Worldwide Sports News

Building on a one-game winning streak.

And Addison Barger is back (with Piñango the casualty). It was a weird spot….we are hip deep in lefty hitters, but then picking someone who isn’t hitting at all, just because he swings from the right side seems silly.

The Lineups:

Go Jays Go.

As discourse in baseball touches on how the Tigers will fare in the absence of Tarik Skubal, the reigning back-to-back champs take the field with Blake Snell on the mound for the first time in 2026—they do so, having managed his absence about as well as anyone could’ve hoped for, particularly given the outstanding efforts of Justin Wrobleski to keep this rotation running smoothly for the most part.

Although the Dodgers ultimately took the win in the first game of this series in an unfavorable matchup against Chris Sale, they probably would’ve liked to see Emmet Sheehan eat up a bit more innings than the 4.2 he covered—relying heavily on the bullpen finishing the job. Flipping the script, now it’s the Dodgers who send a veteran starter to the mound, and opposing Snell will be Spencer Strider.

A starting pitcher who finished top 5 in the Cy Young voting back in 2023, Strider, in large part thanks to injury woes and diminished velocity, has failed to replicate those numbers ever since, coming off a fairly pedestrian 2025 campaign. While he has Snell beat in MLB exposure this year, it isn’t by much, given that this will only be his second start of the year. Strider had a rocky season debut at Coors Field last week, walking five hitters in 3.1 innings of work in what was ultimately a Braves 11-6 win. Things don’t get much easier now for the power righty, visiting Dodger Stadium, squaring off against one of the best offenses in the sport.

With neither starter in rhythm as one might expect for a matchup in May, this might be a choppier game than usual, particularly when you account for the quality of these two offenses.

Saturday’s game info

• Teams: Dodgers vs. Braves
• Ballpark: Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles
• Start time: 6:10 p.m. PT
• TV: SportsNet LA
• Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)

Bobby Cox, the Baseball Hall of Famer who led the Atlanta Braves to their 1995 World Series title and was a four-time Manager of the Year, has died at the age of 84.

The Braves announced Cox’s death in a statement on Saturday. The team did not give a cause of death.

“We are overcome with emotion on the passing of Bobby Cox, our treasured skipper,” the team said. “Bobby was the best manager to ever wear a Braves uniform.

“Bobby was a favorite among all in the baseball community, especially those who played for him. His wealth of knowledge on player development and the intricacies of managing the game were rewarded with the sport’s ultimate prize in 2014 – enshrinement into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“And while Bobby’s passion for the game was unparalleled, his love of baseball was exceeded only by his love for his family. It is with the heaviest of hearts that we send our sincerest condolences to his beloved wife, Pam, and their loving children and grandchildren.”

Cox managed the Braves in two stints, first from 1978 to 1981 and then from 1990 to 2010. In the later spell, Atlanta became a National League powerhouse, winning 14 consecutive division titles, a feat no professional sports team had accomplished. They reached the World Series five times, including when they defeated Cleveland in 1995 to win the franchise’s third championship.

He managed the Toronto Blue Jays from 1982 to 1985 before returning to the Braves as general manager and later appointing himself manager. He ranks fourth all-time with 2,504 wins, fifth with 4,508 games, first with 15 division titles, first with 16 playoff appearances and fourth with 67 playoff wins. He leads all managers in baseball history with 162 ejections.

“He is the Atlanta Braves,” longtime catcher Brian McCann said in 2019. “He’s the best.”

Before beginning his managerial career, the Oklahoma native coached in the New York Yankees’ system and was on Billy Martin’s staff when they won the World Series in 1977.

Cox retired in 2010 and was unanimously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014. He was hospitalized after a stroke in 2019 and diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2020. Health issues kept him from attending the 2025 All-Star Game hosted by Atlanta, but he made an appearance later that year at Truist Park to honor the 30th anniversary of the Braves’ championship.

Ted Turner, the Atlanta media magnate and owner of the Braves from 1976 to 2007, died earlier this week at 87. Turner hired Cox to manage the Braves in 1978 and then fired him in 1981.

When asked what he was looking for in a replacement, Turner told reporters he wanted to hire someone exactly like Cox.

“Bobby Cox led one of the greatest eras of sustained excellence in baseball history,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “As manager of the Braves, his clubs became an October fixture, representing consistency, professionalism, and championship-caliber baseball for an entire generation of fans.

“On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to Bobby’s family, the Braves organization, the many players and coaches whose lives he impacted throughout his 29-year managerial career, and Braves fans everywhere.”

Thanks to Ian Malinowski and Adam Sanford in our Slack channel for suggesting that Chandler Simpson may be getting more pitches to run on when Junior Caminero is at the plate.

Lineup protection is the idea that a hitter performs better when a strong hitter bats directly behind them in the lineup. The theory is that pitchers will be less willing to pitch around or intentionally avoid the first hitter because they don’t want to face another dangerous bat with runners on base.

While research generally suggests lineup protection has only marginal effects, something different may be happening with Junior Caminero when Chandler Simpson is on first base. Surprisingly, Caminero is actually seeing fewer fastballs and appears to be getting pitched around more often in those situations. This may not necessarily be a bad thing; Caminero appears to ““level up” in these situations.

Below are the rates at which hitters have seen four and two-seam fastballs since 2025:

• League average all situations: 47.2%
• League average with just runners on first base: 48.0%

League-wide, the presence of a runner on first base has almost no effect on fastball usage. This trend is also evident when we look at the break-down per team:

There are a few base runners who break this trend, but none to the extent that Chandler Simpson changes things. Rays hitters see 47.9% of fastballs overall and 47.3% with just a runner on first base, but that number jumps to 54.4% when that runner on first base is Simpson.

Breaking this down on an individual hitter level (min. 15 pitches seen with just Simpson on first base) reveals something really interesting:

The most surprising result belongs to Caminero: he actually sees fewer fastballs when Simpson is on first base. The average in-zone rate for four and two-seam fastballs is typically at or above 55% each season while breaking balls and offspeed pitches are typically under 43%.

Caminero has hit directly behind Simpson in 19 of 36 games this season, including 18 of the last 24 games. Why would the Rays want their best power hitter seeing fewer pitches in-zone? One possible explanation is avoiding double plays, but the early results don’t strongly support that idea. Caminero’s double-play rate actually increases with Simpson on first base, though the sample remains very small.

While the results aren’t there yet in this small sample, Caminero appears to be more disciplined and controlled in these situations. He makes better swing decisions (evident in his zone minus out-of-zone swing rate) and more contact when just Simpson is on first base:

This is an interesting trend; Caminero is seeing fewer fastballs but his approach is significantly better in these scenarios. Through his first 22 PAs, Caminero has an uninspiring .208 wOBA – much lower than the .357 mark he has maintained in his career so far. An improved process should translate into even better production in a larger sample considering he already has 80-grade power. The potential for greater production from Caminero with Simpson on first could explain why the Rays are comfortable with the trade-off in production from the leadoff spot by having Simpson there instead of Yandy.

Caminero actually sees even fewer fastballs with Yandy on first than Simspon, but that doesn’t benefit Yandy in the same way it benefits Simpson because Yandy isn’t a threat to run:

There are two key things to monitor going forward: whether Caminero’s improved process with Simpson on base holds over a larger sample, and whether that process eventually translates into better production. The Rays already know Díaz is the more productive leadoff option, but Simpson’s ability to pressure defenses and alter pitch selection may create indirect benefits elsewhere in the lineup – particularly in elevating Caminero to another level. If those effects continue to improve Caminero’s underlying process, the trade-off could become worthwhile.

On Monday, we got the very sad news that former Yankees’ radio announcer John Sterling had passed away at the age of 87. The announcement was met with sadness from Yankees’ fans, but also from around the baseball world.

The tributes from Yankee fans are hardly unexpected. Sterling had been the radio voice of the Yankees for over 30 years. Plenty of people, myself included, quite literally grew up listening to him. You may very well watch or listen to your favorite team’s announcers over 100-150 times a year. Even if you never met them, they often can be a friendly voice that you seek out on a daily basis. Sterling was that for a lot of us Yankees’ fans.

Not that I expected people to be ripping him on the day that he died, but the tributes from around baseball did somewhat catch me off guard. To be frank, Sterling was not everyone’s cup of tea. I can completely understand him driving you mad if you were a neutral or opposing fan trying to listen to a Yankee game on the radio. However, I probably shouldn’t have been caught off guard. Again, people are generally speak well of people who just passed away. Also, while other fans might not have been fans of the way Sterling called games, they’re generally able to recognize what he meant to Yankee fans, as they themselves probably have that announcer for their own team. Sterling was ours.

John Sterling was never going to be a Vin Scully-type “voice of baseball.” Towards the end of his career, if you could’ve measured it, Scully probably had a near universally positive approval rating. Yes, he was only broadcasting Dodgers’ games by then, but he had a history of doing national broadcasts, and even after that, fans from around baseball would still tune in to hear him.

For various reasons, Sterling wasn’t that. His style with the personalized home runs calls and random show-tune references wouldn’t have hit. There was also the fact that, yes, he occasionally misjudged whether a deep fly ball was deep enough to be a home run or not. Those types of things aren’t always going to play well to people who aren’t invested in listening to him.

Sterling was ours, though, and he was ours because he cared about the Yankees and he cared about the people who care about the Yankees.

I don’t say that in a way to say that he was a homer. Hawk Harrelson for the White Sox was a dictionary-definition homer. White Sox fans loved him, so I’m not saying that to put him down while writing a piece in praise of someone else, but Sterling was not the same.

Considering his famous “The Yankees win!” call after every Bombers’ victory, Sterling definitely seemed to prefer that to Yankees’ losses, but he wasn’t trying to run cover for the team when things went against them. In recent days, a clip of him from the 2024 ALCS saying the Yankees “ran the bases like drunks” has been circulating. He wasn’t going to sugarcoat things going poorly. However, that wasn’t necessarily out of some strict journalistic duty to be neutral, it was more because that was generally what the Yankee fan base listening to him was feeling, and he knew how to read that.

Also in many of the tributes that you’ve seen, the people who knew him all talk about that he really was a kind and wonderful man. I think you could get that sense just from listening to him, but I think that also came across in things like the personalized home run calls. It didn’t matter if you were Aaron Judge or some random injury backup who got called up for a week or two and would be DFAed immediately after that: Sterling was going to give you your moment in the sun if you went deep.

Sure, it would be nice if Sterling got the level of national admiration that someone like Scully got. However, he didn’t need it. Sterling had the love of Yankees’ fans, and he always seemed content with that. I have a lot of good memories of John Sterling calls over the years, and I wouldn’t trade them for anyone else.

Weather will play a factor this afternoon at Fenway Park as the Rays and Red Sox try to play game three of a four game game set at 4:10pm. As of 12:30pm, the game is still on per Chris Cotillo:

However, the outlook does not look promising. Below is a simulated radar from the HRRR model, which shows persistent, reoccurring batches of rain over Boston between now and 9:00pm this evening.

It will not be raining every minute, but when it does it will come down heavy on and off for several hours. Additionally, temperatures will be chilly and the air will be raw, so even if they do try and play through the weather (which seems like an increasingly common trend across MLB), conditions will be rather miserable.

The best move is probably to postpone the game, but that would either require a double header tomorrow, which the team probably wants to avoid on Mother’s Day, a double header in July when the Rays return to Fenway Park right after the All-Star break, or giving up an off day.

Despite the Red Sox having an off day on Monday, that’s not an option to make up this game because the Rays will be in Toronto to face the Blue Jays.

Looking further ahead, models are also suggesting additional rain problems during the back half of the homestand when the Red Sox host the Phillies. A slow moving system will move over New England late Wednesday into Thursday, putting at least one, if not both games in jeopardy.

Hey, at least this is happening while Roman Anthony and Garrett Crochet are on the IL. Might be a chance to minimize their impact of being out.

Bobby Cox, who turned the Atlanta Braves into a National League powerhouse during his decades-long stint as manager died at the age of 84, the team confirmed on Saturday, May 9.

"While Bobby's passion for the game was unparalleled, his love of baseball was exceeded only by his love for his family," the team said in a statement. "It is with the heaviest of hearts that we send our sincerest condolences to his beloved wife, Pam, and their loving children and grandchildren."

Cox was Braves manager on two occasions. Atlanta hired him in December 1977 at age 36, making him the NL's youngest manager at the time.  He went 266-323 in his first stint with the team from 1978-81. 

The Toronto Blue Jays promptly hired Cox after his firing. He would lead the Blue Jays to three winning seasons over the next four seasons, including a 99-win season and postseason appearance in 1985.

Cox returned to the Braves as a general manager in 1985 and named himself manager in 1990, where he would spend the rest of his managerial career.

Over the next 20 years, Cox would lead the Braves to 14 consecutive NL West titles, five National League pennants and a World Series title in 1995.

Cox won four manager of the year awards throughout his 32-year career and finished with 2,504 victories, fourth all time, plus a record 162 ejections. He retired in 2010 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014.

Cox had been the third baseman for the New York Yankees from 1968 to 1969, but injuries cut his playing career short. He would spend the next decade working his way through the Yankees farm system as a manager until he became the first base coach in 1977 and later got his chance with the Braves.

Hall of Fame Braves pitcher Tom Glavine called Cox "the single greatest influence on me as a player, in terms of teaching the game, respecting the game, carrying yourself the right way on and off the field.”

Bobby Cox record

Bobby Cox was 2,504-2,001 in 29 seasons as an MLB manager, winning five National League titles and the 1995 World Series championship.