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Mets 2025 first-round pick Mitch Voit made his way to Citi Field on Friday evening to check out the stadium and the facilities a day after signing his new contract with the big league club.

Voit, a standout at the University of Michigan, was selected 38th overall by the Mets and the team has high hopes for the young infielder. Speaking with the media after a round of batting practice, Voit talked about his feelings.

"I’ve just been filled with excitement since Sunday night," Voit said. "I was extremely happy [to sign my contract], but I also understood it’s time to work."

Voit, 20, signed a reported $1.75 million deal with the Mets and detailed the next steps for himself... or as much information as he knows.

"I'm going to head down to Port St. Lucie and then take a deep dive into everything," Voit said. "I don’t necessarily know the next steps heading forward. I know, get down to Port St. Lucie, go through this player development plan we have in place. From then on, I guess we’ll find out."

Voit was asked if he'll play for one of the Mets' affiliates this summer and the second baseman said he wasn't sure, but he'll learn what the organization has planned for him soon enough.

During his Citi Field visit, Voit was introduced to a number of players but one in particular stood out to him. Juan Soto.

"I got to see the beginning of Soto’s routine. It’s very surgical, you would say," Voit described. "Great guy, really friendly to me. Everyone’s been great to me."

Voit played 56 games for the Wolverines this season after undergoing internal brace surgery on his throwing arm last summer. In that time, Voit hit 17 doubles, four triples, 14 home runs, and 60 RBI with a .346/.471/.668 slash line for a 1.140 OPS while walking 40 times to 34 strikeouts.

The Wisconsin native said his attitude at the plate is to get the barrel to the ball and the Mets hope he can develop into a major league hitter. In fact, they see potential in Voit as just a position player. Voit was a two-way player at Michigan, amassing a 9-4 record with a 4.67 ERA across 29 games (11 starts) in two collegiate seasons -- he did not pitch in his final year with Michigan.

Despite that, the Mets and Voit agreed that they will develop him as a position player but the right-hander doesn't rule out the possibility of him climbing the mound in the future.

"Our plan will be to develop me as a position player," Voit said. "I’ve said this before. If it comes down to it, and the only opportunity is to be a big league pitcher for the New York Mets, then yeah. But our plan moving forward would be as a position player... All your experience as a pitcher doesn’t go away. It’ll always be there in my back pocket."

Phillies fail to capitalize on Harper's big night in series-opening loss to Angels originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Before Friday’s game Trea Turner said there was ‘a lot of good and a lot of bad’ from the first half of the Phillies season prior to the All-Star break.

The same can be said of their first game after the break.

The Phillies squandered a 4-1 lead and lost 6-5 to the Angels. Their record dropped to 55-42 and they’ve now lost five of their last seven games.

Friday’s loss represented a squandered opportunity, an uneven performance by the home team on a beautiful night for baseball in South Philadelphia.

First, the bad.

Tanner Banks surrendered a two-run home run by Taylor Ward in the seventh inning that broke a 4-4 tie and put the Angels ahead to stay. It was Ward’s 22nd home run of the season, a towering shot to left center field.  

The bullpen was pressed into action early after Jesus Luzardo failed to make it out of the fifth inning. Luzardo allowed seven hits and four earned runs on 95 pitches. He served up a solo home run to Jorge Soler and a two-run homer to Jo Adell. Luzardo’s season ERA climbed to 4.29.

Luzardo’s June and July have been a struggle following a scorching first two months of the season during which he posted a 2.15 ERA in his first 11 starts.

Mike Trout, who entered Friday’s game with two hits in 20 career at-bats at Citizens Bank Park, got the best of Luzardo. Trout doubled and scored a run in the fourth inning before delivering a game-tying RBI single in the fifth.

Despite the result, this series opener against the Angels came with its share of bright spots.

Namely, Bryce Harper has officially heated up. Harper hit a three-run home run in the third inning and a solo shot in the eighth, accounting for his first multi-home run game of the season. Harper added a double in the fifth inning and has nine extra-base hits in his last five games. He’s hitting .500 during that span (10 hits in 20 at-bats).

Kyle Schwarber picked up where he left off at the All-Star game, belting a solo home run on his first swing of the game. Schwarber’s line drive into the right field seats in the first inning increased his season total to 31, tied for the fourth most in baseball.

J.T. Realmuto stayed hot at the plate as well, going 2-for-4 with a double. Realmuto has multiple hits in seven of his last 11 games.

But the contributions from some key bats weren’t enough. The Phillies now turn to Taijuan Walker on Saturday night in hopes of evening this three-game series.

When the Yankees announced their probables for their weekend series against the Braves in Atlanta, Max Fried was noticeably absent.

Fried last pitched on July 12 against the Cubs, where he allowed three earned runs in three innings but was removed due to a blister on the index finger of his throwing hand. The Yankees' southpaw had already pulled out of the All-Star Game to prepare himself for the second half of the season, so New York is skipping his spot in the rotation.

Speaking with the media before Friday's series opener in Atlanta, Fried said he's "hopeful" to pitch in the crucial series with the Blue Jays in Toronto starting Monday. Fried said that he and the Yankees wanted to give their ace more time to heal from the blister and that it is improving. He's been playing catch with no issue and the next step is to throw a bullpen, which he has yet to do.

It makes sense for the Yankees to skip Fried in the rotation for two reasons. The first, as previously mentioned, is to give Fried's finger time to heal. Fried has spent time on the IL four times in his career due to blisters, most recently in September 2023.

The second is that it lines up the Yankees' best starters for Toronto. If Fried is good to go, he, along with Carlos Rodon, will start two of the three games against the Blue Jays.

New York enters the weekend series 2.0 games behind the Blue Jays for first place in the AL East.

Justin Verlander's lack of ‘putaway' pitch dooms Giants in loss to Blue Jays originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

For the twelfth time in sixteen games during the 2025 MLB season, the Giants lost a Justin Verlander start.

In what has become an unfortunately common occurence for the Giants this season, a familiar scene unfolded early in San Francisco’s 4-0 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday night at Rogers Centre.

Verlander, the three-time Cy Young Award winner who has a spot in Cooperstown reserved for him, once again got rocked early.

Verlander escaped first-inning trouble after the Blue Jays had runners on first and second with one out, coaxing a double-play ball that allowed the Giants to return to the visiting dugout unscathed. The former MLB MVP wouldn’t be so fortunate in the second inning.

Six of the first seven batters Verlander faced in the second inning reached base, allowing Toronto to jump out to a 4-0 lead which would be more than enough with San Francisco’s anemic offense crumbling in every clutch situation they faced in Friday’s loss.

Coming off a few days to reset during the MLB All-Star break, Verlander took the mound with a chance to put a rough first half behind him and send a strong message that even at 42, he still has what it takes to dominate opposing hitters. Instead, it was much of the same in what has been an outlier season for a pitcher that will go down as one of the game’s greats when all is said and done.

Verlander didn’t record a single strikeout against the Blue Jays, the first time this season the nine-time All-Star failed to log at least one punch out during the 2025 season.

“Typically he has got something to get a swing-and-a-miss, didn’t get any strikeouts,” Giants manager Bob Melvin told reporters after Friday’s loss. “Actually, he limited the damage for the amount of base runners he had in less than three innings, but a couple key hits off him and just really didn’t have a putaway pitch today.”

Verlander’s name is one that long has been synonmous with “putaway pitch,” ranking No.10 on MLB’s all-time strikeout leader list with an eye-popping 3,483 punchouts during his decorated career.

While the lack of a putaway pitch allowed the Blue Jays to string together the game’s decisive inning, Melvin noted that the Giants’ offense hasn’t done Verlander any favors with run support this season.

“The fact we haven’t given him much run support,” Melvin said when asked why he believes Verlander can turn things around. “I mean there have been some games where we’ve been behind early on, but it would be nice to give him a nice lead and let him do his thing. The overall numbers aren’t horrible at this point, it’s just we don’t give him much run support and it seems like there are a few games like tonight where we’ve gotten behind early.”

Verlander was blunt while assessing his own performance today, but remained optimistic the mechanical adjustments he has made recently are showing tangible results that should lead to positive regression back toward the player baseball fans have grown accustomed to seeing during his 20-year MLB career.

“Stuff-wise, still fairly optimistic, but had a tough one today, obviously,” Verlander told reporters after Friday’s loss. “They found a way to put a lot of balls in play. Found a lot of holes and the ones they did hit hard found corners, it’s a tough one. But still optimistic thinking about how the mechanical adjustments have helped my stuff. The velocity is better, I think the breaking balls are sharper, all in all.”

Friday’s loss was the 10th time this season the Giants have been shutout, reflecting a season-long trend of San Francisco’s offense failing to give its robust pitching staff the support it so desperately needs in games like these.

Even with Verlander’s struggles, the Giants still boast arguably the league’s best pitching staff across the board. If San Francisco sneaks into the MLB playoffs, they have the kind of arms in their arsenal that have a long-standing track record of being the key recipe to making deep postseason runs.

The unfortunate reality? None of those hypotheticals will matter if Verlander and San Francisco’s offense can’t get on the same page down the stretch run over the next couple of months.

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