MLB Player News

First-year GM Dana Brown made the call. Firkus was finishing up his first year as an assistant GM in his 11th season with the Astros. Goodrum was hired away from the Brewers two years ago to oversee player development.

Stewart took this game over. First, with a two-run shot to tie it up in the second inning. It was an impressive piece of hitting by Stewart who smacked a low-and-away fastball from Alan Rangel for an opposite field homer. Then, he was in the middle of the Reds’ back-to-back-to-back shots in the fourth . Those two blasts gave him 19 on the season, which broke Frank Robinson’s 70 year old record for the most home runs by a Reds rookie before the All-Star break. That is one heck of an accomplishment for the first time All-Star who looks like a budding star.

A rare difficult outing for Burns, he didn’t get through a single inning cleanly and felt like he was battling himself all night. His fastball was extremely erratic with just a 44% zone rate and far too many of them wound up at the eyes of the Phillies’ hitters. That issue got worse as the game went on and he wound up being fortunate to get out of this start with just the three runs on his ledger. That’s the mark of a great pitcher though: giving your team a chance to win when you don’t have your best stuff. He’ll head into the All-Star break after an excellent first half with 11 wins, a 2.54 ERA, 118 strikeouts, and 37 walks through 102 2/3 innings.

The ball was flying in Cincinnati tonight. Schwarber’s ninth inning home run was the seventh of this game and his league-leading 32nd of the season. It’s been a banner first half for the slugger with 58 RBI, a .254 batting average, and .945 OPS to go along with those 32 dingers.

Rangel didn’t have a great day here. He was a bit predictable with first-pitch fastballs followed by changeups and sliders. The problem was that he struggled to locate either of those secondaries. So, he often had to battle through tough at-bats and gave up two home runs. After getting to 90 pitches in each of his last two outings, he was yanked before reaching 70 here. Funny enough, this game spun out here soon thereafter when reliever Tanner Banks gave up back-to-back-to-back home runs. Rangel remains a depth option with intriguing stuff but poor command.

He struck out four. Bennett is on an excellent roll, having allowed a total of three runs over 27 innings in his last four starts. In eight starts overall, he’s 4-3 with a 2.64 ERA and a 35/8 K/BB in 47 2/3 innings. It’d be nice to see more strikeouts before giving him a stamp-of-approval as a full rest-of-season option, but he’s in a groove right now.

Martin walked two and threw a run-scoring wild pitch in a three-run third innings and then gave up four singles in a two-run fourth. That took him up to 84 pitches, and the White Sox decided against bringing him back out for the fifth. It’s just the fourth time in 18 starts that martin has allowed more than three runs. However, all four of those have come in his last nine outings. He closes out the first half 9-4 with a 3.41 ERA, and he seems like a shaky bet for the rest of the season.

Cheng has held his own in the majors as Boston’s fourth option at shortstop, going 6-for-22 with four RBI since being called up on June 26. He’ll still probably lose his spot if Trevor Story is able to return before the end of the month.

Contreras expressed optimism that he doesn’t believe he’s dealing with anything more than a bruise after fouling a ball off his left foot during Wednesday’s contest against the White Sox. It doesn’t sound like he’ll undergo any imaging at this time. He’ll continue playing until the appeal process is complete regarding his seven-game suspension stemming from last week’s on-field incident against the Nationals.

Murakami has gone 2-for-7 in a pair of rehab contests since kicking off a rehab assignment earlier this week. He figures to make it back to Chicago’s lineup at some point later this week. He’s been out with a hamstring strain since late May.

Pitching on his birthday, McGreevy turned in a gem. After a bit of chaos to start the game, he retired 17 of the next 18 hitters he faced. The only one who reached was thrown out stealing the McGreevy barely broke a sweat during the middle innings of this one. He was eventually pulled after allowing two hits in the seventh and one of those inherited runners scored as the only blemish on his ledger. As usual, he mixed his deep, seven-pitch repertoire beautifully and mostly hung around near the edges of the plate. This was a fantastic close to an amazing first with a 3.01 ERA, 66 strikeouts, and 23 walks through 101 2/3 innings.