Murakami (hamstring) officially back from IL

The A’s will set their rotation to start the second half as Jump on Friday, J.T. Ginn on Saturday, and Jacob Lopez on Sunday in their three-game set against the Nationals. Jump, 3-4 with a 3.51 ERA, struggled a bit towards the beginning of July but bounced back against the White Sox. He’s definitely a viable mixed-league starter when he’s not pitching at home.

They condition this with the idea that he’ll need to show his injured fingers are fine and he’ll need to keep producing for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre when he returns. But in their eyes, the Yankees have no confidence in Anthony Volpe or José Caballero at this point. They also quote Yankees GM Brian Cashman as saying that Lombard “might be a choice at some point.”

Both left-handers can become free agents at the end of the season, and the Mets aren’t close to the playoffs. We may not see a huge sell-off from the Mets while they look to compete again in 2027, but pending free agents should definitely be on the radar.

The Brewers, at 59-37, are in no jeopardy of losing a playoff spot at this point. Misiorowski is already within 31 innings of his total from last year in the minors, majors and postseason. We don’t want to read too much into this — all we know for sure is that Misiorowski isn’t expected to start in the first series after the break, but it’s definitely possible that Misiorowski is managed carefully down the stretch of the season and has lower pitch and inning limits ahead of the postseason. McCalvy writes that Misiorowski is expected to have “an extended breather over the All-Star break and into the second half.” We knew about the All-Star break, but it’s worth noting that based on that quote he may miss some time early in the second half of the season as well.

Dipoto mentioned that Gabe Speier, Matt Brash and Cooper Criswell being hurt has left the Mariners “operating short for quite a while now.” He also said the market is slow-to-develop. The Mariners seem like they have a surplus of starting pitching to deal from if they need to make a deal. In contrast to the bullpen situation, Dipoto said the Mariners hitters just need to “do the things that they have historically done.”

Donovan batted leadoff and was the designated hitter. He’s been on the injured list with a strained groin since May 17th, so Donovan will likely need a few weeks of games before he’s back up in Seattle. How the playing time shakes out now that Cole Young and Colt Emerson are both up will be the other question that needs to be answered.

This suggests the A’s aren’t expecting Nick Kurtz back in the near future. White, 23, was the Athletics’ second round pick in 2024. The corner infielder was hitting .303/.345/.489 in 55 games since moving up to Triple-A Las Vegas, but while that sounds pretty good, it’s just average considering the environment. For instance, Joey Meneses and Brian Serven, both of whom were sent down by the A’s today, had about 100 points of OPS on him. Henry Bolte’s OPS before his callup was 1.076. White will likely play mostly first for now. Once Kurtz is back, he could move to third, depending on how he’s performing. He’s probably not going to amass mixed-league value initially.

The Cardinals will have 48 hours to add Blewett to their 40-man or make him a free agent. Blewett showed off a nice little velocity boost this spring, but it wasn’t enough to win a bullpen job, and he has a 5.18 ERA for Triple-A Memphis in spite of a nice 63/19 K/BB in 48 2/3 innings.

Basso is back for a third stint in the pen after giving up six runs over 4 1/3 innings in the first two. He’s been throwing his Barry Zito-like curveball a less of late, instead focusing on his cutter to go along with his four-seamer. It doesn’t really seem to have paid off, as he was sporting a 5.11 ERA in Triple-A. He’ll need to take a step forward here in the second half if he wants to stick on the 40-man this winter.