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Hey now. The players are in camp, except for a couple, who (as far as I know) are still having visa trouble. They’ll actually play a competitive game this week.

I don’t know about you, but I’m studio-tanned, restless, and ready-to-wear. I’m in the best shape of my life (round) except for my hand, which is going to take a month or so to heal, so playing guitar is out, typing is, um, interesting, and my wallet, which is soon to be $150 thinner when MLB.TV renews.

But those are small things. Baseball is back. I’m of the coterie that believes next year is toast so, from my perspective, there’s much more at stake and I shall be especially attentive. That makes the window of contention 2026 unless that toast lands butter-side-up, and I have little faith in Bruce Meyer and no faith whatsoever in Rob Manfred getting that done.

*means autoplay on, (directions to remove for Firefox and Chrome). {$} means paywall. {$} 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.

• Jordan Bastian (MLB.com*): PCA, Bregman tout stacked Team USA. “I mean, how can you put together a better roster than what we’ve got?” Crow-Armstrong said.
• Bradford Doolittle (ESPN*): MLB 2026: Why your team didn’t do what you wanted this winter. “… for baseball fans, spring has sprung early.”
• Paul Niemiec (North Side Baseball*): Chicago Cubs non-roster invitees: Breaking down everyplayer invited to Spring Training. “Let’s see who else is in camp outside of the players you already know.”
• Meghan Montemurro (Chicago Tribune* {$}): How lefty Shota Imanaga and the Chicago Cubs are planning to tweak his arsenal for a bounce-back season. “I’m very excited for Shota to have an outstanding season,” manager Craig Counsell said.
• Sahadev Sharma (The Athletic {$}): Three relievers looking to bounce back as the Cubs look for their next surprise. “Part of the fun of spring training is trying to figure out which performances are real and which aren’t.”
• Jordan Bastian (MLB.com*): Cubs get camp debuts from top pitching prospect … and Sir Charles! “NBA legend Barkley stops by while Wiggins hits the mound to kick off 1st Spring Training.“
• Maddie Lee (Chicago Sun-Times* {$}): What Pete Crow-Armstrong can learn from Cubs and Team USA teammate Alex Bregman. “Bregman joined the Cubs this offseason with a glowing reputation for his leadership skills.” Jordan Bastian has more*.

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. We will not wittingly publish A. I. – driven articles or clickbait, and insist on unimpeachable sources.

Maybe you’re a regular at Detroit Tigers spring training camp. Maybe you’ve made the pilgrimage once, like myself. And maybe your best spring training memory came from a story or from watching Grapefruit League action on television.

I went down once, long before the whole Lakeland complex was completely renovated, before I even started writing about baseball. One of these years, I’ll get back to check it all out, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this year.

Still, there are a lot of fun memories even just from the last 5-10 years. I look back fondly but also with sorrow at a certain Matt Manning appearance in 2020 spring camp before COVID sent everyone home. For a brief moment, there was the Tigers pitching prospect looking more built than ever before, firing 97-99 mph fastballs past Yankees hitters. Sadly, that was kind of a high point in his development, and we rarely saw that velocity ever again. My dreams of a second Noah Snydergaard lie in ruin.

My favorite recent memory though, was from that same 2020 camp, and also against the Yankees, when Miguel Cabrera took Gerrit Cole deep twice for two monstrous home runs in a Grapefruit League matchup. That felt like the last time we saw the real Miguel Cabrera before age finally took their toll. Sorry I’m in a bittersweet mood this weekend apparently.

Check these bombs out. The first one looked like it carried 470 feet downwind out to left center field. The second was off the batter’s eye in straightaway center.

So how about you? What memories come to mind when you think spring training and Lakeland?

The Pittsburgh Pirates are going into the season with a lot of hype as Paul Skenes and Konnor Griffin highlight the team’s bright future.

ESPN is projecting that the Pirates should win close to 80 games this season, which would mark the team’s best record since the 2018 campaign.

“The starting rotation should rank in the top 10, a great building block for any rising team, and could crack elite status if Bubba Chandler takes a leap to become Robin to Paul Skenes’ Batman. The staff should strike out a lot of batters, which helps. Still, playoff teams tend to turn balls in play into outs, and the Pirates’ positional alignment seems to put too many regulars in tension with their ideal slot on the defensive spectrum,“ ESPN analyst Bradford Doolittle wrote.

“At the same time, projecting team defensive rankings is an inexact science, to say the least, so maybe skipper Don Kelly can make it work. A quick ascension by Konnor Griffin at shortstop would surely help.”

The Pirates have had seven consecutive losing seasons, two of which saw the team drop a hundred games or more. In 2020, had the season been 162 games like a normal campaign, the Pirates would have been well on pace for another hundred lost season.

The Pirates have gone through the trials and tribulations of this rebuild, and it looks like things could be improving for the franchise. Skenes is the tip of the iceberg, and several other players are coming to help improve the team around him. If they can live up to expectations, the Pirates should be much better in 2026.

From his first day attending classes at Harvard-Westlake’s middle school campus, which includes seventh- and eighth-graders, Louis Lappe was being recognized as a celebrity.

“A few of the seventh graders I guess they know me kind of,” Lappe said humbly.

Not kind of.

“Every day, I hear them,” freshman teammate Nate Englander said. “'Are you Louis Lappe, the kid who hit the walk-off home run in the Little League World Series?' Every grade, seriously.”

THIS IS WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF!

A walk-off to win the #LLWS Championship 🙌 pic.twitter.com/aVZVvIKIwi

— Little League (@LittleLeague) August 27, 2023

It’s time for the Louis Lappe Show to hit the high school ranks. The national hero as a 12-year-old who led El Segundo to the Little League world championship in 2023 is now 15 and set to begin his first year of high school baseball. He'll be starting at third base for the Wolverines. He’s 6 feet 2 and is joined by two other top freshmen on Harvard-Westlake's varsity team, the 6-2 Englander, an outfielder-pitcher, and the 6-2 Mateo Mier, a pitcher.

This reminds scouts of the spring of 2021, when Bryce Rainer, Tommy Bridges and Duncan Marsten started on the Wolverines' varsity team as freshmen. Rainer became a first-round draft pick, Marsten is a standout pitcher at Wake Forest and Bridges went to Northwestern.

Englander still hasn’t forgiven Lappe for eliminating him and Sherman Oaks Little League in the 2023 regional playoffs.

“Obviously, it was difficult at the time,” Englander said. “We’re boys now. It’s amazing to reconnect. It’s going to be fun."

During fall and winter ball, Lappe displayed occasional power, similar to what he did as a 12-year-old that allowed him to hit five home runs at the 2023 Little League World Series, including his walk-off home run in the bottom of the sixth inning to beat Venezuela.

He had a .445 batting average in winter ball, second only to Vanderbilt-bound senior James Tronstein.

It’s still going to be a transition season for Lappe.

“It’s a whole new game. A whole new chapter I have to get used to,” he said. “The main thing will be getting used to the speed of the game. It’s much faster than 14-, 15-year-old travel ball. Everyone runs faster, throws harder. When we get used to that, we'll be just fine.”

Harvard-Westlake freshmen Louis Lappe and Mateo Mier make the USA 15U baseball national team. pic.twitter.com/UuiDxvjjlQ

— eric sondheimer (@latsondheimer) August 8, 2025

Lappe and Mier won gold medals during the summer playing for the USA 15U national team.

Mier is going to be placed immediately on the mound as part of a three-man starting pitching rotation used by pitching coach Joe Guntz to deal with some of the best hitters in the Southland.

“I think it's more about finding your spot on the team,” Mier said. “It’s a team game. Travel ball is very self-centered. The challenge is learning how to pitch and not be a thrower. I feel coach Guntz is the right person to teach me that.”

All three look like they could be playing basketball or football with their physical statures. That will mark them early on as no ordinary freshmen.

“We’re in the Mission League, which is one of the most difficult and prestigious leagues in the country,” Englander said. “There’s a lot more talent, whether it’s guys throwing harder, hitting the ball farther."

The Mission League has had an influx of outstanding players from the class of 2029, including Jordan Leon at Sierra Canyon and Brody Brooks at Loyola.

"I think we’ll hold our own," Englander said. "We look the part. Hopefully we can play the part.”

Mark down Harvard-Westlake’s games against Loyola because the Cubs have four former El Segundo players on their team, including the manager, Danny Boehle. Imagine the trash talk that might be transpiring with Lappe on second base talking to Brooks, one of his best friends who plays shortstop.

“It will be fun to mess with them and also beat them,” Lappe said.

It’s going to be a memorable four years of high school baseball for Lappe and his fellow class of 2029 players.

Sign up for the L.A. Times SoCal high school sports newsletter to get scores, stories and a behind-the-scenes look at what makes prep sports so popular.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

This post is part of a series of daily questions that we’ll ask the community here at Amazin’ Avenue throughout the month of February. We hope you find the questions engaging and that our prompts can spark some fun conversations in the comments. We’ll see you there and plan to have staff chiming in, too.

After Carlos Beltrán, who will be the next player to enter the Hall of Fame in a Mets cap?

Bryce Harper calls surprising offseason remark ‘wild' originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Bryce Harper isn’t searching for motivation.

But when he spoke Sunday in Clearwater for the first time publicly since Dave Dombrowski’s end-of-season comments about his “elite” status, it was clear the tone of that conversation still stuck with him.

“For me, it was wild, the whole situation of that happening,” Harper said.

Part of Harper’s reaction comes from the standard he felt was set when he started negotiating with the club in 2019.

“When we first met with this organization, it was, hey, you know, we’re always going to keep things in-house, and we expect you to do the same thing,” Harper said. “And so, when that didn’t happen, it kind of took me for a run a little bit.”

The dynamics have shifted since then. Dombrowski wasn’t overseeing baseball operations when Harper joined the team. He was with the Red Sox at the time. 

Harper’s 13-year deal has hardly been a disappointment and overall does not deserve a whole lot of criticism. Since coming to Philadelphia, Harper owns a .912 regular-season OPS and a 1.010 postseason OPS, along with three Silver Sluggers and an MVP.

The frustration is also rooted in what 2025 looked like. Harper didn’t dodge Dombrowski’s evaluation.

“Obviously, I didn’t have the year that I wanted,” he said. “Obviously, I didn’t have the postseason I wanted. My numbers weren’t where they needed to be. I know that.”

If there’s a single place the season stung, it’s October. In the NLDS against the Dodgers, Harper went 3-for-15 with one extra-base hit, good for a .600 OPS. It was the fewest extra-base hits he’s had in any postseason run with at least 10 at-bats and his toughest five-game-or-more series since his 19-year-old season in 2012.

And it wasn’t just Harper. Between Harper, Trea Turner, and Kyle Schwarber, the trio slashed .208/.309/.375 in the series for a .684 OPS.

Harper’s focus now is less about statements and more about adjustment. Some of it is approach, some of it is what he’s being given.

“Yeah, I think there’s a lot of things that, you know, chasing pitches or chasing stuff out of the zone… not missing pitches over the plate,” Harper said. “I’ll hopefully see a couple more pitches in the zone this year.”

Harper’s chase rate backed up the point. His outside-the-zone swing percentage was 36 percent, his highest since 2022 (37.2). He saw 42.9 percent of pitches in the zone, about in line with last year, and he hasn’t seen 44-plus percent since 2022.

The 2022 and 2025 profiles weren’t identical, but they carry similarities. Harper tore his UCL in 2022 and still slashed .286/.364/.514. The .877 OPS that year and the way he was pitched in 2025 fit into a familiar theme: if pitchers don’t have to challenge him, they won’t. 

That’s where the lineup protection conversation comes back, especially with the cleanup spot still unsettled.

“I think it’s a huge impact in the four spot,” Harper said. “I think the numbers in the four spot weren’t very good last year either for our whole team. So… whoever is in that spot is going to have a big job to do.”

Whether it’s Schwarber, Alec Bohm, or Adolis García, that spot affects how teams choose to pitch Harper. And if he’s seeing fewer hittable pitches again, the Phillies will need to create offense through other avenues.

Before the regular season even begins, Harper will have another stage. He’s set to play in the World Baseball Classic, something he spoke about with obvious excitement.

“I can’t wait to represent your country. There’s nothing better… the feeling of putting USA on your chest and playing for something so much bigger than yourself,” Harper said. “And having Aaron Judge hit behind me is going to be a lot of fun as well.”

It also changes his calendar. Harper ramped up earlier than usual this offseason with the WBC ahead, and he noted an offseason regimen that included Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation (EBOO). 

He described on Instagram in December that the process is where a portion of blood is drawn, filtered, and exposed to ozone before being returned to the bloodstream.

The goal is simple: stay on the field all year. Harper hasn’t played 150 games in a season since his first year with the Phillies, and disruptions can impact one’s readiness for the postseason.

That’s the part hovering over everything in Clearwater. Harper can post strong regular-season numbers again. The Phillies can win 90-plus games again. But if the stars fade when the games tighten, the ending stays the same.

Harper knows that. He doesn’t need to be pushed. He’s looking for the version of the Phillies that shows up when it matters most.st.

DRaysBay works best as a place for community and conversation. Accordingly, in the lead up to the new season, we are posting “Daily Questions” in the month of February. I look forward to seeing you in the comment section!

On the one hand, a pitching duel — particularly with a pitch clock — is a high intensity, efficient affair. Breezy and compelling for those of us near a screen.

A slugfest, on the otherhand, begs the question, “are you not entertained?” And is that not why we watch?