MLB Player News

The Cardinals just keep on winning extra-inning games. They’ve won in extras on back-to-back nights and three times in their last three tries. Coincidentally, all three have come against the Brewers. Baker played the hero in this one with his 10th inning single off Hoby Milner to set up the victory. Baker has shown impressive power with two homers, a double, and nine RBI in just 19 at-bats since being called up, but isn’t much more than a short-side platoon partner with Alec Burleson at DH right now.

This was the ‘TJ Friedl’ show as he opened the game by homering off a hanging curveball from Grant Holmes in a game the Reds would never trail. He took Holmes deep again in his next at-bat and this was his first multi-home run game since August 14th of last season. While his tools will never jump off the page, he’s still hitting lead-off nearly every day for the Reds.

Pagán did well here to put yesterday’s blown save behind him. He worked around a two-out single from Michael Harris to set the Braves down with ease and is running a 31.7% strikeout rate, which would be his highest since way back in 2019. The team clearly still trusts him to be their guy in the ninth inning.

Baldwin’s solo home run in the fifth inning started the Braves comeback that would eventually be for naught, but he has managed to keep hitting despite falling into a back-up role since Sean Murphy returned from injury. He’s only playing one of every three games – very standard for a back-up catcher – yet has maintained some relevance in two-catcher formats with his .796 OPS on the season and three home runs in his last 15 starts.

TJ Friedl burned Holmes for a lead-off home run on a hanging curveball and not much came easily after that. Friedl got Holmes for another homer in his next at-bat and in all, he’d given up four runs through the first four innings. He did manage to pitch into the sixth inning though and still forced 12 swings-and-misses, but that curveball command was spotty all game and forced him to lean on his slider a bit more than he would’ve liked. He’s set for a two-start week against the Nationals and then Red Sox in Fenway Park.

Castillo heads to Triple-A Norfolk as quality extra starting pitching depth for the Orioles, who are struggling to find solutions for the back of their rotation which currently features struggling veterans Charlie Morton and Kyle Gibson. The 30-year-old righty holds a career 5.06 ERA in five appearances (two starts) in the majors.

Pennington has been jettisoned from Baltimore’s 40-man roster to make room for the club to acquire Luis F. Castillo from the Mariners. The 27-year-old lefty was claimed off waivers last week from the Rangers.

Phillies manager Rob Thomson told reporters following Realmuto’s early exit from Wednesday’s contest after fouling a ball off his left foot that his level of concern is basically zero before adding that he won’t even need to undergo precautionary X-rays. It doesn’t sound like a serious concern for now.

Spotted a huge lead early, Sánchez barely broke a sweat in this quality start and victory against the Rays’ paltry lineup. He didn’t force many swings-and-misses, but the Rays literally didn’t make any dangerous contact all game. Yes, literally: of their 14 balls in play, 12 were hit on the ground and the other two were simple pop-ups. It’s nice that he seems to have put the forearm injury scare of a few weeks ago behind him and he’s scheduled to face the Pirates and Cardinals in what should be nice a two-start week coming up.

Has Turner’s power finally returned? His 107.8 mph home run was the third hardest ball he’s hit all season and his fourth inning single was hit harder than 100 mph as well. Other than the power, he’s had an excellent season to this point with a .307 batting average and eight stolen bases as a key cog in the heart of the Phillies’ talented lineup.

The Phillies were all over Baz in their third time around the order. They wound up scoring five runs during that fateful fourth inning which started with a walk, single, fielder’s choice, and safety squeeze before Bryson Stott, Trea Turner, and Bryce Harper had consecutive base hits to chase him from the game. All three of those batted balls were hit at least 100 mph and it felt like they were seeing him very clearly by that point. Turner himself had two batted balls over 100 mph, with the other being a home run. While Baz’s velocity was up, his command was off and he left far too many knuckle-curves in the middle of the zone. Baz now has an ugly 4.93 ERA after this poor start and he’ll have to get his command back before his next scheduled start against the Blue Jays.