MLB Player News

If you like watching pitchers generating swings and misses, Reds-Rangers was the game for you. Leiter and Chase Burns combined for 39 of them in their time on the bump, with Leiter responsible for 18 of those. The 25-year-old has whiffed 17 over 11 innings to begin the year with a solid 2.45 ERA to go with them. He has an intriguing matchup coming over the weekend against Roki Sasaki and the Dodgers.

Despite going 0-for-17 in March, Jung is currently hitting .299 on the season. He’s at .371/.430/.671 with four homers in April alone. Statcast thinks the slugging percentage is mostly a mirage, but it is really encouraging that he’s striking out just 17.5 percent of the time this year. His career rate coming into the season was 27.9 percent.

Gore struck out seven, but this was a mediocre, inefficient outing in which he needed 106 pitches to get his 15 outs. Still, at least now that he’s working in front of a quality defense and throwing to a solid catcher, his weaker outings look more like this instead of the three-inning, six-run affairs during his Nationals career. Gore will make his next start in Detroit.

Latz has seemed like a candidate for saves in the Texas bullpen for weeks now, but this is his first save of the year. He joins Jakob Junis (three), Tyler Alexander (two) and Cole Winn (one) in having earned saves for the Rangers. Junis set him up with a scoreless eighth tonight, while Winn wound up with the win for pitching a scoreless sixth. It’s difficult to recommend any one Texas reliever right now, but Latz is probably the best bet of the bunch from an ERA standpoint.

Things could have gone better for Springs, who allowed just three hard-hit balls on the night. The big blow was Josh Jung’s two-run to right-center, and that would have left only 11 of the 30 ballparks. Besides that, Springs gave up four singles and two walks. He dropped to 3-2 with a 3.79 ERA ahead of a start against Cleveland next week.

Carlos Cortes doubled in his place. Muncy was a nice surprise for two weeks, but he’s 4-for-36 with one extra-base hit (a triple) and 16 strikeouts in his last 12 games, leaving him with a .239/.308/.402 line on the season. He’s not assured of remaining a regular at third base.

Misiorowski threw a whopping 39 pitches over 100 mph while picking up 20 swings-and-misses on 91 overall offerings. He also issued only one walk, and while he did allow six hits, it’s worth noting that only four balls put into play registered as hard hits. Misiorowski looked the part Saturday, and it’s pretty easy to imagine double-digit strikeouts versus the Nationals on Friday.

Keller struck out six against two walks, and he allowed five total hits in the contest. He blanked the Brew Crew over the first three innings, but gave up a pair in the fourth and another in the sixth was charged to the right-hander after he left. Keller was outstanding Sunday against the rays, but this effort would accurately be described as so-so or “meh” from a fantasy perspective, even with a decent number of punchouts. He still possesses a strong 3.18 ERA and will look to lower it against the Cardinals on Thursday.

He was hit by a foul tip. This sounds like a day-to-day situation, but since the Angels don’t have much flexibility to send down someone and add a third catcher, they’ll probably put O’Hoppe on the IL if they think he’ll be unavailable for more than a day or two. Travis d’Arnaud replaced O’Hoppe, who was 0-for-3 on the night.