger Suarez and Caleb Durbin to have solid seasons to have any chance of putting the Bregman fire out. They don’t need them to be MVP or Cy Young candidates, but they do (at minimum) need them to come close to replicating their 2025 campaigns.

To cement why this is the case, let’s take a look at the timeline since the start of the new year. At noon on January 14, less than 100 hours after the news broke on social media, the Chicago Cubs officially announced the signing of Bregman, which he also personally retweeted.

Less than three hours later, the Red Sox made their push to shift the narrative. Jeff Passan broke the story of how Boston decided to spend the money originally allocated for Bregman:

So now the money was spent, but not on the hitter they desperately needed. And the reason for all of this is of course because they decided play footsie with Bregman for so long that by the time mid January rolled around, all of the other big, right-handed, infield bats that might have been worth a damn to sign like — Pete Alonso and Bo Bichette — were already off the board. (For comparison, Alonso got five years at $155 million, and Bichette got three years at $126 million.)

So, instead, the Red Sox decided to use the money that was supposed to go to one of those bats on Ranger Suarez, and the whole thing just became this perfect encapsulation of what happens when you try to work it backwards and make the roster fit the budget instead of bending the budget to fit the roster’s needs.

But we still weren’t done, because despite most of the money being spent, there was still a gigantic hole left at third base. This meant the Red Sox had to trade from their new found “excess” of starting pitching to get the right-handed infield bat they still lacked. Not surprisingly, they probably couldn’t get through a conversation for any of the bats they really wanted without Connelly Early, Payton Tolle or Marcelo Mayer’s name coming up, so they eventually had to set their sights lower on Caleb Durbin as part of a perplexing trade that went down like this on February 9:

The Red Sox traded Kyle Harrison, David Hamilton and Shane Drohan to the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for Caleb Durbin, Andruw Monasterio, and Anthony Seigler.

And of course the cherry on top of it all is that Harrison is both one of the guys who came over in the Devers trade and the arm the front office deemed expendable after they used the Alex Bregman money to sign another starting pitcher. That’s the guy they used to acquire a young third baseman after they managed to fumble away both Devers and Bregman.

So make no mistake, these transactions are all connected, and this entire season is going to be a referendum on the radical reconstruction of the irregular roster left behind when the Bregman negotiations fell apart. Oh, and in almost poetic fashion, Alex Bregman and the Cubs will visit Fenway for the very last series of the season on September 25th through the 27th. The atmosphere for that three game set going to feel like a jury releasing their verdict at a murder trial.

But let’s get back to Suarez and Durbin specifically. They have to be good to prevent this Bregman thing from becoming radioactive. Not just because their presence here is so obviously connected to Bregman’s departure in 2026, but because literally everything else connected to Bregman’s arrival in 2025 has already turned into a flaming trainwreck.

There’s losing the second round pick of the 2025 draft for just one year of Bregman’s services. There’s Rafael Devers throwing himself a pity party after Bregman took over at third base. And then, of course, there’s the ensuing salary dump trade that’s left the Red Sox lineup with a noticeable lack of thump ever since.

But you know what’s crazy? Even at that point in the proceedings, this whole odyssey was still very salvageable. All they had to do was pay Bregman a fraction of the money they dumped in the Devers deal and hang onto the young guys they got back. Instead, they never met the moment when it came to a long-term Bregman contract, and have since traded away both James Tibbs and Kyle Harrison in highly questionable moves.

So far in the very early output of the 2026 season, James Tibbs has an 1.827 OPS in Triple-A, and Kyle Harrison looked great in his one start with the Brewers, which included eight strike outs in five innings of work.

And just to be complete here, the Red Sox are also paying $4 million for each of the next two years for Jordan Hicks, who was so bad in Boston after coming back as part of the Devers trade last year that they had to move him to Chicago over the winter in a deal where the White Sox will only pay for part of his salary.

So once again, as far as this front office is concerned, Ranger Suarez and Caleb Durbin have to be good! Because so far, literally everything else connected to Alex Bregman’s tenure here has turned toxic, and with both Suarez and Durbin being under team control for at least the next five years, the only way this story has a happy ending for the folks who set the wheels in motion is if these two guys end up being useful contributors to a winning baseball team. (No pressure though!)

And to be clear, these guys just have to be good, not great. The Red Sox don’t need Suarez to be a Cy Young candidate, they have Garrett Crochet for that. They just need him to be the guy that posted a 3.25 ERA over the last five years before he got his big payday. The Red Sox don’t need Caleb Durbin to fully replace Alex Bregman, they just need him to look like the guy who finished third in rookie of the year voting last season.

But so far out of the gate, Suarez and Durbin look a lot more like guys turning to stone in the continued curse of everything that touches the Alex Bregman web as opposed to guys who are ready to make a meaningful contribution to the 2026 Red Sox.

Now the flip side of this is Suarez has made just one bad start in a Red Sox uniform so far, Durbin is only 18 at-bats into his Red Sox tenure, and baseball has a habit of making anybody who says anything about the first week of any season look like a fool. But man, something about this feels ominous. Suarez was also terrible in his outing for Team Venezuela against Japan in the World Baseball Classic in which he gave up five runs in just 2.2 innings of work. And worse yet, this is a guy who is known for pitching well in big games and carries a 1.48 ERA in 42.2 innings of postseason work. When you consider how bad he was against Japan and that he was facing off against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, it’s minor miracle Venezuela got through that game and winning the tournament. Suarez was one of the big headline names on the team, and he played almost no role in helping them win.

Then there’s Durbin, who feels like he got the absolute most out of his ability in 2025. If he can replicate that, fantastic! But he also might be one of those guys who turns into a pumpkin as quickly as he showed signs of promise and can never replicate that near-3.0 WAR season again.

Either way, these are the stakes for Suarez, Durbin, the front office, and this entire 2026 Red Sox season. Both the team and most of its main characters have gotten off to about as bad of a start imaginable, but I don’t want to start shoveling dirt on them quite yet. Baseball has a funny way of sometimes making the first week nothing more than a mirage and dealing out the exact opposite hand for the rest of the summer. For instance, just last season the Brewers (Durbin’s old team), gave up 46 runs in their first four games en route to an 0-4 start. They then of course went on to win 97 games and had the lowest ERA of any team in the National League.

This is classic baseball! It will scare you with fake monsters while hiding the real ones for later in the proceedings. Who knows, two weeks from now we might be singing the praises of both Suarez and Durbin and talking about how bad Bregman looks in Chicago. But until or unless that happens, we’re going to be left to confront the fallout from those fateful winter nights when Alex Bregman came into and left the Red Sox organization.

When Cooper Pratt reportedly agreed to an eight-year extension (with two additional option years) with the Brewers earlier this week, it came as quite a shock. These types of deals aren’t completely unheard of, even within the organization; when Jackson Chourio signed his big extension before the 2024 season, he’d played a grand total of six games above Double-A, which is three more than the number of games Pratt had played at Triple-A when news of the extension broke. Colt Emerson of the Mariners signed a Chourio-like extension this week: he has not debuted yet, and may not for some time.

But there’s a difference. When Chourio signed his extension, he was baseball’s No. 2 prospect. Emerson, via Baseball America, is No. 7. Pratt, on the other hand, is ranked No. 50 by Baseball America, No. 64 via MLB Pipeline, and he is not in the top 100 on Baseball Prospectus. Pratt is a good prospect, but he’s not exactly a great one, and as BA’s JJ Cooper points out, the expected outcomes for a player in Pratt’s range do not exactly suggest “this guy will definitely be a star.”

Based on Cooper’s chart, the most likely outcome for Pratt is that he’ll have a career WAR value between 3 and 10 WAR. The Brewers, a team without a ton of financial resources, just promised him a minimum of $50 million; I do not think that’s the outcome they’re looking for.

But not all prospects are the same. Pratt is an outstanding defensive player, so even if he never really learns to hit major league pitching, it’s not the same as if a corner outfielder never learns how to hit. Joey Ortiz earned 1.4 fWAR in 2025 while having an atrocious offensive season; that’s more WAR than Luis Arraez earned (via FanGraphs or Baseball Reference) in 2024 when he won a batting title.

Offensive Outlook

This deal probably signals that the Brewers think Pratt will figure it out at the plate. His track record is a little mixed; he looked great in Low-A and High-A in his first full pro season in 2024, but hit just .238/.343/.348 in 2025 at Double-A. There are a couple of caveats to that line, though: first, that wasn’t that bad for the pitcher-friendly Southern League, and translated to an above-average 107 wRC+. The other thing is that Pratt was very young; as a 20-year-old at Double-A, Pratt was nearly four years younger than the average player in that league, so the fact that he was above average offensively (while playing defense that won him a Minor League Gold Glove in 2024) is actually quite encouraging.

Pratt’s power hasn’t shown up yet, and it may never be a major strength. He’s hit only 16 homers across nearly 1,000 plate appearances as a minor leaguer. But he’s not a small guy (listed on FanGraphs at 6’4” and 210 pounds) and the Brewers may be banking that he’ll grow into it a bit. He’s also shown good patience (a 12.7% walk rate in 2025), and he cut his strikeout rate drastically in 2025 (from 20% to 15.2%), another encouraging sign for a young player who moved up a level.

It won’t take a ton of offense for Pratt to live up to the value of this contract over its lifetime. The average annual value is only a little more than $6 million, which, by popular estimates, means he needs only about 0.75 WAR per season to justify that value (even if this isn’t a perfect one-to-one comparison). Based purely on defense, Pratt should outperform that, and if he hits even a little, he could outperform it by a lot.

Logjammin’

But the arguably bigger question that this deal raises has to do with fit. Ever since it was clear that the Brewers had several high-level middle-infield prospects, we knew this question would need to be addressed eventually, but this commitment to Pratt — the third- or fourth-best infield prospect in the system, with Andrew Fischer charging up from behind and two controlled, relatively young established players in the big leagues — makes that question a little more urgent.

Jesús Made is the obvious pearl of the organization, and is a more-or-less consensus top-three prospect. He has a good chance at being the No. 1 overall prospect league-wide heading into next season, as the two players ahead of him — shortstops Konnor Griffin and Kevin McGonigle — will likely both have graduated by mid-summer (McGonigle is already playing for the Tigers, while Griffin is expected in the big leagues as soon as the Pirates secure the extra year of service time they’ll gain by keeping him in the minors to start the season, or they agree to an extension not totally unlike Pratt’s, if more lucrative). Jett Williams has played a lot of middle infield and is a little further along than Pratt. Luis Peña sometimes almost feels like a forgotten man, but he actually outperformed Made in the Dominican Summer League when they were both 17 and had a 139 wRC+ at Single-A Carolina as an 18-year-old. Fischer, who looks like he’ll keep playing third base for now, looked ready for primetime this spring, when he posted a 1.429 OPS in five Cactus League games and hit .357/.438/.714 in four games with Team Italy in the World Baseball Classic.

Add Brice Turang and Joey Ortiz to the mix — both still have three years of team control remaining after this one — and you can see the problem, even if that problem is a good one: there are too many guys.

The first thought is that this is a big year for Ortiz. His offensive approach has been better early this season, but there are no questions about his defense. If he hits even a little, he’s a useful player; if he can get close to the league-average offensive player he was in 2024, he could produce at a borderline All-Star level. Maybe the ship has sailed on Ortiz as a good offensive player, but he was a consistently above-average minor league hitter, and as we’ve seen with Turang, we shouldn’t necessarily write these guys off after one or two tough years in the big leagues.

However, Ortiz’s spot is also probably the most precarious. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s on his way out with the Brewers, and he could become quite a luxury as a utility player. But he’ll also get a bit more expensive when he gets to arbitration next season, and his defense should hold value throughout the league. Whether he bounces back offensively or not, the Brewers are likely to check on Ortiz’s market after the season. If no deal that the front office likes comes to the fore and the Brewers are ready to move on from Ortiz as the everyday shortstop, I’m sure they’ll consider using him as a right-handed backup to all three infield positions.

It might be a little early to make this proclamation, but Turang is a star. He’s also likely to be very expensive in a few years; as a Super Two player, he’s already making over $4 million and has three more arbitration years after this one, and he’ll hit the market when the 2029 season ends as a soon-to-be-30-year-old free agent. While we don’t necessarily want to start thinking about the end of Turang’s tenure in Milwaukee, for the purposes of this exercise, we should at least acknowledge the possibility that Turang might play three more seasons in Milwaukee and then gets traded a year before he hits free agency.

Even still, that clogs up one of the Brewers’ three infield spots for the next three years, limiting opportunities for others. Third base is another question: it’s likely spoken for this season, with Luis Rengifo and David Hamilton (though a later-season opportunity for a younger player there, particularly if there are any injuries, does seem possible), but there’s a likely opening there beyond 2026.

So what are some options?

The first step is to build a defensive hierarchy. Turang is at the top of the heap at second base and should stay there as long as he’s on the team. Ortiz, Pratt, Made, Williams, and Peña all play shortstop, though the writing has been on the wall for Peña for a while, and basically as soon as Williams was traded to Milwaukee, people started speculating about where he’d move. Made’s defensive reputation is pretty good, but his added weight this season might precipitate a move to third base. Ortiz, as a proven defensive stud, is ahead of Pratt, but it doesn’t seem like the Brewers think there will be much of a step down defensively if and when Pratt takes over at the position. Fischer seems like a capable third baseman, but probably not as good as any of these other options, and first base may be in his future.

So even if we shift Made to third base and Fischer to first, we have to consider alternatives. Williams has played way more shortstop than anything else as a minor leaguer, but he also doesn’t have quite the same defensive reputation that these others do, and he did play a decent amount of center field last season. Peña has never played the outfield, but he’s a 70-grade runner, and probably could play the outfield. The Brewers don’t have the same organizational depth in the outfield as they do in the infield, and switches for Williams and Peña might benefit all parties. That’s something to keep an eye on moving forward.

Looking down the road, then, it requires a lot of projection (and here’s where I’ll remind you that it’s unlikely that all of these players work out as useful big leaguers, no matter how promising they are now), but you could see some sort of alignment in a couple years like this:

1B: Fischer
2B: Turang
3B: Made
SS: Pratt/Ortiz
OF: Jackson Chourio
OF: Sal Frelick
OF: Williams/Peña

That would get all of these prized prospects into the lineup — and who knows, the Brewers may not have to worry about squeezing all of these guys in at once, as Peña, for instance, will still only be 21 in two years, and he’d still be a young debutant if Milwaukee just waited three years, traded Turang, and then installed Peña as the starting second baseman heading into 2029.

These questions don’t all need to get answered today, but the guarantee of money to Pratt makes his arrival in the big leagues feel closer than ever. We know that Williams is already on the doorstep. We probably won’t see Made, Peña, or Fischer this season, but if Made really is on the Chourio track, that would line him up for the beginning of 2027.

To reiterate, this is not a bad problem. But at some point, decisions will need to be made, both by those closer to the field and those further away from it. Will positional changes provide the necessary relief, and will those changes go smoothly? Could a blockbuster trade be in the cards? (A related question: Does the eight-to-ten-year extension the Brewers just gave Pratt increase his trade value?) There are a lot of different ways that things could still be addressed, but the Pratt extension makes the future of this team feel just a little bit closer.

Matthew Boyd started against Yusei Kikuchi . The Cubs went hitless until the third, when they batted around and scored five runs. Jeimer Candelario did not have his best day at first base. Nico Hoerner lined a couple of tw0-baggers, scored, stole a base, and singled to boot.

Boyd had it going on. Ten strikeouts in 5.2 innings. He faltered a bit late. Hunter Harvey gave up a couple of hard-hit balls that probably should have been caught, and the Angels had the chance to make a game of it. They didn’t — the bullpen had it together. The team is 3-3, back to .500. Onward and upward.

Cubs 6, Angels 2. Leftover meatloaf makes great sandwiches.

Every page these days has some form of advertising. {$} means paywall. {$} means limited views. Italics are often used on this page as sarcasm font. The powers that be have enabled real sarcasm font in the comments.

• Sahadev Sharma (The Athletic {$}): Edward Cabrera gives Cubs a taste of what they have long desired in team debut. “I keep thinking about the curveball he threw to Trout,” catcher Carson Kelly said. “Once you do that in the first inning, you’re setting the tone.” More from Jordan Bastian.
• Kyle Williams (Chicago Sun-Times {$}): How the Cubs lured right-hander Hunter Harvey to Chicago. “The Cubs targeted Harvey for their bullpen because of his velocity and experience.”
• Max Ralph (MLB.com): Brown dazzles in relief, shows signs of potential 2026 breakout for Cubs. “He has allowed just two runs (on a home run), struck out eight and walked only two.”
• Randy Holt (North Side Baseball*): Craig Counsell has unlocked a special tandem in the middle of the Cubs’ lineup. “… the concept of Pete Crow-Armstrong and Nico Hoerner hitting next to each other may be Craig Counsell’s best iteration yet.
• Matt Ostrowski (North Side Baseball): Alex Bregman is making himself at home in unexpected ways. “What can we glean from his stellar start?”
• Tony Andracki (Bleacher Nation*): Who should Cubs extend next? Evaluating the most intriguing candidates. “To be clear, most players don’t like negotiating in-season.”
• Patrick Mooney (The Athletic {$}): Where does Ian Happ fit after Cubs’ recent push for contract extensions? “… the Cubs are still positioned to shed an enormous amount of money from their payroll after this season.”
• AP: Cubs outfielder Seiya Suzuki to go on a minor-league rehab stint during Cubs’ upcoming trip. “… manager Craig Counsell said Tuesday.”

Food For Thought:

Please be reminded that Cub Tracks and Bleed Cubbie Blue do not necessarily endorse the content of articles, podcasts, or videos that are linked to in this series. Thanks for reading. Ne mai vedem.