MLB Player News

Jacob has been shipped back to the minors to make room for ace Michael King to return from the injured list for Tuesday’s game against the Reds. The 27-year-old righty has operated in middle relief for the Padres this season, compiling a serviceable 5.13 ERA across 33 1/3 innings over 29 appearances.

Rojas just made his season debut after missing time with a hamstring injury, so it’ll probably be a brief stay for him. Funderburk, who has allowed seven runs — two earned — in nine innings this year, will likely miss two or three days.

Dingler was already on the short list of 2026’s best hitters in terms of xwOBA a week ago, and now his actual numbers are catching up. With three homers in six games, he’s hitting .302/.380/.603 for the year. He has as many barrels as strikeouts this year, amassing 12 of each through 73 plate appearances.

Valdez’s strikeout rate has been way down — he’d fanned 12.5 percent of the batters he faced coming into the day — so it was nice to see him miss some bats today. He had 11 whiffs on the 29 curves and changeups he threw and then 22 called strikes on his sinker to finish up with a 39 percent CSW on the day. Valdez is 2-1 with a 3.30 ERA, and he’s set to get the Reds next.

It’s not good, but this isn’t nearly the same sort of disaster as his previous start against the Twins. Crochet looked fine for four innings today and then struck out the first two batters of the fifth before a homer, a walk, a single and another homer. Crochet’s velocity was back to his season norm today, even though it was a cold and rainy afternoon in Boston, and he struck out eight. It was just a standard off day, as opposed to whatever the heck it was that happened when he gave up 11 runs in 1 2/3 innings six days ago.

Pérez is now 1-for-26 after not having any good at-bats today, but it’s still encouraging that he’s struck out only twice since his recall and 11 of his 23 balls in play have been hard-hit. Also, his one hit was an eighth-inning, go-ahead home run. The Tigers figure to stick with him.

Weathers’ velocity was down on a a rainy, 42-degree day at Yankee Stadium, but the Royals still had no fun trying to hit him. Weathers had 14 whiffs on 43 swings, and the slider that he’s barely used this year finished off three strikeouts and had a 55 percent CSW on the 20 times he threw it. The win is Weathers’ first with the Yankees. He has a 3.18 ERA and a 36/8 K/BB in 28 1/3 innings over five starts. He’ll face the Astros on Saturday.

He’s the first pitcher to walk eight in a game since James Paxton on Apr. 14, 2024. Considering that he gave up three homers in addition to all of those walks, this really could have been even worse. Ragans’ velocity was down just a tad today, but that should have been expected on a 42-degree day. There were no good quotes from him or the manager after the game on what they think went wrong. It’s worth wondering if his thumb might be causing issues after he took a comebacker off it and left his Apr. 8 outing. We wouldn’t panic just yet, but it’s been ugly so far. He’ll take an 0-4 record and a 6.00 ERA into his next start against the Angels.

Instead of going with their righties, the Yankees started both Grisham and Ben Rice against Ragans today and both took the southpaw deep. It was the third time Grisham has started in the Yankees’ eight games against lefties this season, though one of the previous two starts was just against a lefty opener. He’s 2-for-14 against southpaws, but that comes with a nice 4/4 K/BB.

No runs scored or RBI for Witt today. Elias Díaz tried to score from first on Witt’s double in the sixth, but he was thrown out pretty easily with the Royals down 7-0 in the game.

In addition to those two hits, Vargas also drew a pair of walks. The 26-year-old has gone deep three times, but even with a four-reach game, his slash of .173/.315/.360 leaves much to be desired. The 26-year-old should continue to see those numbers bump up, even if that’s partially due to the fact that it’s hard to imagine them getting much worse.