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Ryan Jeffers has been phenomenal to start the season, emerging as one of the best all-around catchers in baseball. Right now, he looks every bit like a truly elite backstop. View the full article

Earlier this week, Jays Centre's Owen Hill wrote about the Blue Jays' defense. He pointed out that the Jays are one of the best teams in the league according to Baseball Savant's Fielding Run Value (FRV), despite ranking as one of the worst in errors and fielding percentage. After reading Owen's article, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I was watching clips of all the errors the Blue Jays have made this season when it occurred to me how many of them were on the pitchers. Toronto has made 27 errors in 2026, the fifth-most in MLB. Of those 27 errors, nine belong to the arms. My gut reaction? That's a lot of pitcher errors. My gut was right. Pitchers aren't usually the best fielders. That's not a dig. They just have other priorities. What's more, by nature of where they stand on the field, the batted balls they have to work with are often moving very slowly or very fast. In either case, those can be tough to deal with. However, pitchers are limited in the number of errors they can make because they don't handle the ball all that much. They make errors at a higher rate than players at any other position, but even so, they're typically only responsible for 12-13% of errors league-wide. That's why I was surprised that pitchers have made one-third of the Blue Jays' errors in 2026. This year's pitching staff has already compiled more errors than the team's pitchers have in 13 separate seasons of Blue Jays history. Three of those were shortened seasons (1981, 1994, and 2020), but the other 10 were full 162-game (or even 163-game) campaigns. In 1988 and again in '92, Toronto's pitchers made a full-season franchise-record-low five errors; this year, they passed that total 11 games into the schedule. As a more recent comparison, the 2022 and '23 staffs only made six errors each year. That's an average of one per month. This year's pitchers already had eight errors by the end of April. Looking around the league, there are almost always a handful of pitching staffs that don't top nine errors all year. The last time that every single team's pitchers made more than nine errors was in 1974, before the Blue Jays even existed. Let that sink in. It's not unusual for a team's pitchers to make nine or fewer errors all season. The Jays' arms have already hit that mark by mid-May. For more historical context, the Blue Jays' pitchers are on pace for 34 errors this season. That would surpass the franchise record, held by the inaugural 1977 team; their pitchers made 30 errors. In fact, it would be the highest number of errors by any pitching staff in the live ball era; the record (33) currently belongs to the pitchers of the 1976 San Francisco Giants. So, at the rate they're mishandling the ball, Toronto's pitchers have a chance to break records that have stood for 50 years. But that might be underselling it. You see, errors are less frequent than they used to be. As Owen mentioned in his piece, MLB's official scorers have been getting more lenient in recent years, classifying fewer and fewer plays as errors. The league's .986 fielding percentage in 2026 is the highest it's been at any point in major league history. We're on pace to see 2,370 errors by the end of this season. In contrast, MLB fielders made 3,458 errors in 1976 – when there were only 24 teams. Fifty years ago, teams averaged almost an error per game. In 2026, it's more like one every other game. The rate has nearly been cut in half. Here's another way to think about it. The Blue Jays' pitchers are on pace to make 34 errors this year, and their nine errors account for just under 1.5% of all errors in MLB. However, if they were making errors at the same rate compared to league average in 1976, they would be on pace for 50. Fifty! If their current pace holds – which, to be clear, is unlikely, but we're having fun here – the Blue Jays would also set a record for the highest "pitcher error-to-position player error ratio" in major league history. One in three of Toronto's errors this year was committed by a pitcher. Right now, the full-season record belongs to the 2024 New York Mets, whose pitchers were responsible for about one in four of the team's errors (23 out of 94). And in case you're interested, the record in the opposite direction belongs to the 2021 Washington Nationals. The team made 96 errors that year (third-most in the NL), but only one of those errors was by a pitcher. It bears repeating that I don't actually expect the Blue Jays' pitchers – or the rest of their fielders – to maintain their current error pace. Errors are always unpredictable, and a quarter of a season is a tiny sample. I'm only bringing up full-season paces and historical records to contextualize how unusual it is that we've already seen so many pitcher errors at this early point in the year. Indeed, the real story here is the high number of errors the Blue Jays' pitchers have made to this point in the year. So, please check back tomorrow morning, because I'm putting together a piece where you can watch all of those misplays in all of their glory. View the full article

The Binghamton Rumble Ponies were the lone Mets affiliate to win, edging Somerset 5-4 behind home runs from Jose Ramos and Nick Lorusso, while Bryce Conley earned the win across five innings. Syracuse was shut out 7-0 by Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, with Dylan Ross and Ryan Lambert contributing scoreless relief. Brooklyn dropped a 4-3 decision at Rome despite Mitch Voit's solo homer and Jonathan Jimenez's five scoreless. St. Lucie was swept by Jupiter. Mets Transactions New York Mets placed C Francisco Alvarez on the 10-day injured list. Right meniscus tear. New York Mets recalled C Hayden Senger from Syracuse Mets. Mets Bats Held To Two Hits In Scranton Shutout The Syracuse Mets managed just two hits and struck out 15 times in a 7-0 loss to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. Jihwan Bae singled and walked, and cleanup hitter Christian Arroyo added the team's other hit. Ryan Clifford and Cristian Pache each struck out three times. Starter Jack Weisenburger took the loss, going 3 2/3 innings while allowing eight hits and seven runs, six earned, with two strikeouts and no walks. He surrendered one home run. The damage came in the bottom of the fourth. The RailRiders opened the inning with three straight singles to load the bases. A two-run single to center pushed the score to 3-0, and after a fielder's choice that included a Weisenburger throwing error reloaded the bases, a grand slam to left center capped the six-run rally at 7-0. The RailRiders had opened the scoring in the first when a runner doubled, advanced no further on a flyout, and came home on an RBI single. The Syracuse bullpen kept the game from getting further out of hand. Jonathan Pintaro, Joey Gerber, Dylan Ross, and Ryan Lambert combined for 4 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing two hits and two walks while striking out three. Syracuse left three runners on base and committed two errors. Player AB R H RBI BB K Nick Morabito (CF) 4 0 0 0 0 2 Ji Hwan Bae (DH) 3 0 1 0 1 1 Ryan Clifford (LF) 4 0 0 0 0 3 Christian Arroyo (3B) 3 0 1 0 0 1 Eric Wagaman (1B) 3 0 0 0 0 2 Yonny Hernandez (2B) 3 0 0 0 0 0 Cristian Pache (RF) 3 0 0 0 0 3 Ben Rortvedt (C) 3 0 0 0 0 2 Jackson Cluff (SS) 3 0 0 0 0 1 Player IP H R ER BB K HR Jack Weisenburger 3 2/3 8 7 6 0 2 1 Jonathan Pintaro 1 1/3 1 0 0 0 1 0 Joey Gerber 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 Dylan Ross 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 Ryan Lambert 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 Ramos And Lorusso Power Binghamton Past Somerset The Binghamton Rumble Ponies edged the Somerset Patriots 5-4 on the strength of two long balls. Jose Ramos hit a three-run homer in the third, his fifth of the year, and Nick Lorusso added a go-ahead solo shot in the sixth, his third. Leadoff hitter Eli Serrano III went 2-for-4 with a walk and two stolen bases. Jacob Reimer added two hits, a walk, a stolen base, and two runs scored. Cleanup hitter Kevin Parada doubled in a first-inning run, and JT Schwartz added a double of his own. Starter Bryce Conley earned the win, going five innings while allowing five hits, four runs, four earned, with four strikeouts, two walks, and one home run allowed. Binghamton struck first in the top of the first. Reimer walked, stole second, and scored on Parada's double to right. The Rumble Ponies pulled away in the third when Serrano walked, Reimer singled, and Ramos followed with his three-run homer to center, pushing the lead to 4-1. After Somerset rallied for three runs in the fifth to tie it at 4-4, Lorusso led off the sixth with his solo homer to left center to take the lead back. From there, Ben Simon worked two scoreless frames, Matt Turner struck out the side in the eighth, and Brian Metoyer recorded the save with one inning of work in the ninth. Binghamton left six runners on base. Player AB R H RBI BB K Eli Serrano III (DH) 4 1 2 0 1 0 Jacob Reimer (3B) 4 2 2 0 1 1 Jose Ramos (CF) 4 1 1 3 0 2 Kevin Parada (C) 4 0 1 1 0 2 Nick Lorusso (1B) 4 1 1 1 0 1 TT Bowens (RF) 4 0 0 0 0 3 JT Schwartz (LF) 4 0 1 0 0 2 Wyatt Young (SS) 4 0 0 0 0 0 Diego Mosquera (2B) 4 0 1 0 0 2 Player IP H R ER BB K HR Bryce Conley 5 5 4 4 2 4 1 Ben Simon 2 1 0 0 1 1 0 Matt Turner 1 0 0 0 0 3 0 Brian Metoyer 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 Voit Homer Not Enough As Brooklyn Falls In Rome The Brooklyn Cyclones fell 4-3 to the Rome Emperors, dropping a game in which their starter could not escape the first inning. Leadoff hitter Mitch Voit went 1-for-3 with a solo home run, a sacrifice fly, and two runs batted in. Sam Biller had a run-scoring single, and Trace Willhoite singled and scored. Brooklyn struck out 16 times as a team, including four times by John Bay and three by Colin Houck. Starter Cristofer Gomez took the loss, lasting just two-thirds of an inning while allowing three hits, four runs, four earned, with one walk and no strikeouts. Jonathan Jimenez followed with five scoreless innings of relief, scattering five hits and four walks while striking out two. The bottom of the first ended the game before it really began. Rome strung together a leadoff single, a run-scoring double, a sacrifice fly, and another double for three runs against Gomez. Jimenez took over with two outs and a runner on, then issued a walk and surrendered a run-scoring single that pushed the score to 4-0. Brooklyn answered with two in the third on Biller's RBI single and Voit's sacrifice fly to left, then trimmed it to one in the fifth when Voit homered to left, but the Cyclones could get no closer. Dakota Hawkins, Parker Carlson, and Garrett Stratton each tossed scoreless relief innings to keep it within reach. Brooklyn left three runners on base. Player AB R H RBI BB K Mitch Voit (SS) 3 1 1 2 0 1 John Bay (CF) 4 0 0 0 0 4 Ronald Hernandez (C) 3 0 0 0 1 1 Corey Collins (LF) 3 0 0 0 1 2 Daiverson Gutierrez (DH) 4 0 0 0 0 1 Colin Houck (2B) 4 0 0 0 0 3 Trace Willhoite (1B) 3 1 1 0 0 2 Nick Roselli (3B) 2 1 0 0 1 1 Sam Biller (RF) 3 0 1 1 0 1 Player IP H R ER BB K HR Cristofer Gomez 2/3 3 4 4 1 0 0 Jonathan Jimenez 5 5 0 0 4 2 0 Dakota Hawkins 1/3 0 0 0 0 0 0 Parker Carlson 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 Garrett Stratton 1 0 0 0 1 2 0 Zayas Homer Cannot Lift St. Lucie In Game One Loss The St. Lucie Mets dropped the opener of a doubleheader to the Jupiter Hammerheads 5-2. Leadoff hitter Elian Pena went 1-for-3 with a walk, a run-scoring single, and two stolen bases. Julio Zayas tied the game with a solo home run in the fourth, his first of the year. Randy Guzman, AJ Salgado, Chase Meggers, and Sam Robertson each added one hit. JT Benson walked and stole a base. Starter Conner Ware lasted four innings, allowing five hits and two runs, both earned, with five strikeouts, two walks, and two home runs surrendered. Adbert Alzolay took the loss in one inning of work, giving up three hits and two runs, both earned, with a strikeout and a home run allowed. Christian Rodriguez followed with two innings, two hits, one earned run, and two strikeouts. The Mets tied the game at 2-2 across the third and fourth. Kevin Villavicencio reached on an error, advanced, and scored on Pena's single to right. An inning later, Zayas drove a ball to left center for his solo homer. The Hammerheads regained control in the fifth, when a two-run homer off Alzolay made it 4-2, and Jupiter tacked on a fifth run in the sixth on a bases-loaded walk off Rodriguez. Player AB R H RBI BB K Elian Pena (SS) 3 0 1 1 1 1 JT Benson (LF) 2 0 0 0 1 0 Randy Guzman (RF) 3 0 1 0 0 1 AJ Salgado (1B) 3 0 1 0 0 1 Julio Zayas (DH) 3 1 1 1 0 0 Chase Meggers (C) 3 0 1 0 0 0 Sam Robertson (2B) 3 0 1 0 0 1 Simon Juan (CF) 3 0 0 0 0 1 Kevin Villavicencio (3B) 3 1 0 0 0 0 Player IP H R ER BB K HR Conner Ware 4 5 2 2 2 5 2 Adbert Alzolay 1 3 2 2 0 1 1 Christian Rodriguez 2 2 1 1 1 2 0 St. Lucie Bullpen Falters In Late Game Two Loss The St. Lucie Mets fell 5-4 to the Jupiter Hammerheads in the second game of the doubleheader, surrendering three runs in the seventh after taking a one-run lead the inning before. Julio Zayas went 2-for-3 with his second home run of the day. Branny De Oleo added two hits, JT Benson tripled in a run, Sam Robertson doubled, walked, and scored, and Jamari Baylor had a hit and a walk. Leadoff hitter Elian Pena went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts but drove in a run on a groundout in the seventh. Starter Joel Lara went four innings, allowing three hits and one run, with four strikeouts and one walk. St. Lucie pulled ahead 3-2 in the bottom of the sixth. Robertson led off with a double, JT Benson followed with an RBI triple to right, and Guzman lifted a sacrifice fly to center to bring Benson home. The lead did not hold. In the top of the seventh, Ernesto Mercedes entered, hit a batter, walked another, and gave up a bunt single to load the bases. A run-scoring single tied it at 3-3. A wild pitch then scored a run during a strikeout to push the lead to 4-3, and after an intentional walk, Miguel Mejias relieved Mercedes and walked in another run to make it 5-3. St. Lucie answered with one in the bottom half. De Oleo and Baylor opened with consecutive singles, and Pena drove in De Oleo on a groundout, but Robertson flied out to end the game. St. Lucie left four runners on base. Player AB R H RBI BB K Elian Pena (DH) 4 0 0 1 0 2 Sam Robertson (CF) 3 1 1 0 1 1 JT Benson (RF) 3 1 1 1 0 2 Randy Guzman (1B) 2 0 0 1 0 1 Julio Zayas (1B) 3 1 2 1 0 0 Simon Juan (LF) 0 0 0 0 0 0 Kevin Villavicencio (3B) 3 0 0 0 0 1 Francisco Toledo (C) 3 0 0 0 0 2 Branny De Oleo (SS) 3 1 2 0 0 1 Jamari Baylor (2B) 2 0 1 0 1 0 Player IP H R ER BB K HR Joel Lara 4 3 1 1 1 4 0 Ryan Dollar 2 1 1 0 1 2 0 Ernesto Mercedes 1/3 2 3 3 2 1 0 Miguel Mejias 2/3 0 0 0 1 1 0 Top-20 Prospect Performance Nolan McLean: DNP Carson Benge: DNP A.J. Ewing: DNP Jonah Tong: DNP Ryan Clifford: 0-for-4, 3 K Jacob Reimer: 2-for-4, BB, K, SB, 2 R Jack Wenninger: DNP Elian Pena: Game 1: 1-for-3, BB, K, RBI, 2 SB; Game 2: 0-for-4, 2 K, RBI Mitch Voit: 1-for-3, HR, K, 2 RBI Nick Morabito: 0-for-4, 2 K Jonathan Santucci: DNP Chris Suero: DNP Zach Thornton: DNP Wandy Asigen: DNP Will Watson: DNP Eli Serrano III: 2-for-4, BB, 2 SB, R Ryan Lambert: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, BB, K Dylan Ross: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, BB, K Antonio Jimenez: DNP R.J. Gordon: DNP View the full article

The Twins will option struggling outfielder Matt Wallner to Triple-A St. Paul on Thursday, two sources with knowledge of the team's plans told Twins Daily, Taking Wallner's place on the roster will be utilityman Ryan Kreidler, who made his Twins debut during Royce Lewis's stint on the injured list earlier this season. Kreidler is expected to serve in the same roving backup role he filled in Lewis's absence, as the team gives Austin Martin a fuller opportunity as a regular corner outfielder. By now, there should be little suspense or surprise around that move. Wallner's demotion is overdue. The massive Forest Lake native is batting .167/.259/.292 on the year. His last two starts came Wednesday night against the Marlins and Saturday in Cleveland, and in each, he went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts. He's been slowly phased out of the team's plans over the last four weeks, with Martin gaining an ever greater share of the playing time in the outfield and Trevor Larnach becoming the left-handed batter manager Derek Shelton kept in the lineup even against left-handed opposing starters. Compounding the negative value of his bat, Wallner has been the worst defensive outfielder in baseball this season. He's lost speed; takes bad routes on fly balls; is too slow to field balls that fall in and to get off throws back to the infield; and doesn't communicate well with the infielders or with Byron Buxton on balls hit between defenders. He has no business playing in the major leagues right now; the team will hope that a hard reset in the minors can fix that. Right-hander Zebby Matthews is also coming over from St. Paul Thursday, and that promotion has portent, too. All the team is saying so far is that Matthews is making a spot start to facilitate the team bumping back Connor Prielipp's next one by a day, as they monitor and mete out the latter's workload for the year. However, Matthews looks likely to stick around and take over the starting rotation spot occupied (until now) by Simeon Woods Richardson, who was knocked out early again Wednesday and has an untenable 7.71 ERA for the year. Wednesday night's game was also the latest indication of a more gradual change. Tristan Gray made his fourth start at third base in the last 10 games. Two of those starts came one week ago, when Shelton gave Royce Lewis back-to-back days off as a reset. So far, however, Lewis has shown little to give the team renewed hope since then, and he's only batting .167/.269/.300 for the year. His two-day benching came one week after Wallner's, and now, Wallner is heading for the other end of the Green Line. The clock is ticking on Lewis, too, with Gray threatening to take his job even before the prospects about whom he's so worried are ready to come to the big leagues. The 2025 trade deadline amounted to a reckoning for the previous year's worth of failures—for the collapse that led the 2024 Twins to miss the playoffs and for an offseason in which they were hamstrung by the Pohlads' attempts to sell the team, preventing them from sufficiently addressing the causes of that collapse. As roster overhauls go, though, it was actually relatively small, and when a Derek Falvey-led front office once again plodded most of the way through the winter without proactively moving on from any of the players who'd dragged them down over the previous year-plus, they began this season in something eerily similar to the same place they were in before that so-called fire sale. Falvey's conservative approach and belief in the core he'd assembled led the team to hold onto Wallner, Lewis, Larnach and Woods Richardson over the winter, when there were strong arguments for moving on from any or all four of them. In fact, those arguments were also there last July, and even the previous offseason. The team went 1-for-4 in its long-running series of gambles on those young players. Larnach might not be a long-term piece for the club, but if nothing else, he's boosted his trade value substantially this spring. The other three are now being proactively replaced by a front office that still bears Falvey's fingerprints but has departed from his plans in some key aspects, and at the behest of a manager who isn't inclined to be especially patient with players at this phase of their careers. Shelton lost half a decade of his life in Pittsburgh, making no progress toward winning because he was handed a parade of players on whom the organization was placing doomed bets a year after they should have stopped. He's been quick to try new things and shake up the way he deploys his roster, and slow to trust anyone. He and Jeremy Zoll are reshaping the big-league roster relatively early in the season, both because the utter ineptitude of the AL Central has allowed them to hold onto a dream of competing this year and because they agree that it's no longer reasonable to keep expecting Lewis, Wallner and Woods Richardson to turn things around. Thursday marks the dawn of an interesting interstitial period. Martin, 27, will continue to get regular playing time, something he just achieved for the first time after last year's deadline. He's batting an extraordinary .327/.448/.416 in 125 plate appearances so far, though that's still distorted by platoon effects. Martin has faced left-handed pitchers in 49% of his plate appearances, almost twice as much as a full-time right-handed batter can expect to see them over a full season. As his role expands, he'll be tested, and could be exposed. Gray has been less impressive at the plate since his hot start, and looks like an inconsistent, Kody Clemens-style offensive contributor. However, he plays plus defense at third base, separating him from Lewis. Both players will get a real chance to earn an even longer look, but each is also holding down a spot that could soon pass into the hands of one of the team's top prospects. Kaelen Culpepper needs a bit more time at St. Paul, but were Emmanuel Rodríguez healthy, he would already be in the majors, according to one team source. Culpepper's arrival could move Brooks Lee off shortstop and over to the hot corner. This shakeup could also result in Lee moving to second, if Gray shows enough to merit sustained playing time, with Luke Keaschall sliding to the outfield to soak up some of the playing time vacated by Wallner's demotion. For now, Lewis remains on the big-league roster, so he'll play third base at least as often as Gray. The timeline of the Wallner phaseout is a reminder, though, that time is short. The Twins' new chairman, Tom Pohlad, expects the team to win and is evaluating the front office and manager on that criterion. Neither Zoll nor Shelton is as invested in Wallner, Lewis, Woods Richardson or several other players on this roster as Falvey was, even if Zoll has been around for several years and was part of bringing in and developing much of the team. Change is afoot, and while the only unequivocal handoff of playing time marked by Thursday's moves is from Wallner to Martin, the writing is on the wall for several pieces of a core that was once the team's future—but is now being tossed onto the junkheap of the past. View the full article

For much of the past four years, Yasser Mercedes has been one of those names that scouts and development staff could not quite let go of. The tools were always impressive. The results were not. Signed by the Minnesota Twins in January 2022 for $1.7 million, Mercedes arrived as a highly-regarded international outfielder with impact potential. He ranked among the top 20 international prospects in his class. The expectation was not immediate production, but rather gradual growth built on loud raw tools. However, that growth has taken longer than expected. In his pro debut in the Dominican Summer League, Mercedes showed flashes of offensive ability that validated the investment. But when he reached the Florida Complex League in 2023, the transition exposed the gaps in his game. Pitch recognition wavered, timing slipped, and the strikeout totals climbed. Even so, the organization stayed patient. A return to the Complex League in the following season brought improvement—enough to earn a brief look at full-season ball in Fort Myers. That stint, however, was too small to draw firm conclusions, and the results were uneven at best. The underlying traits have never been in question. When Mercedes is right at the plate, he looks like a completely different hitter. The bat speed is well above average, and the raw power shows up in every part of the strike zone. When his approach is disciplined, he is capable of controlling at-bats, working deep counts, and drawing walks at a strong clip. At his best in the Dominican Summer League and again in stretches in the Complex League, he showed an ability to shrink the zone and force pitchers into uncomfortable spots. The challenge has always been sustaining that version of himself. Injuries have played a major role in the stalled development. A hamstring issue, a quad strain, and a shoulder problem all interrupted his progression across 2023 and into 2024. Those setbacks did not just limit playing time. They also disrupted rhythm, which is critical for a hitter still learning to translate raw ability into consistent performance. Defensively, Mercedes has split time in center field while also profiling as a potential right fielder long term, thanks to a strong throwing arm. The defensive versatility has helped keep him on the field, but the organization’s priority has remained clear. He needs uninterrupted at-bats. That opportunity finally came in 2025 at Fort Myers, but the results were difficult. Across 94 games, Mercedes slashed .186/.296/.307 (.603) and produced 10 home runs and 13 doubles, but the strikeout rate climbed to 25.1% while the game power came in streaks rather than sustained stretches. Even a winter ball assignment in Puerto Rico did not provide a reset, as strikeouts again outweighed contact. That is what makes the start of 2026 so notable. Returning once more to the Florida State League, Mercedes has finally looked like a hitter who is putting the entire skill set together. Through 21 games, he has produced a .321/.439/.642. The power has been real with six home runs, two triples, and four doubles. He has also added value on the bases, converting 11 steals in 13 attempts. Perhaps most encouraging is not the stat line itself, but how it is being built. The strikeout rate has dropped by more than three percentage points, while the walk rate has climbed above 17%. That combination suggests a more controlled approach rather than a simple hot streak. The Twins have been searching for more impact talent developed through the international market in recent years. While Emmanuel Rodriguez remains one of the organization’s premier success stories from that pipeline, the overall list of high-end international contributors beyond him is thin. That reality has placed added importance on players like Mercedes finding their footing. In response, the Minnesota Twins have restructured parts of their international scouting and development operation over the past several seasons. Those changes are still too recent to evaluate in full, but players already in the system are often the first indicators of whether adjustments are working. Mercedes is one of those early test cases, even if his signing predates the overhaul. Now assigned to Cedar Rapids, where Mercedes is over a year younger than the average age of the Midwest League competition, he is stepping into a new challenge at an accelerated pace. The question is no longer whether the tools are real. That has never been in doubt. The question is whether the adjustments he is showing in Fort Myers can hold against better pitching and over a longer sample. For the first time in a while, the answer feels at least somewhat open. The development path has been uneven, interrupted, and at times discouraging. But players with this kind of bat speed and raw power do not disappear quietly from prospect lists. They either adjust or they stall. Early signs in 2026 suggest Mercedes may finally be moving toward the former. The next test is consistency over a full season against real competition. If that arrives, the Twins may finally be seeing the version of Yasser Mercedes they envisioned when they made the investment four years ago. What stands out about Mercedes in 2026? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View the full article

Ben Brown will start for the Cubs Thursday evening at one of the more successful attractions on The Battery, a suburban entertainment district in the northwest suburbs of Atlanta. It's his second turn in the starting rotation since the team lost left-hander Matthew Boyd to a torn meniscus in his knee, and Brown will be hoping to play stopper, opposite future Hall of Famer Chris Sale. The Cubs are in danger of losing five games in a row; their last win came in Brown's last start. In that outing, Brown managed four scoreless, hitless innings against the Texas Rangers, though he did issue one walk. Working on three days' rest after spending most of the season in the bullpen, he threw 46 pitches. Presumably, this time around, he will have a longer leash, and he might need to pace himself more. Normally, that would spell trouble for Brown. His fastball has sat comfortably around 96.5 miles per hour this season, which is where he's always needed it to be in order to find success. The shape of his heater has always been pretty much what a hitter would expect, based on his high three-quarter arm slot, so the only ways for him to avoid getting hurt on the pitch were to locate well and to throw very hard. For almost no pitcher is there a bigger difference between throwing 95 and throwing 98 than for Brown, as we've known him dating back to 2024. There's also his limited arsenal to consider. For most of his career, Brown has functionally been a two-pitch pitcher. He's tinkered with a cutter, a slider and multiple flavors of changeup, but he's only ever been able to rely on his four-seamer and a sharp (though short) knuckle-curve. Starting has tended to strain his capacity for fooling hitters with only two options at his disposal. Everything is different, now. That doesn't mean the results will follow, or that Brown is now set up to enjoy a long run of success as a starter, but to the hard questions posed by those past problems, Brown now has pretty robust answers. First, let's tackle that dead-zone fastball problem. The solution there (if, indeed, it turns out to be one): lower the arm angle, and change the profile. Arm Angle Pitch Type 2025 Apr. 2026 May 2026 Four-Seamer 44.1 42.6 39 Curveball 46.5 45.1 42.8 Kick-Change 42.7 41.5 37.3 Sinker - 41.7 40.7 From last year to this year, Brown made one slight downward move in his arm angle. Since the season began, he's made another. You can see the progression, below, in the way his arm works at release. A lower slot has meant a bit less carry on his four-seamer, but it's also given his curveball a bit more depth. The kick-change he's developed has more depth on it than it would from the higher slot, too. His sinker can run to the arm side more. The change takes his fastball slightly out of the dead zone, but more importantly, it frees up his arm to work more naturally. His other pitches have improved because of the tweak. That, of course, also answers the other problem. Brown's sinker is exclusively a weapon against righties, giving him two different heaters to work two different lanes horizontally and three different levels of vertical movement to force the hitter to cover a bigger zone. The kick-change is used exclusively against lefties, and it, too, rounds out his arsenal just enough. The fleshing-out of each as part of his attack has been made possible by the change in his arm angle. Brown's command and variety of shapes still aren't good enough for him to succeed as a starter without throwing hard, but the mechanical changes he's made appear to have helped him maintain his velocity better. The Cubs need to stop suffering losses to their rotation, but for the moment, there's reason to hope that they've found another good solution at the back end of it. Brown has shown more adaptability over the last several months, as he's discovered the limits of the simple, unrefined approach he used in the past, and he's been healthy enough to implement some new things. They're working. View the full article

Ben Brown's 2026 numbers are night and day from what we saw last season. He has gone from being one of the hardest hit hurlers in baseball to sporting a sub-2 ERA and keeping hitters off balance. What's his key to newfound productivity this season? We dive into it all in this video. View the full article

Very few players excel at everything. Sure, there are the Shohei Ohtanis and Bobby Witt Jr.s of the world who seemingly do it all, but the key to success for most players is that they do one thing extremely well and tread water everywhere else. Ramon Laureano was one of those players, and he still kind of is, except he is doing it in the complete opposite way as before. After parts of nine seasons in the bigs and at 31 years old, there isn’t a ton of mystery as to what makes Laureano tick. He plays solid outfield defense, holds his own against right-handed pitching, and crushes lefties. Just about every team would sign up for his career wRC+ of 108 against right-handed pitching and 123 wRC+ against lefties from a guy who can fake it in center for a game or two. It’s why the San Diego Padres traded for him last year, and he more than lived up to the billing in 2025, posting a wRC+ of 139 against left-handed pitching and a career-best 137 against right-handers. Heading into 2026, the expectation was that Laureano would cool off a tad against right-handers but would continue to mash lefties. And while he has cooled off a tad against same-handed pitching, he has cratered when he has the platoon advantage, just like no one expected. It’s still early, but heading into a mid-May clash with the Milwaukee Brewers, Laureano has a wRC+ of 113 against right-handed pitching and a wRC+ of 45 against lefties. While Laureano has had extended stretches where he has hit right-handed pitching well, the last time he finished a season with a wRC+ below 100 against left-handed pitching was the truncated 2020 season. If you exclude 2020 for the obvious reason that it was 60 games long, the lowest full-season mark of his career against left-handers is 108. Simply put, a wRC+ of 45 is beyond uncharted territory. Ramon Laureano Career Platoon Splits *Stats as of May 12, 2026 Early in his career, Laureano did hit right-handed pitching better than left-handed pitching, but he was still wildly productive against lefties. However, starting in 2021, he began showing more conventional platoon splits, but the degree to which it has flipped this season is jarring. The easy answer to his struggles is that he is running a BABIP of .250 against lefties, against a career figure of .338, but there’s far more to it than just bad luck. Laureano is struggling against left-handed pitching because he hasn’t been able to turn on it. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Laureano’s offensive profile is driven by power. He doesn’t possess monster bat speed or exit velocities, but when he does make contact, it’s usually hard, in the air, and to the pull side. For his career, he has a pulled air rate of 19.4%, against the league average of 16.7%, and it was 21.8% in 2025. Unfortunately, in 2026, his pull air rate is down to a near career-low of 15.9%, and it has come largely against left-handed pitching. For his career, Laureano owns a fly ball rate of 37.1% and a pull rate of 43.6%. Against right-handed pitching, his career fly ball rate is 38.5% with a pull rate of 43.3%, and when facing left-handed pitching, his fly ball rate clocks in at 33.9% with a pull rate of 44.3%. In 2026, his fly-ball rate against left-handed pitching is up to 45%, but his pull rate is down to 30%. That's a lot of numbers to throw at you, but the point of the data is thus: Throughout his career, the more he has lifted the ball against left-handed pitching, the worse the results have been (-0.83 linear correlation to wRC+), but the more he has pulled the ball, the better they have been (0.836 linear correlation to wRC+). With that in mind, his 2026 spray map shows exactly why he has cratered. Most of his elevated contact has been to right field, while the vast majority of his pulled contact has been on the ground. This isn’t an unusual split, but the trade-off for pulled grounders needs to be elevated-and-celebrated pulled contact. To be a successful hitter with Laureano’s raw thump, you need to lift and pull, not lift or pull. It’s difficult to parse exactly why Laureano has struggled to turn on left-handed pitching, but I doubt that he has suddenly become Derek Zoolander. It’s very likely that this is a small sample quirk, which has been exacerbated by him facing better-than-average left-handed pitching. He has already faced Tarik Skubal, Framber Valdez, Ranger Suarez, Aroldis Chapman, and Gregory Soto, among others. Upon pulling the data, the average left-hander he had faced up to that point had a 3.17 ERA and 3.44 FIP, against league averages of 3.82 and 3.97. At the end of the day, Laureano’s struggles against left-handers have only come in 32 plate appearances. I trust his track record of pulling the ball with authority when he has the platoon advantage more than what he has done in the early going. Now, if this continues, it’ll be worth examining, but we’ll also have more information to really figure things out. And considering how well he has hit right-handers, there’s a good chance he goes from being a league-average bat (99 wRC+) to the middle of the order thumper he was last season (138 wRC+), which the Padres could desperately use. View the full article

The Milwaukee Brewers' 8th-ranked prospect, Andrew Fischer, is tearing the cover off the ball in 2026. His OPS lives above .900, he's among his respective league leaders in home runs, and the confidence is already there. What does he need to polish, and when will he break into the big leagues? We answer those questions in this breakdown video. View the full article

How much of a ripple effect can one person have on a struggling baseball team? Today, we are doing a deep dive into A.J. Ewing and how he can help a stumbling New York Mets squad. We break down everything from Ewing's advanced, contact-oriented approach to the 70-grade speed that jumps off the page among his fellow prospects. View the full article

Kevin Gausman just checked off the 2,000 career strikeouts milestone, and at the age of 36, he's still one of the most reliable arms in Major League Baseball. In this video, we dive into the varying factors that contribute to the right-handed veteran's long-term success. View the full article

Before the 2026 season began, Payton Tolle was considered a prime candidate for a contract extension. Since being called up in late April, Tolle has cemented himself in the Red Sox rotation. In this video, we revisit a possible Tolle extension, due to not only what he brings on the mound, but the clubhouse as well. View the full article

There are dominant pitching performances, and then there are outings that feel almost impossible in the modern game. Bailey Ober’s complete-game shutout against the Marlins somehow managed to be both. At a time when pitchers are judged by velocity, strikeout rates, and wipeout stuff, Ober carved through Miami with precision and efficiency instead. He needed only 89 pitches to complete nine scoreless innings. The performance also came at the perfect time with questions swirling about other parts of the Twins’ starting staff. Instead, he responded with one of the most memorable starts by a Twins pitcher in years. Here are the most amazing facts from Ober’s historic night. It was the first shutout of Ober’s career Ober had thrown complete games before, but Tuesday marked the first time he finished all nine innings without allowing a run. It instantly became the signature outing of his major league career. He threw the first Twins Maddux since 2017 Ober’s outing qualified as a Maddux, the baseball term for a complete game shutout thrown on fewer than 100 pitches. The Twins had not seen one since Ervin Santana shut out the Giants on June 9, 2017. The term is named after Hall of Famer Greg Maddux and was coined by baseball writer Jason Lukehart. Ober only needed 89 pitches Not 99. Not 95. Just 89 pitches to complete nine shutout innings. That level of efficiency feels almost impossible in today’s game, especially with teams working deep counts and prioritizing patience at the plate. “We were talking if under 100 is a Maddux, we’re going to have to name under 90 an Ober,” Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “He was just under control. He was executing pitches.” His fastball averaged just 88.8 mph That might be the most shocking part of the outing. Velocity has become one of the defining conversations around modern pitching, and Ober dominated an entire lineup while sitting below 89 mph with his fastball. He threw only three fastballs above 90 mph all night and totaled only nine pitches faster than 89 mph. He snapped a recent strikeout slump Coming into Tuesday, Ober had gone three straight starts with three strikeouts or fewer, leading to questions about whether his low velocity was starting to catch up to him. Instead, he struck out seven Marlins hitters. That total tied for his second-highest strikeout game of the season, behind only his 10 strikeouts against Cincinnati on April 19. It also matched his seven strikeouts against Boston on April 13. The 89-pitch total was somehow familiar Oddly enough, the last time Ober threw a nine-inning complete game, he also threw exactly 89 pitches. That outing came on June 22, 2024, against Oakland in a 10 to 2 Twins win over the A’s. Ober joined an exclusive group in Twins history Ober now has two of the six complete games by a Twins pitcher since 1988 thrown on 90 pitches or fewer. The other names on that list include Carlos Silva, John Smiley, Bill Krueger, and Rick Aguilera. Before Tuesday night, Krueger had been the only pitcher in that group to record a complete game shutout. Ober finished stronger than he started Ober never lost command late in the game. He struck out the final two batters in the eighth inning, then needed only eight pitches to complete the ninth inning and finish off the shutout. Complete games barely exist in modern baseball. Complete game shutouts are even rarer. A complete game shutout in fewer than 90 pitches almost feels impossible in today’s version of the sport. What makes Ober’s performance even more memorable is how rare this style of pitching has become across baseball. Modern starters are often trained to chase velocity and strikeouts above all else. Teams monitor pitch counts aggressively, complete games have nearly disappeared, and many pitchers are pulled before even reaching the seventh inning. Ober not only finished the game himself, but he did it with a level of efficiency that feels pulled from another era of baseball. There was no overpowering 98 mph fastball or unhittable wipeout pitch carrying him through the night. Instead, Ober relied on command, sequencing, confidence, and an ability to consistently stay one step ahead of hitters. Every inning seemed to move faster than the last as Miami struggled to square anything up against him. By the end of the game, the crowd at Target Field understood they were watching something special. The outing also served as an important reminder about Ober’s value to the Twins rotation. Even when the velocity readings spark concern or the strikeout totals dip for a few starts, Ober continues finding ways to succeed against major league hitters. His margin for error may look smaller than many modern pitchers, but Tuesday showed just how effective he can still be when everything is working together. For Twins fans, it was the type of performance that will be remembered for years because of how unusual it felt. A complete game shutout on 89 pitches almost sounds impossible in today’s game. Bailey Ober made it look effortless. What stood out about Ober on Tuesday night? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View the full article

The Brewers' farm system continues to impress despite several big-time graduations over the last few years. Some trades have brought new names in, and one of them is currently helping the big-league team out of the bullpen, which led to our lone brand-new addition to the list. You can find the full list here! #17 LHP Shane Drohan Milwaukee acquired Drohan in the Caleb Durbin trade after spending most of his time in the Red Sox organization, as well as a spring with the White Sox. Injuries have impacted much of his professional career, including a 2024 Rule 5 stint with Chicago that resulted in his return to Boston. When healthy, however, he features a polished, deep pitch mix that seems scalable between the bullpen and the rotation. In Nashville, Drohan was being stretched out as a starter, and he made his MLB debut against Boston as a starter as well. After being sent down, he made one more start in Nashville before injury forced Drohan back up to the big-league club. Since then, he's pitched exclusively out of the bullpen, both in single-inning and multi-inning roles. His fastball typically sits 92-94 MPH as a starter and plays effectively enough to support the rest of the arsenal, though the secondary pitches are the foundation of the profile. Since moving into the bullpen role with the Brewers' big-league team, the fastball has averaged 95.3 MPH, and he has touched 97 at times. He also mixes in a cutter in the low-90s, and a sinker thrown about a tick slower than his four-seam. They both are best used against left-handed hitters, but the cutter can work as a bridge pitch for him against righties as well. The slider is Drohan's best pitch and his primary swing-and-miss weapon. Since his move to the bullpen, the pitch has averaged 86 MPH, with a spin rate of nearly 2900, and a 33.3% whiff rate. He also mixes in a solid curveball in the 78-80 MPH range, also spinning around 2900 RPM as a reliever, and also with a 33.3% whiff rate against it. His changeup has always been a reliable option against right-handed hitters with roughly 8-10 MPH of separation off the fastball. However, he seems to have switched to a splitter lately, as the spin rate has gone from ~1500 to ~990 on average. Drohan's command showed improvement in 2025, and since his move to the bullpen, he's only walked 3.2% of batters he's faced. There is still legitimate rotation upside if he can stay healthy enough, though the arsenal and bat-missing ability are showing that they can translate very well in the bullpen right now. Drohan appears firmly entrenched in the Brewers' future pitching plans right now, though the role beyond 2026 is still up for debate. Biggest Risers #6 OF Luis Lara -- Up five spots from #11 Lara has shown some improvements in the power department, already nearly doubling his career high of four home runs, with seven at the time of this article. There is some reason to doubt the power output as of this moment, playing in some of the bandbox ballparks Nashville plays at and posting a wOBA of .409, compared to an xwOBA of .313. Despite that, there does still appear to be real growth in the power department as well, as evidenced by his 109 MPH max exit velocity. His 13.9% whiff rate is elite, and he’s limited strikeouts extremely well, while walking at a high rate as well. Lara is 15 of 18 on stolen base attempts, and he’s a plus defender who could be elite in center field at the big league level. Lara looks like a player who will make his MLB debut at some point this season. #16 Coleman Crow -- Previously Not Ranked (#19 in 2025) Crow made his big-league debut in April and immediately put his ability to spin the ball on display. His spin rates rank among the highest in MLB on all of his offerings. The breaking balls are his best pitches, but his cutter has made nice strides from where it was in 2025 and is now a strong offering for him. Neither his four-seam nor sinker is a great pitch on its own, but they work well with the cutter to create enough hesitation for batters to struggle to square them up regularly. Crow is a big-league arm that is waiting for his chance in Triple-A right now. Much like the next guy on this list had to do in 2025. #3 RHP Logan Henderson -- Up three spots from #6 Henderson worked his way up to number three by significantly improving what has always been the biggest question mark in his game, his glove-side secondaries, this offseason. His slider is now thrown more like a slurve, and it has played pretty well in MLB games so far. The cutter has been inconsistent, but as a “bridge pitch,” it has fared pretty well against right-handed batters. Henderson has the look of a pitcher who may have graduated from this list next time the voting takes place, because he appears to have grabbed hold of a rotation spot, with Chad Patrick moving into more of a bullpen role. #9 OF Josh Adamczewski -- Up three spots from #12 Adamczewski has been destroying Midwest League pitching this season. After a slow start at the level in a small sample to close out the 2025 season, Adamczewski has returned with a vengeance. He’s currently posting a .992 OPS and a 150 wRC+. He has already surpassed his career high in home runs with seven (previously five in 2025), and he’s also kept his strikeout rate under 20%. His move to left field has also gone well, showing instincts that are better than expected, given his relative inexperience out there. Having just been added to Baseball America’s Top 100 this week, Adamczewski could continue his climb up this list over the course of this season. He could also continue his climb through the system, as a Double-A call-up feels like it can’t be too far away if he keeps up this production for much longer. #13 OF Braylon Payne -- Up three spots from #16 Payne got off to a really hot start this season. He’s cooled off a bit over the last couple of weeks, but has still settled into an .863 OPS and a 118 wRC+ for the Timber Rattlers. His season has been highlighted by his ability to tap into even more raw power, both in terms of his exit velocities and his ability to hit the ball in the air. His PullAir% of 20.0% is in the 85th percentile for High-A hitters. One of his home runs left the bat at 115 MPH earlier this season. He’s also a plus-plus runner, though his 8/11 success rate on stolen bases leaves something to be desired. The defense has taken a step forward in center, where his athleticism is always on display. The reads and jumps still need some work, but they are better than in 2025. Payne has the tools to be a power and speed threat, though he will still need to curb his whiffs (33.2%) and limit his strikeouts (27.4%) as much as possible. Biggest Fallers #18 3B Brock Wilken -- Down three spots from #15 Wilken got off to a very slow start in 2026, though he is currently in the midst of a 28-game on-base streak. During that stretch, he is posting a 118 wRC+ and has walked almost as much as he has struck out. The overall numbers are far less encouraging, though, as evidenced by his 77 wRC+ and his 28.5% strikeout rate. We will likely find out which version of Wilken is closest to the real version over the next couple of months. #11 RHP Bishop Letson -- Down two spots from #9 Letson has gotten off to a tough start in Double-A this season. The walks have skyrocketed this season, rising from 7.5% in 2025 to 15.7% in 2026. The ERA is at 6.75, and the FIP is over 6 as well. The strikeouts are down nearly 10% as well. All that said, Letson’s stuff looks to be in a similar spot to where it was in the past, even getting the velocity up a bit higher than in the past. Letson’s drop is likely due more to the players below him forcing their way up the list, but he will need to rein in the command moving forward and limit walks at a much higher level to reach his full potential. Thank you to all of you who voted! View the full article

It's difficult to overstate the value that Michael Conforto has brought to the Chicago Cubs early in 2026. A minor-league signing coming off a brutal season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the original perception of Conforto's role was, at best, as temporary depth while Seiya Suzuki worked his way back to full health. Instead, he's gained an increased role in recent weeks on the heels of a torrid stretch of play. As of the series in Atlanta, Conforto is carrying a slash of .340/.448/.617 with a gaudy 198 wRC+. He's striking out more than the Cubs would probably like (25.9 percent), but he's also walking more than 17 percent of the time. Add it all up, and he has been worth 0.6 fWAR for the Cubs in barely 60 plate appearances. It's all a far cry from where he sat last year with the Dodgers when his line read .199/.305/.333 with a wRC+ of just 83 (-0.6 fWAR) across more than 480 PA. What's particularly important in the case of Conforto is that this isn't a player merely flashing despite questionable peripherals. Sure, he's due for some regression on the merit of his .452 batting average on balls in play by itself, but he's also driving the baseball. His 54.5 percent hard-hit rate exceeds his career average by about 13 percent while his 15.2 Barrel% is nearly five full percent better than his career mark. We know good things happen when hitters pull the ball in the air, and Conforto is deploying those contact metrics to the tune of a 30.3 PullAIR%. In short, it's not blind luck driving the start. He's been legitimately good. In general, this performance seems to be driven by his approach. Conforto's swing rate is down, with a 40.2 percent number that would be the lowest of his career if it holds up over the full season. What's more is that his chase rate has fallen to just 20.5 percent (also the lowest of his career). Perhaps most importantly, as the chase rate has plummeted, the in-zone swing rate has remained steady. He's working with a 64.2 percent swing rate on pitches inside the zone that represents just a two percent decrease from last season. It's not solely about the eye, though. There are also mechanical tweaks at play. Conforto's attack angle is up to 13 degrees in 2026 after falling to 10 degrees last season. It's a steeper swing and one that reads around league average (10 degrees), but when you combine the improved approach with a swing generating fly ball contact, you're able to find the type of early results that Conforto is producing. Of course, it's important to note the managerial component within all of this as well. While a recent scuffling from the Cubs' offense at large has forced Craig Counsell to insert Conforto into the lineup with greater regularity, he's also shielding him entirely from left-handed pitching. Conforto isn't as drastically bad against pitchers of the same handedness as some lefty hitters may be, but he did go for a wRC+ of just 76 against them last year. As such, Counsell has sent Conforto to the plate against a left-handed pitcher just a single time this season. That's certainly something not to be overlooked in matters of his early run. As impressive as Michael Conforto has been, the regression monster is something that's going to continue to loom, especially in the case of a player that hasn't experienced sustained offensive success since, realistically, 2019. In short, that regression is going to come at some point. The batted ball fortune alone is indicative of that inevitability. However, the trends which Conforto has demonstrated to date do offer some encouragement that he can continue to be a regular contributor to the offensive output. When you put a player in a position to succeed, as Counsell has, while said player demonstrates a command of the strike zone and uses that command toward making meaningful contact with the baseball, it's going to yield positive results. Given those two factors, it isn't a surprise that Conforto has good; it's merely a pleasant turn of events that he's been such an uplifting force in the lineup. View the full article

On Tuesday night at Target Field, Bailey Ober threw a complete shutout on just 89 pitches against the Miami Marlins. It was a rarity in its own right — Twins starters don't complete a game very often — but the efficiency of his performance was almost unheard of in these times. The only starter in Twins history to throw a shutout on fewer pitches, per Aaron Gleeman, was Bill Krueger (85) back in 1992. It was around that time, the first of Greg Maddux's four consecutive Cy Young seasons, that the term "Maddux" was being coined in reference to a shutout recorded on a double-digit pitch total. The Hall of Famer would also gain repute for his ability to dominate with relatively sub-par velocity. Coincidentally, earlier in the day on Tuesday I happened to be dinking around on Baseball Reference and looking through Carlos Silva's 2005 game log. The backstory is that I've been piecing together a list of my most vivid personal memory from each of the past 25 Twins seasons, and for '05 it was Silva's 74-pitch shutout against the Brewers in May. This was the pinnacle outing from Silva's career — a perfect encapsulation of the strike-throwing groundballer at his best — and the epitome of Twins pitching philosophy from that era. Silva debuted in the majors in 2002, the same year as Rick Anderson became Minnesota's pitching coach, and two years later he was acquired by the Twins alongside Punto in the Eric Milton trade. Silva's stylistic alignment to Anderson's "pitch-to-contact" prototype undoubtedly played a role in the Twins targeting him. And sure enough, the right-hander mostly served as a proof point for the wisdom of such an approach at the time. With the exception of his ugly 2006 campaign, Silva was mostly a reliable, ultra-efficient innings eater with above-average ERAs for the Twins. That 2005 season was his best: he posted a 3.44 ERA (130 ERA+) in 188 ⅓ innings while issuing just nine walks all year. Silva achieved this success with a 9.5% strikeout rate (3.4 K/9) — just 71 strikeouts in 27 starts. The lowest strikeout rate in baseball today belongs to Adrian Houser at 12.2%. To look back through his game log now is almost incomprehensible up against the context of modern-day pitching. Deep counts just really didn't exist against Carlos Silva. He threw it over the plate and said, "Come get it," knowing that the movement on his middling 90ish-MPH fastball and oft-used changeup would succeed in inducing weak contact most of the time. As a result, his pitch counts were shockingly low. In 2005, Silva completed seven or more innings in 21 of his 27 starts, but surpassed 100 pitches in an outing only twice all year. You contrast that with the current environment, where starters rarely venture into the seventh or eighth because their pitch counts have already piled up on longer, strikeout-chasing ABs, and it feels like almost a different game. And in many respects, it was. Baseball has changed in fundamental ways over the past 21 years. A pitcher like Silva probably could not succeed in 2026, and would likely be unable to even tread water. Ober is doing it though. Granted, his traits are not as extreme as Silva or some of the other standard-bearers from the pitch-to-contact era like Brad Radke and Nick Blackburn, but Ober leverages similar ingredients in his recipe. Throw strikes, hit your spots, induce ground balls, lean on the offspeeds. "The lost art of pitching," as Ober calls it. Ober's 35.5% GB rate is not conventionally high but it's the highest of his career. He's attacking the fringes of the zone with the highest called-strike rate of his career (17.3%). And he's throwing more (better) changeups than ever before: 36.2% of the time, with a .167 batting average allowed. The economical pitch usage enables Ober to routinely pitch deeper into games than other starters, which has ancillary positive effects on the bullpen. The Twins as a team have had three complete games thrown over the past three seasons and Ober was behind all of them. This year, he's gotten through at least six innings in five of his past six starts, and he's on pace to reach 200 innings. A throwback, indeed. Time will tell if Ober can keep rolling like this, especially given the quality of the defense backing up all this contact — he definitely has his skeptics — but it's already gone on long enough that it's difficult to characterize his success is a total fluke. As long as he can stay on track, I'm just going to enjoy the ride and bask in the nostalgia. View the full article

The Florida/Miami Marlins have won a franchise-record nine straight games on five separate occasions. It was first achieved on this day 30 years ago. Against the St. Louis Cardinals at Joe Robbie Stadium on May 14, 1996, the Florida Marlins used a six-run eighth to break the tie and cruise to victory, 11-5. The Marlins had taken a 5-4 lead with three runs in the bottom of the seventh. In the top of the eighth, however, Ray Lankford drew the Cardinals even with a solo home run off Florida’s Terry Mathews. Jeff Parrett remained on the hill for St. Louis in the bottom of the inning. After getting Jeff Conine to line out to open the inning, Parrett issued three straight walks to load the bases and end his night. The Cardinals turned to Rick Honeycutt, but the left-hander fared no better in getting outs. Joe Orsulak rolled Honeycutt’s second pitch of the night up the middle for a two-run single. Devon White followed with an RBI double on the seventh pitch of the at-bat to extend the lead to 8-5. Alex Arias followed with an RBI single of his own to make it 9-5 before Greg Colbrunn was safe on a fielder’s choice to extend the lead to 10-5. Conine made two of the three outs in the inning for Florida, but his second plated White to cap the scoring. Yorkis Pérez retired the Cardinals in order in the ninth to end the contest and run Florida’s winning streak to nine. White and Arias each finished 3-for-5 with two runs scored and two RBIs. Colbrunn went 2-for-4 with a home run and three RBIs. Lankford and Ozzie Smith each had two hits for St. Louis. With the victory, Florida improved to 20-21 but missed the opportunity to get to .500 for the first time that season as it fell to the Cardinals the following day, 6-0. The Marlins would briefly get over .500 in 1996 before finishing 80-82 – their best season ever at the time. Although they’ve never hit double digits, the Marlins also won nine straight games in 2004, twice in 2006 and in 2008. It was first achieved, thanks in part to a six-run eighth inning, on this day three decades ago. View the full article

Fresh out of jail, Mark Lemongello went looking for work. After a year out of baseball, Lemongello called Toronto Blue Jays general manager Pat Gillick and asked for another shot with the organization. He had last pitched in the majors with the Blue Jays in 1979, and it was a disaster. The general manager told Lemongello they would talk once his legal issues were resolved, but Gillick must’ve known that the Pinellas County District Attorney’s case was pretty strong. There was no way Lemongello was going to pitch for the Toronto Blue Jays again. Lemongello couldn’t handle losing. He didn’t hate to lose like the average ballplayer; no, defeat turned Lemongello into a different being. He tore up clubhouses and destroyed their vending machines. He once took scissors to his uniform, shredding it to pieces. Following a particularly painful loss, he threw french fries at a waitress when he received them instead of a baked potato with his post-game steak. “If a little thing happens on the mound, he’ll go crazy,” said his former minor league teammate Frank MacCormack. “I’ve had to hold him down on the bed in hotel rooms so he wouldn’t tear sinks off the wall, smash the TVs, and rip the lamps apart. Even then, he managed to smash a few.” The stories grew, and they were mostly true. One scouting report took the myth of Lemongello to another level, but it contained one of the few allegations he denied. After a bad outing on the mound, he was said to have dove headfirst into the food table and, quote, “JUST LAY THERE in hot dogs, burritos, mustard, ketchup.” After another, he was said to have bit into his shoulder so hard it bled. Not so, said Lemongello, and he had a scarless torso to prove it. “I’m a colourful personality, and I’ve done some things that I wish I hadn’t done, but I’m not nuts, and I’m not crazy,” he said. If there was anything that rivaled how much Lemongello hated losing, it was finding out he had been traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. It had been over a month since the Blue Jays brought in Lemongello in an offseason trade with Houston, and the team had yet to speak with him. One of the three players acquired for catcher Alan Ashby, Toronto hoped Lemongello would slot third in their rotation behind Tom Underwood and Jim Clancy for the upcoming ‘79 season. Now, they were hoping that he would just show up to camp. “All we can do is send a registered letter to his home,” said personnel man Elliot Wahle. It stood little chance of being answered. Lemongello was in the wind, not thrilled with the idea of being a Blue Jay and having to live in Canada. Describing a move north as “10 steps backwards for me,” the Arizona-born Lemongello told the Ottawa Journal that he was not reporting to the organization and vanished. He took a long trip to the Grand Canyon, then took an even longer drive cross-country to New Jersey, unreachable the entire time. Scrambling, the Blue Jays tried reaching out to Lemongello’s mother, who said she had no idea where her son was, but he did have a question, one that was relayed to the team and no doubt gave them their next sign of the trouble ahead. “What’s a Toronto?” Undeterred, team president Peter Bavasi dug deep. He heard that Lemongello worked at Coca-Cola bottling plants in the offseason and tried to get word to the pitcher that, hey, lifting crates in a cool climate might be better than the sweltering heat in Phoenix. As the end of January closed in, Bavasi was able to make contact with Lemongello’s agent, Gary Walker, who had also received a call from his client. Earning his dues, Walker brought the sides together. There was only one problem: Lemongello didn’t work at the soda plants. Either way, the pitcher was touched by Bavasi’s efforts to comfort him, and any fears of playing in Toronto had been run off, for now. Lemongello signed a two-year deal as spring training closed in. Saying he heard nothing but good things about the city, Lemongello explained he had been reeling and in shock after the trade. After all, no one wants to find out they are unwanted by their previous team. And everything about Canada? Simple geographic confusion. “It would have been different if I was traded to Montreal because I would still be in the same league as I had been (in Houston),” he said. “I didn’t even know where Toronto was.” Pitcher that hates losing, meet the team that loses most of all. Toronto lost over 100 games in each of its first two seasons, and the ‘79 season would turn out no different. The Blue Jays started the season 0-3 when Lemongello failed to make it out of the fifth inning in his first turn through the rotation, an 8-3 loss to Kansas City. By the end of April, the Blue Jays were 7-15, with three of those losses on the winless Lemongello. The anger inside the pitcher was building. “Any time he had a bad outing, he’d blame it on Canada,” said teammate Bob Bailor. The potential flashed, then the rage. Lemongello earned his first win of the year on May 13, a complete game effort in a 3-1 win over Texas on 108 pitches. The success was short-lived. In his next start, Lemongello fell victim to the long ball and then himself. Having already been taken deep by Andre Thornton and Dave Rosello, Lemongello was taken out in the sixth inning after another home run, this by Toby Harrah. What he did next in the dugout, in the wonderfully descriptive words of Alison Gordon in the Toronto Star, was "alarmingly self-destructive in nature." Now 10-27 on the season, the Blue Jays and the self-battered Lemongello got a shot at Cleveland the next week at Exhibition Stadium. With one away in the third inning of Lemongello’s start, manager Roy Hartsfield ordered an intentional walk to load the bases for Thornton. A high fastball to the Cleveland slugger ended in the same fate as the last week’s pitch, the first ever grand slam surrendered by Lemongello in the majors. When Cleveland went ahead 7-5 on a sacrifice fly in the sixth, Hartsfield had seen enough. So had Lemongello. As the manager approached the mound to remove him from the game, Lemongello showed Hartsfield ultimate disrespect, flipping the ball past his outstretched hand on his way to the dugout. No one talked about the incident afterwards, but the crime committed was clear in the eyes of Hartsfield. The punishment was severe. When it came time for Lemongello to start again, he didn’t. Lemongello wasn’t pitching anywhere good enough (1-6, 6.46 ERA) to warrant more starts, but his outburst was the final straw. He was now the final man on the depth chart, pitching mop-up innings from the ‘pen or taking reluctantly-given spot starts around doubleheaders. He was supposed to start the first game of a double dip against Baltimore on June 29, but instead, Toronto called up Dave Stieb from Triple-A to make his first career start. Stieb would start 407 more games in his career for the Blue Jays; Lemongello would only pitch in another three. Lemongello pitched in relief later in the series, and six Orioles’ hitters got him for two runs on three hits. He wouldn’t pitch again until his birthday, 20 days later. He recorded eight outs against the Twins, and the outing was his final good major league appearance. The frustration over his non-existent role was reaching an apex. “I know I can pitch,” he said. “I was a regular starter on one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, and here I am not pitching on one of the worst.” Two nights later, on July 23, Lemongello would exit the majors in a way befitting him. With under 8,000 in attendance at Metropolitan Stadium, Lemongello entered a tied ballgame in the eighth inning and retired 9-1-2 in the Twins’ lineup. The Jays were held scoreless in the top half of the ninth, and Hartsfield left his pitcher in the game. After he got the first out, Bombo Rivera tripled off Lemongello to deep center. The winning run was 90 feet away, and Lemongello and Hartsfield would have their final disagreement on how to deal with it. Hartsfield intended to walk the next two hitters to set up a force at every base and signaled his pitcher to do so. When he saw the sign, Lemongello started shaking his head in disagreement towards the skipper in the dugout. He was already mad at Hartsfield for having him warm up on multiple occasions during the game, but when the phone rang in the bullpen, it was for Tom Buskey to enter and then for Tom Underwood. Each call down from the skipper for someone other than him felt like a slap in the face. Despite being tasked with a high-leverage situation, Lemongello entered the game pissed. With catcher Rick Cerone standing up for the first intentional pass, Lemongello sailed the first pitch well over his catcher’s head. Rivera couldn’t score from third, so the game continued, and Hartsfield had to be restrained from running onto the field after his pitcher. The next seven balls were uneventful, and the bases were now loaded. On the third pitch of the at-bat to Minnesota pinch-hitter Mike Cubbage, Lemongello uncorked a wild pitch, this time allowing Rivera to score, giving the Twins the walk-off victory. A few days later, the job of telling Lemongello he was being demoted fell on Gillick. As Bavasi sat outside of the meeting, Lemongello stormed out, shouting he would take vengeance. When Bavasi went into the room, he saw a shaken general manager. On his way out, Lemongello hurled one last one high and wide – an ashtray that would firmly implant itself into an interior wall at Exhibition Stadium. Verbal threats accompanied his tirade, and Bavasi reported the altercation to major league officials, who had a word with Lemongello before he reported to Triple-A Syracuse. Lemongello turned his season around in the minors. He won three of his four starts, threw a three-hit shutout in the first game of the playoffs, and started a crucial game five in the International League championship. Steve Grilli would get the win in relief, and Syracuse moved a game away from the title before losing the next two to Columbus, including a walk-off in 12 innings in game seven. Sadly, there is no record of how Lemongello took that loss, but his performance in the minors would keep him in the Blue Jays’ plans for 1980. Not in Toronto’s plans was Hartsfield, who was fired, and where most of the blame for the Lemongello situation was laid in the offseason. Sure, the guy punches himself in the face, but the manager was his downfall. Hartsfield was no peach, but that line of thought was cope for a front office hoping new manager Bobby Mattick would turn a new leaf with Lemongello, who entered spring training in competition for a roster spot. It didn’t go well. He was middling in some appearances at best and hit hard in others. Mattick rarely mentioned his name while talking about the Opening Day roster. In a last-chance game against the Twins, Lemongello was smacked around again, and his ERA for the spring ballooned over 10. In the press box, Twins public relations man Tom Mee joked that Lemongello’s line for the day was “one inning pitched, two hits, two runs, both earned, two hit batters, and a one-way ticket to Syracuse." A week later, Lemongello was gone, his contract unceremoniously sold to the Chicago Cubs organization. Gillick’s headache was a thing of the past. Lemongello reported to Double-A Wichita and sucked in his final professional season. He surrendered 11.1 hits per nine innings, pitching for the Aeros, where he met another wayward pitcher on the staff. Manny Seoane had pitched briefly in the majors a few years prior, and with neither him nor Lemongello headed back to the bigs, the duo looked for their next payday. Sources are linked throughout as usual, but I wanted to shout out two pieces in particular: Malcolm Allen and his Lemongello biography from the invaluable SABR, as well as the late Earl McRae and his feature on the pitcher in the May 12, 1979 edition of the Toronto Star and their invaluable archives. (photo credit: Toronto Star) One has to wonder what Joe Sambito was thinking. One of the best lefty relievers in the National League in the late 70s, Sambito was once roommates with Lemongello while the two were on the Astros. Despite intimate knowledge of his former teammate's erraticness, when it came to building a new home, Sambito entrusted Lemongello. After all we have read about Lemongello, why would you invest with him? But Sambito did. And now Sambito found himself on the wrong end of a gun being pointed by none other than Lemongello himself. The shadiness of the situation wasn’t entirely on Lemongello. It was, in fact, a family business. Lemongello’s cousins – Peter, a professional crooner, and Mike, a professional bowler – were building houses under Heron Development Corp. in Florida, and the ex-Wichita teammates joined the scheme. Lemongello had connected Sambito with his cousins, and now, neither party was happy. Cost overruns and shoddy worksmanship plagued Sambito’s property. On this day, he was meeting with the cousins at the construction site to discuss a few things. Sambito’s future home was also where Lemongello and Seoane were headed. They were feeling slighted as well, having not received a cent in commission for the referral of Sambito. Deciding to take it for themselves, they took the cousins at gunpoint. When Sambito tried to intervene, Lemongello aimed his revolver at him. Sambito wasn’t playing hero, and off the cousins went, forced into a bank to hand over $50,000 from a security box to Lemongello and Seoane, before they were dropped off in a wooded area. Lemongello would turn himself in, and before he made the call to Gillick, he blabbed to authorities. Based on what Lemongello said, Peter was arrested for arson and insurance fraud and ended up with 10 years’ probation. For the robbery, Lemongello received seven years’ probation, and by the time his sentence was over, the Blue Jays were on their way to their ‘90s successes. They were a long way from the organization that once employed Lemongello. View the full article

Following the 2024 Rule 5 Draft, there was little hope for Angel Bastardo to return to the Boston Red Sox organization. Despite having Tommy John surgery in June of 2024 and expected to miss all of 2025, the Blue Jays still took a flier on the right-hander. It was a surprise to some, as Bastardo had struggled since being promoted to Portland near the end of the 2023 season, having gone 0-6 with a 5.28 ERA in 13 starts between 2023 and 2024. The Blue Jays planned to have him potentially be in the bullpen for 2026, but after a spring training where he flashed potential but couldn’t quite put it all together for the defending American League champions, the team decided to return him to the Red Sox on April 1 after designating him for assignment. On April 21, he finally made his return to the mound as a member of the Red Sox. The right-hander tossed one inning out of the bullpen, walking two while striking out three batters. There were some moments of wildness from the pitcher, and by the end of the outing he had thrown 27 pitches. “The ball just jumps out of his hand, so I was pretty excited,” former Worcester manager Chad Tracy explained when asked if anything really stood out during Bastardo’s Triple-A debut. “The first hitter I was seeing a bunch of 97 [miles per hour]. I’m like, this is a great looking arm.” It wasn’t all positives for Bastardo, however, as rust was prevalent for the pitcher as noted by Tracy. Of the 27 pitches he threw, 12 of them were balls and he did end up throwing some non-competitive pitches. “He did lose some balls, like up arm side for some non-competitive fastballs. I mostly attribute that to it being his first outing, so we got to keep an eye on that as we go forward,” Tracy continued to explain about the young pitcher. In the outing, there were multiple opportunities to get out of the inning sooner than he did, but the young pitcher still managed to escape the frame without allowing a run to score. The Worcester manager was overall impressed with the outing, especially from a stuff standpoint along with the way the ball. If Bastardo can consistently throw strikes and have his stuff look as it did in his debut on a regular basis, there is a real shot he could make it to the major leagues one day. Despite it being over a year since he had his surgery, the team will be cautious with Bastardo. “He threw one inning [on Tuesday], Saturday we got him scheduled for a couple innings. I don’t think it’s gonna be 45 pitches or anything, but he will. We’re looking for multiple ups. I don’t have the full thing but I know initially a lot of his outings will be picked and scripted out, rather than like most of my bullpen where if they’re up we can use them whenever. We’ll lay out his [Bastardo’s] days right now,” Tracy detailed on April 24 when asked what the plan might be for Bastardo as he builds up his pitch count and gets stretched out. Don't expect him to immediately go back to starting, as Tracy turned down the idea. At least for right now. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to our front office about that like, I think that could be possible, but I don’t think it’s in the immediate plans right now. It’s mostly just stretching out outings as a reliever and getting built up appropriately before we say now you can just be used as a normal reliever." Overall on the season, the young right-hander has appeared in five games, tossing 8 2/3 innings while allowing four earned runs. Over that span, he's struck out 13 batters while walking six. As a pitcher, Bastardo relies on a four-pitch mix with his four-seam fastball making up over half of his pitch usage at 52.3%. His changeup is used 32.6% of the time while the slider is used 12.8% and his curveball makes up the remaining 2.3%. Of the four pitches, his changeup may be his best pitch; through his first few outings this year, batters had a .187 xwOBA and a .150 xSLG against it. Despite making just a few appearances thus far while working back to full strength, Bastardo could be a valuable piece for the Worcester bullpen as they deal with a fluctuating roster. Should Bastardo continue to thrive in Triple-A while rediscovering the form that made him a Rule 5 pick in the first place, he could quickly be on the radar of Tracy in Boston. View the full article

Transactions: DSL Brewers Gold released RHP Linbel Jimenez. Game Action: Nashville pre-game media notes Nashville 4, Iowa (Cubs) 1 Box Score As always, you are encouraged to read the official round-up from the team’s site: Vihuelas Exercise Demonios with 4-1 Final The Nashville Sounds secured a 4-1 victory over the Iowa Cubs at First Horizon Park, propelled by a dominant collective effort on the mound and a balanced offensive effort. Offensively, the Sounds found their spark in the third inning when Ramon Rodríguez launched a solo home run to right-center, erasing an early Iowa lead. Highlight here courtesy of the Sounds X Account: The momentum stayed with Nashville in the fifth, as the team played some small ball to break the game open. A single, steal, walk, and hit by pitch loaded the bases for Cooper Pratt. Pratt drove in a run on a ground out, before Luis Lara socked a single to center (video) to make it 3-1 Nashville. Lara was once again the standout at the plate for Nashville, finishing with three hits and a run scored. Lara’s 50 hits on the season are second-most in the International League. Brock Wilken added some late-inning insurance in the eighth with a funky triple to plate a run (video), finishing the night with two hits and providing the pitching staff with more than enough cushion to close out the win. On the mound, Thomas Pannone delivered with a season-high four innings and four strikeouts. Easton McGee earned his fourth win of the season with two scoreless frames, followed by Peter Strzelecki and Blake Holub, who combined to allow just two hits over the final three innings. Holub’s clean ninth inning earned him his first save of the year, punctuated by a strikeout to end the contest. Coleman Crow takes the mound on Thursday for the Sounds, who now sit three games above .500. Biloxi pre-game media notes Biloxi 11, Montgomery (Rays) 3 Box Score Shuckers Burn Biscuits 11-3 The Shuckers picked up where they left off after Tuesday's late rally by toasting the Biscuits in a convincing 11-3 victory. The scoring started early with a and RBI ground out from Matthew Wood in the second. In the third, Damon Keith and Mike Boeve provided run scoring singles to pad the lead to 4-0. You can check out both singles here, courtesy of the Biloxi X account: The middle innings proved to be the breaking point for Montgomery, as Biloxi, aided by some defensive miscues, put up four runs in the sixth to effectively put the game out of reach. Blake Burke had an RBI single: While O’Rae and Jesus Made plated runs on a sac fly (video) and ground out. Boeve was once again the straw stirring the drink for the Shuckers, a night after his clutch two-run home run in the 9th inning. Boeve turned in a stellar 3-for-5 performance with two RBIs and a double. In the month of May, Boeve has a .355/.429/.613 (1.042 OPS) slash line with 11 RBI in nine games. Maybe more impressively, Boeve has cut down both on his whiff rate (32.6% in April to 16.4% in May) as well as his strikeout rate (27.5% in April to just 6.7% in May). Wood provided the finishing touches with a solo home run in the eighth inning, his third home run in his last six games: Nearly every starter contributed, with seven different Shuckers recording at least one RBI, showing the depth of this Biloxi roster. The Shuckers’ speed was also on full display as O’Rae, Made, Keith, and Boeve all swiped bases, On the mound, Manuel Rodriguez earned his third win of the season, delivering five solid innings and navigating through six hits to allow only two earned runs. The Shuckers’ bullpen was equally impressive as Jesus Broca, Cameron Wagoner, and Nick Merkel combined to shut the door over the final four frames, racking up four strikeouts and allowing just one run. With the win, Biloxi moves within two wins of the .500 mark. Tanner Gillis is slated to make his first start (eighth appearance) of the season on Thursday. Oh, and yes, with Konnor Griffin "graduating", this is now official (article link): Wisconsin pre-game media notes Wisconsin 11, South Bend (Cubs) 6 Box Score Wisconsin Outlasts South Bend Wisconsin put on an offensive clinic at Neuroscience Group Field, racking up 14 hits to overpower South Bend in an 11-6 victory. The Rattlers wasted no time asserting their dominance, erupting for five runs in the second inning to chase the Cubs' starter early. In total, five Rattlers starters had multi-hit days. Tayden Hall led the charge with a four RBI performance, including two doubles, while Josh Adamczewski stayed hot with a three-hit game and a steal. Braylon Payne doubled twice, walked twice, scored twice and stole a base. Eric Bitonti had two hits, two walks, three runs scored and a steal. Bitonti now has a .961 OPS in the month of May despite striking out 18 times in 36 at-bats, Juan Baez provided the exclamation point in the eighth, launching a two-run home run to left to put the game out of reach. You can check out all the highlights here: On the mound, Yorman Galindez (2IP 5H 4R 4ER 3BB 2) once again labored through a short start. The newly promoted Garrett Hodges earned his first win of the season despite walking four and hitting a batter in two innings in his first appearance for Wisconsin. However, it was Braylon Owens who stole the show in relief. Owens tossed five dominant frames, striking out six and allowing just one run to earn the rare five-inning save. Owens, a 10th round pick last year, now has 46 strikeouts in 31.1 IP at Wisconsin this season. With this win, the Timber Rattlers improve to 20-13, maintaining their hold on first place in the Midwest West division. Another 2025 draft pick, lefty J.D. Thompson will take the mound for Appleton on Thursday. Wilson pre-game media notes Hill City (Guardians) 7, Wilson 3 Box Score Warbirds Use Rally to Extend Game, Fall in Extras Despite a resilient late-inning comeback to force extra innings, Wilson ultimately fell 7-3 to Hill City in a 10-inning heartbreaker at Wilson Ballpark. Jayden Dubanewicz was a bright spot in his 2026 Carolina League debut. The 20-year-old righty threw three scoreless innings allowing just two singles while striking out five. The game was scoreless until the fifth, when a throwing error on a potential double play brought in the first run of the game off Tyler Renz (4.2 IP 3H 4R 3ER 4BB 1K). Renz has now issued 22 free passes in 31.1 IP on the season. Hill City added two more in the sixth inning to give them a 3-0 lead. The Warbirds finally got on the board in the seventh when Jose Anderson doubled, stole third, and scored on a Juan Ortuno single (video). The Anderson steal was the Warbirds’ only successful base thievery on a day that saw the team caught stealing three times. The score remained 3-1 until the bottom of the ninth. Brady Ebel started the rally by taking one for the team on an HBP. With one out, Frederi Montero doubled to put the tying runs into scoring position for Ortuno. After an Ortuno RBI ground out put Wilson on the brink of defeat, Pedro Ibarguen snuck a single through the infield to tie the game (video). Unfortunately, Hill City struck for four runs in the extra frame to squash any notion of a walk-off win for Wilson. With the loss, Wilson falls to 15-20 on the season. 2025 3rd round pick Jacob Morrison will look to snap the Warbirds’ three game losing streak when he takes the mound on Thursday. Morrison (7 IP 0 ER) will look to continue his scoreless streak to start his professional career in his third start. Organizational Scoreboard including starting pitcher info, game times, MiLB TV links, and box scores Current Milwaukee Brewers Organization Batting Stats and Depth Current Milwaukee Brewers Organization Pitching Stats and Depth View the full article

Jesus A. Castro struck out a career-high nine as Lake Elsinore beat Rancho Cucamonga 4-0. The San Antonio Missions got a ninth-inning sacrifice fly for a 4-3 walk-off victory. The Fort Wayne TinCaps gave up a lated lead for a 4-3 walk-off loss to the Cedar Rapids Kernels. The El Paso Chihuahuas gave up seven runs in the sixth inning en route to a 12-4 loss. Chihuahuas Surrender 7-Spot In Setback To Bees Box score Two errors contributed to another huge inning by the opposition as the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas gave up 11 runs over the last four innings in a 12-4 loss to the Salt Lake Bees. The Chihuahuas led 4-2 before coughing up a seven-run sixth inning that featured three consecutive doubles. Anthony Vilar went 3-for-4 with a pair of doubles and a run scored, while Pablo Reyes extended his on-base streak to 29 games by going 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. The Chihuahuas scored all their runs in the fifth inning. Trailing 1-0, Nick Schnell had a leadoff single and Vilar doubled him to third. Jase Bowen plated the first run with a sacrifice fly to tie it. After a strikeout for the second out, Will Wagner hit an opposite-field RBI single to left for a 2-1 lead. Nick Solak walked and Reyes grounded a single to left to bring in Wagner. Reyes and Solak pulled off a double steal, with Solak swiping home to cap the four-run rally. Salt Lake scored once in the fifth before erupting for seven in the sixth and three in the eighth. EP_0513.mp4 Missions Manufacture Walk-Off Victory Over Wind Surge Box score A walk, a steal and two sacrifices, including Francisco Acuna's fly to center field, produced the winning run as the Double-A San Antonio Missions rallied past the Wichita Wind Surge 4-3 for their fifth consecutive victory. Left-handed starter Jagger Haynes struck out seven in 6⅔ innings, the longest outing by a Missions pitcher this year. Haynes had gone a season-high six innings in each of his last two starts and fell one out shy of his career best, set in 2024 with Lake Elsinore. Haynes gave up three runs on five hits and didn't issue a walk. Haynes gave up a pair of runs in the top of the third on a homer, but the Missions came back to tie the game in the bottom half. Acuna singled, Carson Tucker had a one-out single and Kair Murphy reached on a throwing error by the catcher to load the bases. Leandro Cedeno hit a sacrifice fly to right to score Acuna and Tucker came home when the catcher threw wildly to second to tie it 2-2. Wichita took a 3-2 lead in the top of the seventh on a single off Haynes and three straight walks by Missions right-hander Francis Pena. The Missions tied it in the bottom of the eighth when Kai Murphy doubled, went to third on a groundout and scored on Tirso Ornelas' sac fly to right. In the bottom of the ninth, Braedon Karpathios walked and was replaced by pinch-runner Kai Roberts, who stole second. Luis Verdugo bunted Roberts to third and Acuna hit his walk-off sac fly to center. Romeo Sanabria went 3-for-4 with a double and a stolen base, while Tucker went 2-for-4 with a run scored. SA_0513.mp4 TinCaps Have All The Hits, But Not The Win In Walk-Off Loss Box score A standout start by High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps right-hander Maikel Mirrales was undone by a late rally by the host Cedar Rapids Kernels, who earned a 4-3 walk-off victory against closer Clay Edmondson. The TinCaps outhit the Kernels 13-5 and drew seven walks to Cedar Rapids' 1, which led to Fort Wayne stranding 17 runners on base, one shy of a club record. Miralles went a season-best five innings, allowing two hits on four hits and a walk while striking out six, including the final three batters he faced. Miralles, in fact, set down the final seven Kernels in a row. But he left the game trailing 2-1 after the Kernels scored twice in the second and the TinCaps once in the top of the fifth on a Zach Evans triple and Jack Costello's RBI single. Fort Wayne grabbed the lead in the top of the eighth as Lamar King Jr. hit his first triple of the season and Alex McCoy cranked his sixth homer of the season, an opposite-field two-run shot to right for a 3-2 edge. The TinCaps had an opportunity to tack on a run in the top of the ninth after Jack Costello had a leadoff double, but the next three batters were retired. Edmondson entered the game not having allowed a run in 14⅓ innings this season, notching seven saves. An error by Evans, the third baseman, opened the inning and the runner moved to second on a groundout. The next batter hit an RBI double to tie the game. A passed ball by King on a strikeout put runners on the corners, then a sacrifice fly won for the Kernels. King, Padres Mission's No. 10 prospect, did extend his on-base streak to 24 games, while McCoy—Padres Mission's No. 12 prospect—had his second three-hit game of the year. FW_0513.mp4 Jesus Castro Strikes Out 9 As Storm Blank Quakes Box score Right-handed starter Jesus A. Castro struck out a career-high nine and combined with three relievers on a nine-hit shutout as the host Low-A Lake Elsinore Storm blanked the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes 4-0. It was the second shutout of the season for the Storm, who had a 21-0 win over the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes on April 9. The 18-year-old Castro went 5⅔ innings, matching his last outing, giving up seven hits and a walk while surpassing his previous high of eight strikeouts in a game set last year in the Dominican Summer League. He has struck out 16 in his last two games. Castro's nine-strikeout performance came a day after right-hander Winyer Chourio struck out 10 in a 4-3 win over the Quakes. Right-hander Carson Swilling got four outs, striking out three, while left-hander Joseph Herrera and right-hander Vicarte Domingo each pitched a scoreless inning. It was a 0-0 game until the Storm scored in the sixth. Luke Cantwell drew a one-out walk and Ryan Wideman singled to center. Ty Harvey grounded to the third base, who got the forceout at second, but an errant throw by the second baseman trying to complete the double play allowed Cantwell to score. In the seventh, the Storm broke it open. With two outs, George Bilecki singled and Dylan Grego and Bradley Frye walked to load the bases. Cantwell lined a single to center to score Bilecki and Grego for a 3-0 lead and Wideman singled to right to bring in Frye for a 4-0 advantage. LE_0513.mp4 View the full article

TRANSACTIONS RHP Sam Armstrong activated from 7-day IL (AA Wichita) Saints Sentinel St. Paul 3, Columbus 8 Box Score Trent Baker: 3 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K HR: None Multi-hit games: Ryan Kre5dler (2-for-5, 2B, RBI), Orlando Arcia (2-for-4, R), Hendry Mendez (3-for-4, 2B, R, RBI) The Saints let one slip by them on Wednesday. Everything began wonderfully. Starter Trent Baker was in a deep groove, allowing just one hit in his three innings—a knock that was later erased by a double play. He struck out four. St. Paul also found three runs. Hendry Mendrez drove a double to center to plate the game’s first run, and Aaron Sabato quickly singled in his friend to push the lead to two. A Ryan Kreidler screaming double in the following frame brought in a third score. Unfortunately, the Saints' bullpen struggled in the matchup, as the three hurlers following Baker all allowed multiple runs. That successive—or, rather, unsuccessful—streak turned what was a 3-0 advantage into an 8-3 deficit the Saints could never recover from. Daniel Espino pitched in relief for the Clippers on Wednesday. Some of you more avid prospect followers may remember Espino as Cleveland’s first-round pick in the 2019 draft. He was the One With the Golden Arm: the type of talented youngster apparently blessed by the gods with the ability to throw a baseball unlike anyone his age. He struck out 152 across 91 2/3 innings in 2021. That was his final remotely full season: Espino suffered chronic shoulder problems not long after 2022 started and missed all of 2023 and 2024. He’s back, but the magic is gone. A tragedy of the limitations of the human body. Clippers shortstop Angel Genoa ranks as the 47th-best prospect in MLB. He singled once in four trips to the plate. Wind Surge Wisdom Wichita 3, San Antonio 4 Box Score Eli Jones: 5 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K HR: Billy Amick (10) Multi-hit games: Maddux Houghton (2-for-4, 2B, R) The Wind Surge were walked off on Wednesday. Tough luck for Eli Jones. The righty was excellent, striking out four in a hyper-efficient outing. Yet, his catcher—someone he’s supposed to be in cahoots with—committed a throwing error on back-to-back plays in the third, turning what could have been a ho-hum frame into a two-run quagmire that soiled an otherwise outstanding start. Wichita matched the runs with a gargantuan blast off Billy Amick’s bat in the bottom of the third. Good luck trying to see where the ball lands. Amick earned another RBI with a bases-loaded walk in the seventh, but San Antonio tied the game in the eighth. The ninth went no better. A walk begat a stolen base, which begat a sacrifice bunt, which begat a sacrifice fly to cap the rare no-hit run. Once again, this author is urging the good readers of this report to take notice of Alejandro Hidalgo. Yes, his ERA on the season is 6.75. So what. He now has 33 strikeouts in just 18 2/3 innings. That’s Hader-ish. There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. But it sure is fascinating. Though the Missions are the team of uber-prospect Ethan Salas, the best youngster in this match was outfielder Braedon Karpathios, ranked 10th in the system. He walked once in four plate appearances. Kernels Nuggets Cedar Rapids 4, Fort Wayne 3 Box Score Miguelangel Boadas: 2 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 2 K HR: None Multi-hit games: None The Kernels inexplicably won on Wednesday. Inexplicable in that the team was thoroughly outhit; struck out 11 times while taking just one walk; and only enjoyed six opportunities with runners in scoring position while their opponent had 19 such tries. In all likelihood, they should have lost. Yet, runs aren’t theoretical, and the nerds with their algorithms and abacuses sometimes suffer while watching the chaos of competition overrule the conceptual. Cedar Rapids scored their first two runs off a Jay Thomason double in the second. Fort Wayne answered with a run in the fifth, then struck again in the eighth to plate a pair and take the lead. Khadim Diaw reached on an error to start the ninth, which ushered in the frame that would win the game for the Kernels. Yasser Mercedes hit a mild grounder beyond the grasp of the TinCaps first baseman—an RBI single for all players, a two-bagger for the electric Mercedes. Then, a bizzarity. TinCaps pitcher Clay Edmonson, a sidewinder, fooled two people with his pitch: the batter, Rayne Doncon, who struck out looking; and his catcher, Lamar King Jr., who expected a different pitch, and whose attempt to adjust to the unexpected offering resulted in a ricochet into no man’s land. And that’s how a backwards K results in a man standing on first (Mercedes also advanced to third.) Miguel Briceno sent a sacrifice fly to right to win the game. The aforementioned King Jr. ranks as the 14th-best prospect in the Padres system; he collected two hits in five at-bats, tripling once. Mussel Matters Fort Myers 10, Bradenton 6 Box Score Merit Jones: 4 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 5 K HR: Quentin Young (4), Quinn McDaniel (1) Multi-hit games: Quinn McDaniel (3-for-5, HR, 2 3B, 3 R, 5 RBI), Jayson Bass (2-for-4, 2B, R, RBI, BB), Bryan Acuña (2-for-4, 2B, R, RBI, BB) The Mighty Mussels smothered the Murauders on Wednesday. The Twins added Quinn McDaniel to their organization on Sunday; on Wednesday, he authored one of the finest hitting performances we’re likely to see from a player this season. He tripled in the third off the wall (and the center fielder’s head). Then he tripled again in the sixth. And, finally, he homered in the ninth (albeit off a position player). That’s one way to make an impression on your new teammates. Though McDaniel enjoyed the better night, perhaps the single best swing came from Quentin Young, who obliterated a 111 MPH liner off the beer stand in center field. You don’t see many 23-degree launch angle shots to that part of any ballpark. Fort Myers pitchers struck out 14 in the game. Merit Jones whiffed five, then Jake Murray K’d two, Mitch Mueller beguiled four, and Mike McKenna ended matters by mowing down the side in the ninth. The Murauders are members of the Pirates system. Though Seth Hernandez sits one level higher, the team nonetheless offered their 17th-ranked prospect on Wednesday, third baseman Murf Gray. He singled once in five at-bats. TWINS DAILY PLAYERS OF THE DAY Twins Daily Minor League Pitcher of the Day – Eli Jones Twins Daily Minor League Hitter of the Day – Quinn McDaniel PROSPECT SUMMARY Here’s a look at how the Twins Daily Top 20 Twins Prospects performed: #2 – Kaelen Culpepper (St. Paul) - 1-3, R, 2 BB, 2 K #5 – Eduardo Tait (Cedar Rapids) - 1-4, 2B, 3 K #10 – Gabriel Gonzalez (St. Paul) - 0-5, 3 K #13 – Hendry Mendez (St. Paul) - 3-4, 2B, R, RBI #14 – Quentin Young (Fort Myers) - 1-5, HR, R, 2 RBI, 2 K #15 – Brandon Winokur (Cedar Rapids) - 0-4, 3 K #17 – C.J. Culpepper (St. Paul) - 1 IP, 3 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 2 K #18 – James Ellwanger (Fort Myers) - DNP #19 – Khadim Diaw (Cedar Rapids) - 0-4, R, K #20 – Kyle DeBarge (Wichita) - 0-3, K THURSDAY’S PROBABLE STARTERS St. Paul @ Columbus (6:37 PM) - LHP Aaron Rozek (0-0, 0.00 ERA) Wichita @ San Antonio (7:05 PM) - RHP Sam Armstrong Fort Wayne @ Cedar Rapids (6:35 PM) - RHP Ivran Romero Fort Myers @ Bradenton (5:30 PM) - Ramiro Villanueva (0-0, 0.90 ERA) FCL Rays @ FCL Twins (11:00 AM) - TBD View the full article

On the night when they learned they were likely to be without top pitching prospect Robby Snelling , the Marlins were in desperate need of a feel-good game to get back on the winning path. Snelling, currently the club's second-ranked prospect, would be placed on the injured list with a UCL sprain. It is yet to be determined whether he will undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery. Thanks to a nine-run outburst from the bats and a voluminous outing from Max Meyer, the Marlins got just that in their 9-5 win over the Minnesota Twins, a much-needed reprieve after being two-hit by Bailey Ober in the series opener. Making his first career Major League start in his home state and with Byron Buxton at his craw, Meyer gutted it through 5.2 innings of four-run ball in the winning effort. Now 3-0 to begin the season, Meyer has matched his previous career high in wins. "He grinded through this one a bit...he's come so far as a starter and now has many weapons in his arsenal," noted manager Clayton McCullough. On the evening, Meyer generated 22 whiffs on the 46 swings against him (48%), 11 of which came on behalf of his slider. As a result, the former first-round pick netted a season-high nine strikeouts. Four of Meyer's whiffs came on a retooled changeup, a pitch Meyer noted he and pitching coach Daniel Moskos were tinkering with pitch grips. "Felt like any other game this year, honestly," reflected Meyer on his first start in his home state. Facing the aforementioned Buxton, the first pitch Meyer threw in his home state landed in the left field stands of Target Field for Buxton's fourteenth home run of the season. Two innings later, again sitting on the first pitch, Buxton doubled up on Meyer for his fifteenth on the year, blasting his second home run in as many trips to the plate. At the plate, the Marlins got off to a fast start, with each of the first five Miami hitters reaching base against Simeon Woods-Richardson (3+ IP, 8 R). Of the 91 pitchers to throw at least 40 innings to this point in the season, none have a higher ERA than Woods-Richardson's 7.71, Following a two-run top of the first, Owen Caissie would break the game open for Miami when he sent his third home run of the season into the Twins bullpen in left-center in the top of the second. However, it would be the team's four-run fourth inning that proved the difference, as Joe Mack, Xavier Edwards, and Liam Hicks all authored run-scoring hits. Hicks became the fourth player in franchise history to collect at least 38 RBI in his first 40 games of the season. With the win, the Marlins improve to 20-23, even record-wise with third-place Philadelphia in the NL East. Notables - Pete Fairbanks, the club's closer and big-ticket free agent addition for the Marlins, was activated off the injured list (right thumb). - Leo Jiménez had three hits in the win on Wednesday, marking the second time in his career he's done so, Looking Ahead The Marlins will bid farewell to the Twins in 2026 in Thursday's season finale. Braxton Garrett (4.03 ERA) will make his first Major League appearance since June 17, 2024. First pitch from Target Field is slated for 1:40 EST. View the full article

Box Score SP: Simeon Woods-Richardson - 3 IP, 7 H, 6 ER, 1 BB, 1 K (88 pitches, 48 strikes (49% strikes) Home Runs: Byron Buxton (15), Kody Clemens (4) 3 WPA: Simeon Woods-Richardson (-0.47), Luke Keaschall (-0.12), Matt Wallner (-0.07) Win Probability Chart (via FanGraphs) We’re in Our ‘Fix the Starter’ Era After an absolute gem from Bailey Ober on Tuesday, the Twins handed the ball to Simeon Woods-Richardson heading into the night, still searching for his first win. Almost immediately, you could tell this would not be that night. He issued a walk to Xavier Edwards, and an error by Luke Keaschall on a ground ball by Liam Hicks doubled the trouble. Otto Lopez followed with an RBI single that should also have produced an out, and Kyle Stowers walked to load the bases. Connor Norby then hit into a double play that still brought in a run, giving Miami an early 2–0 lead. Victor Caratini threw out Jakob Marsee on an attempted steal to end the inning, but the defense had let Woods Richardson down—and he had done nothing to help himself. Minnesota answered right away. Byron Buxton led off the bottom of the first with a first-pitch solo home run, cutting the deficit to 2-1. It was a skyscraper, a high pitch Buxton hit very hard but clipped the bottom half of, but which still easily carried into the bleachers down the left-field line. But Miami kept applying pressure in the second inning, breaking through again with a two-run homer that stretched the lead to 4-1. Woods Richardson never really found a groove, and in fact, he hasn't found one all season. While the pitching struggled to settle in, Buxton kept the Twins alive. He struck again in the third inning, launching another first-pitch home run, giving the Twins their second run. After being burned on a high four-seamer, Max Meyer tried a low sinker. The result was different, in that Buxton hit a screaming liner this time. It was the same, in that he circled the bases with his 15th dinger of the year. Could he hit 40 before 2026 is over? It's absolutely in play. New Pitchers, Same Old Problems The first four batters of the top of the fourth inning reached against Woods Richardson, with two more scoring. Derek Shelton turned to his much-rested bullpen, but not the way he'd hoped he might be able to. Travis Adams entered in relief, but could do little damage control. A single through the drawn-in infield scored two more runs. Adams closed the barn door, but the horses were long gone. The Twins scored twice in the bottom of the fifth, on a well-placed double by Josh Bell, but Adams couldn't keep the game within slam range. Edwards tripled past the hopelessly immobile Matt Wallner in the sixth and came home on a fielder's choice, stretching the lead to 9-4 Miami. Justin Topa took over and minimized damage, though he hardly looked dominant in his first outing since having his own doors blown off a week ago. So It Goes… By the time the game reached the later innings, what had been a long, grinding contest finally began to settle into a quicker rhythm as both sides cycled through the bullpen. Luis García came out in the eighth inning and mopped up the mess. Tristan Gray made the second of two good catches on pop-ups behind third base; he looks more like the team's short-term regular third baseman every day. Kody Clemens offered one last jolt of life in the bottom of the eighth with a garbage-time home run. If he and Bell can get going again at the plate, the team will have a moral victory to take away from the loss. What’s Next? The Twins will close out against the interleague series with a rubber match tomorrow in an afternoon game at 12:40 PM CT, before the Brewers come over to continue the nine-game homestand. The Twins are expected to promote Triple-A starter Zebby Matthews for his first outing of the year. After rookie Robbie Snelling landed on the injured list, the Marlins will also reach into their farm system, for Braxton Garrett. Postgame Interviews Coming soon. Bullpen Availability Chart View the full article

Miami Marlins starting pitcher Robby Snelling was placed on the injured list due to a left elbow UCL sprain, the team announced prior to Wednesday's game against the Minnesota Twins. The corresponding move was to activate closer Pete Fairbanks off the IL. Manager Clayton McCullough announced that Braxton Garrett, who was in Triple-A, will get the start for the series finale on Thursday in Snelling's place. Fish On First's No. 2 prospect, Snelling made just one start at the big league level, going five innings allowing three runs on five hits, four walks and one strikeout. All three runs came in the first inning, then proceeded to throw four shutout innings. Snelling threw his pitch design on Tuesday and reported discomfort, per McCullough. "You work your entire life for the opportunity to become a Major League player, you come up, make your Major League debut and then for something to pop up like this very shortly after, it's disappointing," McCullough told reporters in Minnesota. "Robby is a very hard and tough young man, and whichever way this goes, he'll come back for it." Someone who went through a similar sequence of events was Max Meyer in 2022. Meyer made his Major League debut against the Philadelphia Phillies and after facing just one hitter in his second start, landed on the injured due to a right elbow sprain, later resulting in undergoing Tommy John surgery and missing the 2023 season. Fairbanks, who landed on the injured list due to right nerve irritation, is activated as the corresponding move for Snelling. In 10 appearances this season, he has a 10.00 ERA, 3.34 FIP, 13.00 K/9, 4.00 BB/9 and five saves. He is just five saves away from reaching 100 in his career. Starting on Thursday will be Braxton Garrett, who was supposed to start for Triple-A Jacksonville on Wednesday, but was scratched. No corresponding move has been made and the move to call-up Garrett has not been made official yet. Garrett, who's 2024 season was cut short due to left elbow UCL surgery, competed for a spot in the Marlins rotation during spring training, but lost out on the final spot to Janson Junk. In six Triple-A starts this season, Garrett has a 2.30 ERA, 4.86 FIP, 9.19 K/9 and 4.31 BB/9. He also threw a no-hitter in his fourth start of the season. In his most recent start, he allowed four runs (three earned) on four hits, three walks and six strikeouts. Five of his six strikeouts were swinging. "Just kept his head down, continued to throw and get built up after a lengthy absence of his own," McCullough said. "Was throwing the ball well in Jacksonville and he certainly is no stranger to performing at the Major League level. While disappointed for Robby, Brax has certainly pitched well here in the past and earned the chance to come back up here and be part of our our rotation. Expect Brax to fill it up, compete very well. He knows how to pitch. He knows how to change speeds, move the ball around, so he'll get to start tomorrow." Overall, his fastball is averaging 91.7 mph, generating a 10.5% whiff rate. His breaking pitches on the other hand, have been great. The slider, which he is throwing 22.8% of the time, is generating 41.9% whiff and has the highest psStuff+ amongst his pitches, per Prospect Savant. For Garrett, this will mark his first start in the big leagues since June of 2024. Expect a Marlins reliever to be optioned on Thursday morning to make room for him on the active roster. View the full article