MLB Player News

Black will manage the Rockies for a ninth season. The 67-year-old has more wins than any other skipper in the club’s history; even with a record of just 537-657 over the first eight years. It’s not likely that W-L gets any better in 2025.

Michael King matched Liberatore through six, but Liberatore still got the win due to a Masyn Winn RBI triple in the top of the seventh that every MLB right fielder besides Nick Castellanos and Joc Pederson would have caught. It makes Liberatore 2-1 with a 4.07 ERA in eight starts. That’s solid, but given that he’s well below average in terms of generating strikeouts and groundouts, he still seems like a weak bet going forward. He’ll face the A’s next week.

O’Brien has been a little shaky of late, but that wasn’t the case tonight in a 10-pitch inning. He struck out one of the three batters he faced, and he’s now 11-for-13 closing out games.

The one hit was a solo homer from Alec Burleson. King struck out six while allowing two runs or fewer for the sixth time in eight starts. In spite of that, the Padres dropped to 3-5 in his outings. He’ll face the Brewers on the road next time out.

The Padres again used Fernando Tatis Jr. at second in order to play Castellanos in right field tonight, and it again made very little sense. Castellanos missed a ball that Tatis easily would have caught to produce the Cardinals’ second run of the game in the seventh in what wound up being a 2-1 loss. It might be worth it if Castellanos were hitting, but he’s at .183/.224/.282 in 78 plate appearances.

The 25-year-old southpaw gave up four runs on six hits over 5 1/3 innings in a losing effort against the Rays on Thursday. With Ranger Suarez not expected to require a trip to the injured list and Sonny Gray back in the fold, there was simply no longer room for Bennett to remain in the rotation at the moment. The Red Sox will make a corresponding move on Friday.

Brown has been outstanding in a multi-inning role out of the Cubs’ bullpen this season, registering a 2.10 ERA, 1.01 WHIP and a 24/8 K/BB ratio over 25 2/3 innings in his 12 appearances. He has already pitched twice this week though, throwing 24 and 25 pitches on Saturday and Monday respectively, so it’s unlikely that he’ll work much deeper than three or four innings on Friday. For that reason, he’s unlikely to deliver much value as a streaming option for fantasy purposes.

Caminero belted a two-run home run off of Ryan Watson in the ninth inning to extend the Tampa Bay lead to four runs. It was his 10th home run of the season, and gives him 18 RBI. Obviously, that’s not the RBI total you were hoping for with double-digit home runs, but the Rays have been hitting him second against right-handed pitching, so we may need to lower our expectations for his RBI totals this season. The power is clearly going to play, even with him no longer playing his home games in a minor league stadium.

Story also struck out twice, which remains a problem, but he does now have hits in five of six games in May and nine of his last 11 games. In those 11 games, Story is 11-for-45 (.244) with five runs scored and two steals, so it’s still not the production fantasy managers were expecting coming off his impressive 2025 season, but it’s nice to see some hits finally starting to fall.

Jax struck out three and walked one while throwing 59 pitches in this one. The former reliever showed off a six-pitch mix in this one, using five pitches at least 14 percent of the time. He threw plenty of strikes with his sinker and four-seamer and was able to use his changeup for whiffs against both righties and lefties. However, no other pitches really missed many bats, and he had just a 10 percent swinging strike rate. We’ll need to see a little more strikeout upside from Jax if he’s going to be relied on in fantasy leagues. He should be able to push to five innings next week against the Blue Jays, but we’d hold off on starting him for now.

The Astros already have an open spot on their active roster after optioning Jason Alexander to Triple-A following Wednesday’s ballgame. VanWey, 27, posted an underwhelming 5.74 ERA, 1.53 WHIP and a 19/6 K/BB ratio over 15 2/3 innings in his first 15 appearances out of the bullpen at Triple-A Sugar Land this season.