Worldwide Sports News

After a difficult two-week stretch, it was nice for the Yankees to have a laugher series against the Royals. They swept their first series since the opener against the Giants, the pitching staff bouncing back to limit Kansas City to six runs across the three games while Aaron Judge and Ben Rice are really finding their power strokes to lead an offensive awakening. They enter a well-deserved offday atop the standings in the AL East.

Many of their AL rivals were also in action on Sunday, so let’s recap the events of those games.

Houston Astros (8-15) 5, St. Louis Cardinals (13-8) 7

The Cardinals thoroughly outclassed the Astros in this series, scoring 23 runs in three games to continue their surprising start to the campaign just a half-game back of first. Matthew Liberatore gave St. Louis six strong innings, limiting Houston to a run on three hits and two walks with four strikeouts, the lone damage coming in the form of a Carlos Correa sac fly in the third after Taylor Trammel reached on a one-out triple. The Cardinals then ambushed starter Mike Burrows for four runs in the fifth. Masyn Winn and Pedro Pagés singled around Nathan Church walk to load the bases with two outs. Victor Scott II walked to force home the first run, JJ Wetherholt singled home the next two, and Iván Herrera singled home the fourth.

Houston wouldn’t go quietly, responding with three runs in the eighth to level the scores. Yordan Alvarez became the first in MLB to ten home runs with a two-out solo shot. Jose Altuve singled, Christian Walker walked, and a wild pitch advanced the pair to scoring position allowing both to come home on an Isaac Paredes game-tying, two-run single.

That sent the game to extra-innings, where a crucial error by Brice Matthews at third gifted St. Louis the win. His misplay of a Jordan Walker grounder followed by a Ramón Urías HBP loaded the bases, and Winn won the game with a bases-clearing triple. Houston would attempt to rally, an Altuve RBI single cutting the deficit to two, but it wasn’t enough to prevent their 13th loss in their last 16 games.

Seattle Mariners (10-13) 5, Texas Rangers (11-11) 2

Bryan Woo gave the Mariners seven strong innings, allowing two runs on four hits and a walk along with six strikeouts. He clearly ran out of steam in that seventh inning, allowing a Corey Seager leadoff walk, Wyatt Langford single, and Joc Pederson HBP to load the bases, followed by a Josh Jung sac fly and Evan Carter RBI double. Offseason trade acquisition MacKenzie Gore was nowhere near as sharp for Texas, yielding five runs on seven hits and a walk in five innings.

All five of Seattle’s runs came vie three home runs off Gore. Rob Refsnyder led off the first with a solo shot, his first hit in a Mariners uniform. J.P Crawford struck with a two run bomb in the second after Mitch Garver drew a leadoff walk. Randy Arozarena capped off the trio with a two-run blast of his own after Julio Rodríguez kept the fifth inning alive with a two out single.

Toronto Blue Jays (8-13) 10, Arizona Diamondbacks (13-9) 4

On the verge of being swept for the second time this season, the Blue Jays bats broke out for double digit runs to salvage a win. Eight of the ten came in the first inning to tie a franchise record against starter Ryne Nelson, who managed to record just one out after allowing eight hits and a walk. In fact, the first eight Blue Jays reached safely as they sent an eventual 12 batters to the plate. Doubles from Kazuma Okamoto and Nathan Lukes were the big blows in the inning, Toronto scoring all their runs despite the ball not leaving the yard in the frame.

Okamoto would later add a solo home run to lead off the third while Lukes and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. each contributed three-hit afternoons. Kevin Gausman has been one of the best starters in baseball to open the season, so spotting him an eight-run first inning lead pretty much meant the game was over before Arizona had even come to bat. He pitched six innings of two-run ball, allowing seven hits and a walk against four strikeouts. The Diamondbacks scored consolation runs in second and sixth, the lone bright spot a pinch-hit, two run home run by Jorge Barrosa in the seventh.

Detroit Tigers (12-10) 6, Boston Red Sox (8-13) 2

Tarik Skubal and Garrett Crochet entered the season as the consensus favorites in the AL Cy Young race. Skubal lived up to that billing with six innings of one-run ball and ten strikeouts to silence Boston on Saturday, but Crochet couldn’t return serve. Coming off his worst start with the Red Sox — 11 runs in 1.2 innings against the Twins — Crochet allowed five runs on seven hits including a pair of homers in five innings against Detroit. It’s the third of his five starts in which he has allowed at least five runs, the southpaw left with a 7.88 ERA after departing. On the otherside, Framber Valdez authored another stellar start for the team that signed him to a three-year, $115 million deal over the offseason. He held Boston to a run on three hits and two walks with seven strikeouts in six innings, meaning he has allowed one or fewer earned runs while lasting at least six innings in four of his five starts with the Tigers.

The two sides traded runs in the first, Dillon Dingler opening the scoring with and RBI double before Willson Contreras answered in the bottom half with a solo home run. But then Detroit struck for four runs in the fifth, all with two outs after Crochet struck out the first two batters of the frame. Jahmai Jones crushed a solo blast followed by a walk from Gleyber Torres and single from Matt Vierling to set up a three run wall scraper from Dingler, giving the starlet catcher four RBIs on the day.

There would be no more scoring until the ninth, when again the teams traded runs. Torres collected an RBI single in the top half and Caleb Durbin an RBI double in the bottom of the frame to bring us to our final score, 6-2.

Other Games

Cleveland Guardians (13-10) 8, Baltimore Orioles (10-12) 4

It was the José Ramírez show in Cleveland, the future Hall of Famer slugging a pair of solo home runs as the Guardians tagged Orioles Opening Day starter Trevor Rogers for six runs on six hits and two walks in five innings. Taylor Ward crushed a three-run blast in the Orioles’ four-run fifth to make this a one-run game, but Cleveland restored their cushion by scoring a pair in the eighth. Rookie Juan Brito hit a two-run double and Brayan Rocchio collected three hits and three RBIs batting ninth.

Worcester: W, 4-2 (BOX SCORE)

The Red Sox farm, unlike the Major League team, actually enjoyed solid pitching all the way around on Sunday. Worcester’s shutout performance in Nashville (Brewers AAA) was courtesy of Michael Sansone. The 26-year-old Connecticut native may well end up putting together some innings on the Major League squad in 26; he lacks any sort of velocity but gets by with control. He allowed just two hits in six innings; Nate Eaton beat that on his own, including his 2nd home run of the series in the midst of his three-hit afternoon. This one, with Sansone’s great start, was never really in doubt, but the WooSox may have benefitted from a bit more offense. Still, you can’t look a gift horse that is a 4-2 win in the mouth, especially when it comes at the heels of five straight losses and a total of five runs in three games combined.

Portland: W, 5-3 (BOX SCORE)

Hayden Mullins, the former Auburn Tiger and 2022 12th round draft pick, had perhaps the best outing of his professional career. Mullins has more velocity and less control than Sansone, but the latter didn’t seem to be the case in Altoona (Pirates AA), as he rolled through eight scoreless innings with eight strikeouts and just one walk. That’s not to say he was constantly throwing strikes; 30 of his 76 pitches were outside the strike zone, but the strikes came at the right times. He’s been struggling so far to start 2026, so this was nice.

Day off for Franklin Arias, and in his absence the team had its three top slots in the lineup each strike out multiple times. In fact, the Sea Dogs only had one extra base hit on Sunday from Miguel Bleis. Even still, they strung together a W.

Greenville: W, 4-3 (BOX SCORE)

The only problem with Marcus Phillips’ start on Sunday against Bowling Green (Rays High-A) was that it didn’t go super long. It lasted just 58 pitches, but he amassed seven strikeouts, and then things went south in the bullpen after Phillips was pulled in the fourth. But, things didn’t go SO well for the Hot Rods that the Drive couldn’t take the lead back in the bottom of the eighth with a Natanael Yuten RBI single, which had a .268 WPA. As the entire arm emerged victorious, this win was also not pretty, but it was a win!

Salem: W, 4-2 (BOX SCORE)

The RidgeYaks break their five-game losing streak holding a total run differential of -18 with a defense-first win. They got to scoring runs on Hickory (Rangers A) early, holding a 4-0 lead, peaking with Starlyn Nunez’ RBI triple, and the bullpen held their own following a short, but good, start by Kansas native Barrett Morgan. Prior to this game, the Crawdads had hung a total of 8.8 runs a game on Salem, so this was a refreshing display of effective pitching by committee!

The Orioles had a bad week. They lost two series, and went a combined 2-5 in that span. Neither win was particularly easy, the first requiring them to climb out of a 7-1 hole and the second seeing them take until the eighth inning to score at all. It’s just the latest development in what has been a challenging start to the 2026 campaign. Despite these struggles, could there still be reason for optimism with these Orioles?

Let’s start with the obvious, these Orioles were only “supposed” to good, not great, anyway. Think back to pre-season predications across the industry. Most outlets had the O’s pegged for 85 or so wins. Some more, some less. That represents a step up from 2025, certainly, but nowhere near elite contender status. If things went right for them, maybe they get t0 90 wins and snag the AL East crown. If they crater, they might not even be a .500 squad.

Well, with the season less than a month old, you would have to say their luck has been more bad than good.

Injuries have, yet again, been a problem. Before the season even started they lost Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg, their projected starting second and third basemen, respectively, to the IL. Andrew Kittredge, potentially the team’s set up man, and Keegan Akin, an important middle-inning option, joined them on the shelf later in spring. Since the regular season has begin, they’ve added starting catcher Adley Rutschman, starting right fielder Tyler O’Neill, rotation piece Zach Eflin, bench bat Ryan Moutcastle, and left-handed reliever Dietrich Enns to the infirmary report. It has been a blood bath.

As a result, new manager Craig Albernaz has had less flexibility to adjust a lineup that has failed to meet expectations early.

Samuel Basallo is still getting his feet under him and carries a meager 49 wRC+ in his first full season. He’s starting behind the plate most days anyway, because the other option is Sam Huff, a fringy backstop with limited offensive upside.

Coby Mayo isn’t having the turnaround he hoped for at the plate, though his improvement in the field has been much appreciated. His 36 wRC+ is the worst on the team, and yet he is getting in the lineup regularly because injuries have eaten away the infield depth the team once had.

The outfield is a work in progress. Taylor Ward (143 wRC+) and Leody Taveras (190 wRC+) are adjusting just fine to their new team. But finding that third reliable member has been tough. Colton Cowser (39 wRC+) and Dylan Beavers (74 wRC+) have been slow out of the gate, and both are left-handed. Blaze Alexander, a righty, is getting into the mix now, though that feels like a band-aid given his lack of experience in the role, and his bat has cooled significantly the last week or two anyway.

But you probably already know about this negative stuff. Let’s talk about why the sky is not, in fact, falling.

Start with the schedule. Many folks pointed to the Orioles “soft” start to the season a reason why they needed to come out of the gate on fire. So to have a 10-12 record is disappointing. But the reality is that those perceptions were based on 2025, not 2026. The teams the Orioles have played aren’t all that bad. Ten of their 22 games have been against teams with .500 records or better. No one else in the AL East has played more than six games against teams with winning records. Obviously, you need to beat good teams in order to be a good team yourself, but the Orioles are not losing to a bunch of cellar dwellers here.

Back to the injuries. It sounds like things are improving, ever so slightly, on that front.

Rutschman is eligible to return on Tuesday, though he may play in a rehab game or two first. He is with the team on the road trip and has been participating in all of the baseball activities. Bringing him back will allow the Orioles to improve their defense behind the plate and give their offense a boost, since he was one of their top hitters when he went out.

Holliday has restarted his rehab after being pulled off of it briefly with wrist soreness. That doesn’t mean he will be ready to play at the big league level immediately, but it is a good sign. His return likely pushes Mayo back down to Triple-A. In turn, that will allow Jeremiah Jackson, who leads the team in RBI, to move over to third base. Perhaps that is an overall downgrade defensively, but it should help the lineup.

O’Neill’s return is more ambiguous since he is dealing with a concussion, which can linger. But reports have been fairly positive, and he is eligible to get back on the field any day now. Once he is back on the roster, it should be simple enough for the Orioles to DFA one of Jonathan Rodríguez or Weston Wilson, though they may instead option Cowser or Beavers if they think it would help them long term.

The point here is that the depth should be getting back to the level the team hoped for coming into the season. Depth alone doesn’t get you wins, but it does allow Albernaz to cycle through players and play the hot hand. The players coming back have a batter chance of actually getting hot than many of the names they would be replacing.

On top of that, there is some data you could, admittedly, cherry pick, to tell you that a few key players should start to see their season’s turn around.

Starting in the lineup, we are yet to get the absolute best from Gunnar Henderson or Pete Alonso. Henderson has just a .211 BABIP despite having a hard-hit rate that sits in the 88th percentile of MLB. That should balance out at some point, yielding a higher batting average, present stolen base opportunities, and create offense for the O’s. Alonso has one of the highest average exit velocities (94.7 mph, 96th percentile) and hard hit rates (57.7%, 95th percentile) in the sport. He needs to get the ball in the air more, and his career pedigree says he will. Once that happens, with runners on in front of him, the Orioles are going to score a lot more runs.

Right now, the Orioles are tied for 19th in runs scored in MLB. That is only slightly better than where they finished (24th) in a disappointing 2025. In order for this team to compete for a playoff spot, they need to be a top 10 lineup. The talent that was accumulated this offseason feels like it should be able to accomplished that. But it needs its best players to perform to their ability, and they need to get healthier overall.

It’s a similar story in the rotation, where the Orioles need more out of their absolute best players: Trevor Rogers, Kyle Bradish, and Shane Baz. None of them have performed to their ability, but the top line numbers obscure some good things. Rogers, for example, has a 4.08 ERA on the season, but his xERA is just 2.46 and his FIP is 3.69. Bradish looked much better in his most recent start, and that is reflected in the peripherals. His 5.49 ERA is massive compared to his 3.06 xERA and 3.18 FIP. The difference for Baz is not as stark, but it is there. He has a 4.91 ERA but a 4.21 xERA and 3.95 FIP. It’s not unrealistic to think each of them could lower their ERAs by up to a run in the next month. That would transform the team’s outlook.

On the whole, the Orioles’ pitching staff is right about where they need to be. They are 13th in ERA (3.91), 9th in xERA (3.60), and 13th in FIP (3.98). A middle-of-the-road pack of pitchers and a high-end lineup seemed to be the O’s path to success this year. But those numbers include their bullpen playing to a rather high level. A performance, by the way, that is largely backed up by solid peripherals. The rotation, on the other hand, has underperformed and has room to grow. That’s not a bad spot to be in if you believe in the Orioles’ ability to actually tap into those underlying numbers and get them to emerge on the field.

Of course, you can point out players that might go in the other direction too. Will guys like Jackson or Taveras keep hitting like all-stars? Probably not. Will the entire bullpen continue to pitch at such a high level? Eh, don’t bet on it. But getting more out of your stars, who are positioned at intentional spots in your lineup or rotation, should more than outweigh the dip in performance from the players coming out of nowhere to give you a temporary boost.

Things are not as bad as they have felt this last week. Given everything that has happened to the Orioles so far, they simply need to keep their head above water and give time for their talent to rise to the top. It is possible it won’t ever come to fruition, but it’s really all they can do at this point.

Mariners 5, Rangers 2

• The longest road trip of the Rangers’ 2026 season has come to an end.
• The Rangers went 4-6 on the road trip.
• Could have been better, could have been worse. 4-6 is about what I think one would expect, though.
• A very “at Seattle” loss in this one. A feckless offense, not great outing from the starting pitcher. The type of thing it feels like has become routine when in playing in Seattle.
• His last time out, MacKenzie Gore lost the strike zone, issuing six walks. This time, Gore was much better at throwing strikes — 61 of them, out of 90 pitches, with just one walk issued — but he was also way too hittable, giving up six barrels (per Statcast) and three home runs.
• All three home runs off of Gore were hard hit. The third of them, Randy Arozarena’s fifth inning two run shot, is a home run only in T-Mobile Park, per Statcast, but it was 103.8 mph with a 27 degree launch angle, so it was really hard hit, not one of those wind-blown fly balls that reaches the seats.
• In all, the Mariners had nine balls in play in excess of 100 mph off of Gore, who has shown both his immense ability and his maddening inconsistency so far in his Rangers career. You can see why the Rangers pursued him, why they prioritized him and see him as having top of the rotation potential. You can also see why he didn’t take an overwhelming package to acquire.
• The rest of the bullpen was perfectly acceptable, Tyler Alexander and Jalen Beeks maintaining their sub-1 ERAs, Gavin Collyer still not allowing an earned run in the majors, Jakob Junis pulling a Mitch Williams imitation by loading the bases with a pair of walks and an HBP before getting out of it unscathed.
• Bryan Woo bam-Woo-zled the Rangers bats for most of the game. Brandon Nimmo led off the game with a single, then didn’t allow another baserunner until Josh Smith singled with one out in the sixth.
• Texas did finally manage to get to him in the seventh, when a Corey Seager walk, a Wyatt Langford single, and a Joc Pederson HBP loaded the bases. Josh Jung hit a fly ball the opposite way that for one brief second off the bat had you hoping, but it was caught right in front of the wall for a sac fly. Evan Carter then doubled home Langford for the final Ranger run of the game.
• A Brandon Nimmo double in the eighth went for naught, and the only excitement in the ninth was Jake Burger getting to first base on a strikeout/wild pitch to lead off the inning. He was still standing there three batters later when Evan Carter grounded out for a game-ending 3U.
• It had the energy of a Sunday day game in Seattle. It had the energy of the end of a ten game in ten day road trip.
• The Rangers have played 16 games in 17 days, and after Monday’s off day they play nine in a row at home, meaning 25 games in 27 days. That’s a really hectic stretch of baseball.
• So here’s the thing about Bryan Woo.
• When I see his name in my head I go, “My name is Woo! How do you do! Now you’re gonna die!”
• Is life easy for a pitcher named Woo? It appears to be when he’s facing the Rangers…
• The thing that always bothered me about “A Boy Named Sue” was that you would think that the protagonist of the song would, at some point, just decide to go by a different name. If he’s going to “roam from town to town” to hide his shame, he could just say when he got to the new town that his name was “Frank or George or Bill or Tom, anything but Sue…”
• Thinking about it, if the narrator hated the name “Sue” so much, you’d think that he’d have gone by something else. Even if he didn’t have the scratch or initiative to go to the courthouse and do a legal name change, there’s nothing that would keep him from just telling people he encountered that his name was something else. People do that all the time. It isn’t like last year’s second half platoon first baseman’s government name is “Rowdy,” after all.
• So here’s the thing…I think that there’s something deeper going on here. The narrator, for whatever reason, didn’t want to go by a different name. Maybe it was a way for him to have an easy excuse for his own failures in life, something to blame it on. Maybe it was due to a streak of misanthropy — a desire to give people a reason to mock him, so he would be justified in hating them. Maybe it was a perverse sense of unconscious pride, the one thing that made him unique in a world full of anonymous, gray people that blurred one into the other.
• He claims that he was going to kill his father until his father gave his explanation for naming him Sue, but I don’t buy that. He wasn’t ever going to kill the man that gave him the name that he claimed to despise but nonetheless embraced. He was going to go through the motions, act like this was some act of vengeance, but ultimately he wasn’t going to land the death blow. How could he, after all, kill the man who gave him the name he had built his entire identity around?
• MacKenzie Gore’s fastball hit 96.6 mph, averaging 95.6 mph. Tyler Alexander’s fastball hit 92.2 mph. Jalen Beeks reached 95.2 mph with his fastball. Gavin Collyer’s sinker topped out at 96.8 mph. Jakob Junis reached 93.4 mph with his fastball.
• Evan Carter had a 107.7 mph double. Joc Pederson had a 107.7 mph ground out. Brandon Nimmo had a 106.5 mph double, a 103.5 mph fly out, and a 101.8 mph single. Josh Smith had a 104.9 mph single.
• And now an off day, a much needed day of rest, and then the Rangers are home for a stretch.

Meet the Mets

You bolt awake in the mountains of Carthage. You are not watching the Mets. It is 217 BC. You are the general Hannibal, and you have changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. Rome must burn.

Choose your recap: Amazin’ Avenue, MLB.com, Newsday, New York Daily News, New York Post, The Athletic

Your feelings may vary, but the Mets players are standing by Carlos Mendoza and blaming this skid on themselves and themselves only.

If you want good news, Juan Soto is still on track to return to the Mets during this upcoming homestand.

When the rest of the team returns to Citi Field tomorrow, they aren’t exactly expecting a warm welcome from the fans.

Around the National League East

Curtis Mead hit a two-run homer and three Nationals pitchers combined to shut out the Giants in a 3-0 series finale victory.

The Marlins got to Jacob Misiorowski early for three runs and never looked back from that point in their 5-3 win over the Brewers.

On Peacock, Kyle Schwarber started the Phillies’ half of the first inning with a home run, but the core of the Braves would get the last laugh as they completed a weekend sweep of the Phillies with a 4-2 win.

Around Major League Baseball

Mason Miller continued his streak of essential unstoppability, extending his scoreless streak to 32.2 innings and coming one more appearance shy of breaking the Padres’ team record.

Reaching base in his 51st consecutive game, Shohei Ohtani moved into third place on the Dodgers’ all time on-base streak leaderboard and finds himself a week’s worth of games away from first place.

With a pair of home runs on Sunday, Jose Ramirez is nine home runs and three stolen bases away from becoming the eighth member of the 300-300 club and the first since 2012.

Perhaps unaware that he is on the Dodgers instead of the Mets, Edwin Diaz has continued his early season of horrors, giving up three runs and not recording an out in his first appearance in nearly a week.

Still in uniform and using Cleveland’s incredibly long scoreboard, Austin Hedges got engaged to his girlfriend on the field after Sunday’s contest.

This Date in Mets History

On this date in 1967, Tom Seaver won the first of 311 major league games in his career.

Larry Dierker as a player and manager guided the Astros franchise to a combined 574 wins.  His number 49 is rightfully retired, and he joins us as our Legends Series continues with our sixth entry.    

Let’s start at the beginning.  You struck out Willie Mays in your first ever start.  Incredible.  What do you most remember about that?

I was in Cocoa Florida, and I had been averaging almost two strike outs per inning because the general manager Paul Richards taught me how to throw a sinker and a slider which I didn’t know how to throw.  If all you have is a fastball, you’re not going to last very long.   

I was confident, but they didn’t exactly put me out there against an easy team, they had Harvey Kuenn, McCovey, Cepeda and of course, Willie.  I had one strike in the count, and I threw him a change up, and he hit it about 450 feet, but it went 10-foot foul, and that was strike two.  So, then I threw him a slider that started inside, and the ball broke over the inside corner.  It’s now called a backdoor slider of course, and I kind of threw it by accident and it really worked.    

It’s coming up on 50 years since you threw your no-hitter in July of 1976.  Did you know you had it going that day?   

I was at the end of my career.  We were way out of the race.  They had brought up a bunch of younger guys, so it was clear that the team was looking to rebuild.    

On that day, I decided to just mix it up, and not try to impress anyone that I still knew how to throw.  I was cruising along and then once it got into the 8th inning, I decided that I was just going to throw fast balls because we had a 6-0 lead in the dome, and I didn’t have to give in to anybody.   

My fastball was awesome that day.  In 1969, I had a possible no-hitter in Atlanta with two outs when Felix Millan got an infield hit.  I wasn’t going to let that happen again, so I’m in the dome, there’s these fences to protect me, my ball had pop on it.    

It was kind of like the game when Lance McCullers threw the Yankees 23 straight curve balls.  I just kept throwing fastballs and they couldn’t hit them, and I had a no hitter.  

I often wonder about what would’ve happened if you had gotten to the series and faced the Yankees in 1998.  How good was that Astros team in 1998?

The Padres were a really good team.  Give them credit.  Kevin Brown outpitched Randy.    Remember, Bob Gibson one year had an ERA of 1.12 and lost a game to me.  If your team doesn’t score any runs, you can’t win.   

I’m not sure if that was the best team that the Astros ever had in their history, but it was the best team I personally ever had as a manager.  When we got Randy and he went 10-1 that summer, he was just overpowering, and the months of August and September were so exciting.  I really thought we were going to the World Series.    

Do you have any innings left in that arm of yours?  The Astros staff has been compromised to say the least.

I think the problem with the Astros pitchers and pitchers all throughout baseball is not necessarily the pitchers themselves or the coaches, it’s the doctors.    

If a guy has a little thing in his shoulder, they’ll poke around and find something.  In my day, we put hot patches on it, took some painkillers, and went out there.  All they could do back then was take X-rays and that only showed inflammation or tendons or anything else.    

We couldn’t afford not to pitch because everyone mostly had one-year contracts and you were only paid the next season based upon what you did the season before.  Guys didn’t want to miss a start.  

You look at some of those guys in the Hall Of Fame who threw 4000 or 5000 innings,  are you going to tell me that those guys didn’t have tweaks in their arms, that things didn’t hurt?  I took so many cortisone shots, sometimes even from the opposing team doctors from the other club.  I was always focused on the next start.  That’s just the way it was back then.     

It seems the secret to Sunday success for the Braves is to play Sunday Night Baseball. For the second straight week, the Braves were successful via the new version of Sunday Night Baseball on Peacock. They come from behind to beat the Phillies 4-2 and completed a splendid weekend sweep of their division rival. After dropping the first game of the week to the Marlins, the Braves have now won five straight games. They also continue to strengthen their lead in the NL East with a 5 game lead overall.

With another week of facing NL East opponents ahead, the Braves are playing of their best baseball in recent memory.

Braves News

The big off the field news of the Day for the Braves organization was Didier Fuentes being a late scratch for Gwinnett. Fortunately, it was not health related, as Mark Bowman of MLB.com speculates the Braves are keeping Fuentes fresh to be available if needed this week with the big league club.

Mark Bowman looks at how the lineup fueled the Braves success against the Phillies.

The Braves are up to number 2 in the MLB.com Power Rankings.

JR Ritchie once again looked great over the weekend in the minors.

MLB News

The Yankees power output continued to look impressive over the weekend.

After being swept by the Cubs over the weekend, the Mets have now lost 11 straight games.

For the Astros, starting pitchers Hunter Brown and Cristian Javier are expected to return in around 6 weeks.

The Feed

Finally, both Spencer Strider and Sean Murphy will take another step closer to their season debuts as they arrive in AAA with the Stripers this week.