2026 MLB regular season running thread

[TheSportsPredictor]

Boo! Not the full return of baseball because the Pirates and Guardians have been forest-fired out.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Boo! Not the full return of baseball because the Pirates and Guardians have been forest-fired out.

I guess they can do that since it's not on ESPN.

 

[HanSenSE]

RIP Ron Hunt. Hopefully, no longer being hot by pitches.

 

[Cosmo]

Great Orioles win tonight. Now moved on to the Nats in Oakland Sacramento and boy howdy, that A’s CF is having himself a ****ing night. #YaketySax

 

[nietsroob17]

Congratulations to new trivia question Victor Mederos.

The Braves reliever had a two-run single off backup Rangers catcher Kyle Higashioka in garbage time and became the first true, in-game pitcher (non-Ohtani category) to have a base hit and RBI since the universal DH went into effect for the 2022 season.

Mederos was in the lineup because the Braves moved DH Dom Smith to first base to rest Matt Olson. And it was with Olson's bat and gloves that Mederos got the hit.

Weirdly, he was wearing his own #58 batting helmet. Do they just happen to have helmets for all players just in case?

Ryne Nelson had an RBI single for Arizona last year, but he came on as a pinch-hitter and was not on the mound.

 

[Songbird]

Top-5 … Top-7 … this Cole/Dodgers thing at Yankee Stadium has become quite fun.



And then the play by Pages and Betts …

 

[Bubbler]

Amen. So tired of hearing about prospects. I believe it was Jim Leyland who said a prospect means you ain't done **** yet. The problem is Theo Epstein & the Red Sox nailed a few drafts right after the Moneyball revolution (drafted Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, Jed Lowrie, Josh Reddick & Anthony Rizzo from 2003 through 2007) so everyone thought hanging on to prospects was the way to go. Believing they were always right prospects was yet another thing to fuel the egos of GMs. Add into the equation the prospect dorks all over the Internet believing GMs were always right about prospects and there you go. An entire generation of GM dorks are holding on to prospects because one might end up good.

Prospect nerds are the ultimate forest for the trees types.

Of course you want your organization to have prospects. They’re assets.

What prospect nerds fail to grasp is that there’s more than one way to profit from assets. If I have a lot of top 100 prospects, (Sideways glance and wink at camera: And my team has more than anyone else does right now) you assess them based on future need and go from there. Merely having them isn’t a zero sum thing. What if you have a surplus at a certain position?

These nerds seem to fail to understand that a few years of more or less guaranteed production from a proven veteran is much more stable than maybe having a future star. Or even a rental who might make the difference between playoff vs. World Series qualification.

And they always cite the examples where it went wrong for the prospect-trading team. Alexander-Smoltz! Yeah, well there are times when the prospect-receiving team got fleeced too.

I give you Christian Yelich for Lewis Brinson and lesser prospects in 2018. Brewers prospect nerds were apoplectic Brinson got dealt as he was supposed to be a can’t miss future star.

Brinson ended up playing 357 career games, hit 28 HRs and .198 over his career. The other prospects the Brewers gave up had similarly short careers. Had the Brewers relied on these prospects, they’d be in the same hell their economic peers like the Pirates and Reds have been in since then. (In fact, some of the position player prospects the Brewers did hold on to from that period, like Keston Hiura, were busts.)

Meanwhile, Yelich is still playing and is a major part of why the Brewers have dominated the NL Central since he arrived.

Prospects are assets. Sometimes best kept, sometimes best used to make your MLB roster better. And if they do? They served their purpose anyway.

 

[maumann2]

For every time the Tigers get ripped for John Smoltz, I offer Miguel Cabrera (and Dontrelle Willis) for Detroit's Nos. 1 and 2 prospects -- Andrew Miller and Cameron Maybin -- and four other highly-rated minor leaguers.

At the time, I thought Dave Dombrowski gave up way too much. And Miller and Maybin turned out to have decent major league careers. But Cabrera will be in the Hall of Fame.

https://www.mlb.com/news/revisiting...rera?msockid=0ac89792e8bb6dab2f8b8124e9726c1e

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Speaking of prospects, this was funny:



The Mets got a bunch of duds under Billy Eppler three years ago. Last deadline, they managed to turn Drew Gilbert into a few months of Tyler Rogers, whom they promptly lost in free agency because David Stearns can't walk and chew gum at the same time. I get the theory they should do better as a clear seller in a seller's market, but I wouldn;t trust Stearns to not get fleeced while trading 1988 Topps commons. "Somehow I got a Don Aase dipped in toxic waste for this Floyd Rayford."

 

[ChrisLong]

Angels closer Kirby Yates .....
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.
.
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Oh, never mind. IYKYK.

 

[MarkWatney]

The Smoltz-Alexander deal was a great deal for the Tigers. Alexander went 9-0 and the Tigers won the division (and probably should have won the WS).

Smoltz at the moment was a decent but not great Class A prospect.

Given the Tigers' record at developing pitching at that time, he was probably 50-50 to make the majors at all. Nobody had any reason to believe or expect he would become a Hall of Famer, but even if he had, the Tigers were never good enough during his career that even adding HOF Level John Smoltz to their pitching staff would have gotten them into the playoffs. I think during the time span of Smoltz' career the tigers only finished within 15 games of the playoffs once or twice.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

The Smoltz-Alexander deal was a great deal for the Tigers. Alexander went 9-0 and the Tigers won the division (and probably should have won the WS).

Smoltz at the moment was a decent but not great Class A prospect.

Given the Tigers' record at developing pitching at that time, he was probably 50-50 to make the majors at all. Nobody had any reason to believe or expect he would become a Hall of Famer, but even if he had, the Tigers were never good enough during his career that even adding HOF Level John Smoltz to their pitching staff would have gotten them into the playoffs. I think during the time span of Smoltz' career the tigers only finished within 15 games of the playoffs once or twice.

Three years later, the Red Sox traded Jeff Bagwell for Larry Andersen. A bad trade, given the Red Sox's ceiling was serving as cannon fodder for the Athletics, but to be fair, they couldn't have known Bagwell's career would be JUICED by the move to Houston. Six homers in 205 minor league games and 15 in his rookie season at the launching pad known as the Astrodome.

 

[MTM]

Three years later, the Red Sox traded Jeff Bagwell for Larry Andersen. A bad trade, given the Red Sox's ceiling was serving as cannon fodder for the Athletics, but to be fair, they couldn't have known Bagwell's career would be JUICED by the move to Houston. Six homers in 205 minor league games and 15 in his rookie season at the launching pad known as the Astrodome.

IIRC correctly, wasn’t Bagwell pretty deep on the organization’s 3B depth chart behind players like Boggs and Tim Naehring?

 

[Songbird]

How is he not in the Hall?

 

[MTM]

A lot of the cited trades— Smoltz, Bagwell, the Dodgers moving Yordan Alvarez and O’Neal Cruz for middling relievers— comes from guys moved from the low minors, not from top prospects lists.
Many of those, as mentioned in previous posts, have benefited the team getting the vet.

 

[Cosmo]

Wild stuff in Houston. Astros have the bases loaded with no one out in the bottom of the 10th, 2-2 game. Orioles bring in Leody Tavares as a fifth infielder. Altuve hits a ball to shallow right center. Tyler O'Neill catches it and throws out the runner at home for a double play. Then Kittredge makes a barehanded play to barely get throw the next guy out at first to get out of the jam.

Top of the 11th, two outs, O'Neill in a 3-2 count and runners at first and second. O'Neill hits a slow roller to second and beats out the throw from Altuve, Henderson scores from second after going on contact. Then Tavares pops a single to bring in another one.

Now let's see if Baltimore can close this in the bottom of the 11th ...

EDIT: To add, they did. Six in a row, one an absolute steal. Every time I'm out, they drag me back in.

 

[DanOregon]

I find the current state of baseball "interesting." Hearing people dump on the All-Star Game because big names didn't show. Putting the HRD on Netflix. It's all just a logical progression of the sport seeking maximum efficiency. You put the game on Netflix, people who really want to see it, will find it and watch. Players recognize the risk/reward ratio doesn't compute to play in the ASG, particularly pitchers. You never know when you are a pitch away from Tommy John. And now the owners are trying to push through a salary cap, when what they have no provides maximum efficiency for a player's abilities when measured against team's willingness to spend.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

IIRC correctly, wasn’t Bagwell pretty deep on the organization’s 3B depth chart behind players like Boggs and Tim Naehring?

Let's not forget Scott Cooper!!! Bagwell was a top-50 prospect, per his Baseball-Reference page, and they could have moved him to 1B, though Mo Vaughn was moving up the ranks there too. Just realized Bagwell and Vaughn were selected in the same draft. They accumulated 777 homers, 107.0 career WAR and two MVPs...and the other four guys amongst the Red Sox's top six picks that year combined for 0.4 big league WAR. Vaughn wasn't their first first-round pick and Bagwell wasn't selected until the fourth round. Such a random crapshoot. Trade the kids.

 

[mpcincal]

Angels closer Kirby Yates .....
.
.
.
.
Oh, never mind. IYKYK.

ID(efinitely)K

 

[Michael_ Gee]

IIRC correctly, wasn’t Bagwell pretty deep on the organization’s 3B depth chart behind players like Boggs and Tim Naehring?

The Red Sox were in a pennant race and manager Joe Morgan was using the media (me) to say they needed bullpen help to win it. The Sox knew Bagwell was a prospect, but the deals you make to win right now shouldn't be evaluated by long-term results, only short-term.