MLB Player News

Campos has allowed seven runs -- five earned -- in 5 2/3 innings this season at the major league level. It might be a while before the righty gets another chance.

This was an impressive start. Cavalli forced multiple swing-and-misses with all five of his pitches and his knuckle-curve was especially sharp, forcing eight. That pitch is his make-or-break offering and when it’s on, he is nasty. Cavalli did get to relax with his lineup spotting him a two-run lead in the first inning and eight-run margin in the fourth. After they blew the game open, he threw 24 consecutive strikes to finish off his outing and complete six innings for the second time this season. That’s sensational in-game awareness. He’s also struck out 10 batters in consecutive starts and will try to stay hot with a two-start week on deck against the Twins and Marlins.

Now this is how to pour it on in a blowout win. Mead didn’t have a hit in eight days, but was in the lineup here with the left-handed pitching David Peterson on the mound and certainly got his. Just as a reminder as to how small the samples still are this early in the season, Mead entered this game with a .175 batting average and .652 OPS. After it, he left with a .226 batting average and .798 OPS.

Well, it’s not his fault. Soto has been locked in since coming off the injured list as the Mets’ freefall continues. He doubled in his first at-bat here, homered in his second, and fell a triple short of the cycle by the time his squad turned in another embarrassing performance. In all, he had five hard-hit balls and looks like even this team-wide catastrophe cannot stop him from putting up huge numbers.

Peterson’s horrible season just keeps getting worse. The first two batters of the game got hits off him and both came around to score. However, the real avalanche came in the fourth inning. Peterson walked three – including one to push a run home with the bases loaded on his final batter – and allowed two hits. All in all, two runs came home. Then Sean Manaea promptly hit his first batter before allowing a loud grand slam to Brady House. Even the context of two inherited runners scoring does little to help our opinion of Peterson who now has a 6.53 ERA and may not have a safe spot in the Mets’ rotation moving forward.

This was the good version of Pallante. His slider forced seven swings-and-misses as he dotted in beautifully low and below the zone and played it well off his sinker for the righties and fastball for the lefties. He also got the Pirates to hit into lots of harmless contact, whether it was lazy pop-ups or ground balls. He’ll take a 3.73 ERA into his next start against the Brewers.

The box score won’t tell you that Nick Yorke hit what was nearly a walk-off home run off O’Brien with two outs in the ninth before Nathan Church leapt up to rob it. Watching on hopelessly, O’Brien could not believe his eyes. If that ball wasn’t caught, O’Brien may have blown his third save in his last four tries. It was though and O’Brien’s eight saves trail only Mason Miller and David Bednar so far this season.

One the league’s sneakiest best run producers at the minute, Burleson’s two-run homer here gave him 22 RBI on the season so far. That put him right between Munetaka Murakami and Mike Trout, who’ve combined to hit 22 home runs. This home run was just Burleson’s fourth. The top of this Cardinals’ order has been far better than expected and Burleson is reaping the rewards of taking so many plate appearances with runners on base.

Horwitz breathed some life into his club with his fifth inning solo shot when they were down 3-0. The Pirates’ offense still stalled after that, but Horwitz has heated up of late. He’s hit all three of his home runs this season in his last 15 games and has a .919 OPS over that stretch with more walks than strikeouts. If nothing else, he’ll always be able to crush right-handed pitching.

Watching Chandler so far this season has been like pulling teeth. He’ll blow a hitter away with a 99 mph fastball at the letters, then miss with his next pitch by about two feet. It’s frustrating to see a pitcher with such good stuff be so inconsistent with their command. At least his fastball has been in the zone more – it had a 69% strike rate here – but his misses with it are so bad that hitters are rarely chasing it and his secondaries remain unpredictable. He’ll try again to right the ship in a two-start week coming up against the Diamondbacks and Giants.

Olson is locked in right now. He came to the plate with his Braves down one against Kenley Jansen and smashed a walk-off, two-run shot. Earlier in this game, he also had batted balls hit at 111.5 mph and 108.9 mph. Again, he is on fire with a .306 batting average, 1.087 OPS, and nine home runs through nearly one month of play.