Pete Alonso for Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Mets trade that never was
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Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Mets release Paul Blackburn after right-hander clears waivers
Nolan McLean's big league promotion last weekend resulted in the Mets designating Paul Blackburn for assignment, and now the veteran right-hander is free to pitch in a different uniform. The Mets announced the release of Blackburn on Tuesday, after he declined an outright assignment to the minors and cleared waivers on Monday. While the team is still responsible for the remainder of the 31-year-old's salary, he's only making the pro-rated league minimum. Blackburn dealt with a lot this season, which started with him on the IL with right knee inflammation. The right-hander didn't make his season debut until June 2 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, when he pitched five scoreless innings. From there, things went downhill. After a slew of ineffective outings, Blackburn went back on the IL with a right shoulder impingement, which he had been rehabbing for the last month. Healthy once again but with few spots available after the Mets fortified their bullpen at the trade deadline, the veteran was activated on Aug. 13 and pitched that day against the Atlanta Braves. In what would end up being his final appearance for New York, Blackburn went five innings in what was a blowout loss to save the rest of the bullpen. In seven games (four starts), the right-hander had a 6.85 ERA. Joining the Mets at last season's trade deadline, Blackburn only made 12 appearances during his time in New York after spending eight seasons playing for the Athletics. In his career, the veteran owns a 4.96 ERA in 452 innings. Meanwhile, McLean said Friday he was "surprised" to get the promotion, but is ready for his MLB debut. He's pitched to a 2.45 ERA with 127 strikeouts in 113.2 innings in the minors this season. The 24-year-old made five starts in Double-A before heading to Triple-A, where he owned a 2.78 ERA and 1.09 WHIP across 16 outings.
NBC Sports
27 minutes ago
- NBC Sports
Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Nolan McLean, Ryan Bergert, and Samuel Basallo
We are officially in the fantasy baseball championship push. Whether you're trying to hold onto a top spot, pushing the leader, desperately trying to play catch up, or positioning yourself for playoff matchups, reinforcements and upside are vital this time of year. Most waiver wires have been picked over though and it's difficult to find impact players readily available in most leagues at this point in the season. Fear not, because there are still a handful of available players that have the chance to be difference makers that help push us towards glory. And luckily, we recently got a handful of minor league promotions that could genuinely swing leagues. David Shovein, If you want a larger list, Eric Samulski wrote his extended waiver wire piece on Sunday. Nolan McLean, SP Mets The Mets called McLean up over the weekend to replace the struggling Frankie Montas in their rotation and he was ready for the task. Coincidentally, this weekend was also the first time teams could call up minor leaguers and not exhaust their rookie eligibility ahead for next year. So, if that player were to win Rookie of the Year or place in the top-three in MVP or Cy Young voting before arbitration, their team gets a draft pick. Funny timing on these promotions. Nevertheless, McLean instantly proved he belonged with 5 2/3 innings of shutout ball and eight strikeouts against a solid Mariners lineup. He made their hitters look foolish over and over again mostly with his sweeper and curveball. McLean's sweeper has always been his bread and butter. In terms of spin rate, total movement, and velocity, Dustin May has the only one that can compare to it. Just look at this frisbee. Nolan McLean, Filth. 😷 However, the key to his success in this debut was his curveball. He featured it against left-handed batters and it was downright disgusting. Nolan McLean, 3379 RPM Buzzsaw Curveball. 🌪️ With an average of 3,279 RPM, McLean's curveball has the highest spin rate of any in the league. Also very cool (and to nerd out on pitching for a moment), it has a nearly identical spin direction as his sweeper and practically the same amount of horizontal movement. So, it's very difficult for batters to decide which is coming. Knowing this, they were his two most thrown pitches against left-handed batters combining for a 64% usage rate. Alone, these pitches are incredible. Together, they're already one of the best breaking ball parings in the league. Oddly enough, the curve has somewhat come out of nowhere. He threw 19 in his debut start, the exact same amount as his last three starts in Triple-A combined. Before his promotion, he'd only thrown it 9% of the time. Without throwing it, he struggled a good bit against lefties relative to righties. Whatever happened to make him more comfortable with that pitch, he better keep it up because that with his sweeper and a good blend of fastballs and sinkers that sat around 95 mph can make him a stud instantly. Be mindful of a possible innings limit though. He's already at a career-high 119 and it's only his first season as a full-time pitcher after being a two-way player. So, expect the Mets to limit him on a per start basis and he may not get the opportunity for many quality starts. His WHIP could run high too with such a breaking ball heavy profile. Ryan Bergert, SP Royals Bergert is on a bit of a heater since being traded from the Padres to the Royals at the deadline. Through three starts, he's allowed five earned runs in 16 2/3 innings (2.79 ERA) with 17 strikeouts and five walks. That's a nice little run of success and one that should put him on our radars. Stuff wise, he doesn't seem that special at first glance. His fastball sits 93 mph and has solid carry, but he throws from a very high slot. So, the batter 'expects' some of that rise on it. Otherwise, he has a distinct sweeper and slider plus a sinker for righties and changeup for lefties. The Stuff+ model doesn't rate any of these pitches above a 92 where 100 is considered average. Yet, there's something interesting going on. First off, he's been locating his fastball higher in the zone since the trade. That's a sensible adjustment for him given the good vertical action that pitch gets. He's been more willing to throw his sweeper in the zone to steal strikes against lefties too. His repertoire is reasonably wide and he has great command, so it's nice to see him mixing everything up more. Also, his arsenal is unique in nature. Michael Rosen wrote a great piece for FanGraphs recently describing how uncommon it was for a pitcher like Bergert to have great vertical action and spin efficiency on a fastball and also a sweeper without losing much velocity on it. Read the article, it's amazing and Michael is a fantastic pitching mind. While possibly special pitch traits may not make Bergert an impact pitcher alone, his upcoming schedule might. He's set to face the Tigers, White Sox, Angels, and Guardians in his next four starts. If anything switches by a day, he could even get the Twins in the middle of there. Schedules are very important this time of year and with Bergert's being so favorable plus him having some fun pitch traits make him an enticing waiver wire option. Samuel Basallo, C/1B Orioles Sometimes in fantasy baseball, opportunities come along that are so great, we have to act without thinking and let the pieces fall into place afterwards. Basallo's promotion to the Orioles is one of those opportunities. He is already 3-for-10 with a double, two runs scored, and four RBI two games into his big league career. Half of the balls he put in play were hit harder than 95 mph and his 78.1 mph bat speed is in the 99th percentile of all big league hitters. He is a stud. In terms of an offensive profile, there wasn't a more impressive hitter in the minor leagues. He just turned 21 years old last week and had 23 homers in 76 games at Triple-A. His batted ball data may have been more impressive than the homers though. He had a 115.9 mph max exit velocity, 21% barrel rate, 57.4% hard-hit rate, and graded out exceptionally well among other key metrics. Shoutout Prospect Savant for the great work they've done with these minor league, Statcast adjacent player pages. The one flaw he seems to possibly have is with pitch selection and chasing balls outside the strike zone. Yet, his pitch recognition seems solid because of his high walk rate. In actuality, Basallo is a spectacular bad-ball hitter. He knows there are pitches that other hitters should not be swinging at that he can do damage on. Like this two-run single from his second career game. Samuel Basallo is such a good bad ball hitter it's crazy. Roughly 17 homers on pitches outside of the zone since the start of the 2022 season and a lotttt of hard hit baseballs like this. That was a 97 mph fastball at shoulder-height from Jordan Hicks and Basallo turned it around with ease for a rope at 108 mph exit velocity. Aram's claim about Basallo being a prolific bad ball hitter holds true too. He saw 496 pitches in the shadow of the zone at Triple-A this season and put 83 of them in play. Of those 83, he had a 59% hard-hit rate, .561 SLG, .409 xwOBA, 19.8% barrel rate, and hit 10 home runs. Those are jaw-dropping results against what we consider pitchers' pitches. This is all just to say pick-up up Basallo right now and figure out the rest later. We're dealing with a special hitter that can do what Nick Kurtz or Roman Anthony have done to this point.
Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
As Chicago Cubs' Kyle Tucker sits for a mental reset, the slumping slugger continues to search for answers
The quest to get Chicago Cubs slugger Kyle Tucker hitting like the version who was a catalyst for baseball's best offense the first three months of the season took another turn Tuesday. In an effort to give him a mental reset, Tucker was not in the lineup for Game 1 of Tuesday's doubleheader against the Milwaukee Brewers, and manager Craig Counsell was noncommittal about whether he would start Game 2. 'I think we all see the physical stuff, that's easy,' Counsell said Tuesday. 'It's a lot of ground balls and the mechanical struggles. But we've seen the mental struggle too, and sometimes it results in whatever, body language and things like that, that we see in each other when we're struggling as people and so we try to help, try to support, try to motivate in any way we can.' 'There's some time off, kind of get him away from the thoughts that he's having and maybe create some new thoughts, that's kind of the question I'm asking myself.' Since the All-Star break, Tucker owns a .182/.333/.239 slash line with just three extra-base hits and six RBIs. The Cubs are 12-14 in games Tucker starts during that stretch. 'Production-wise, not great,' Tucker said Tuesday. 'I mean, I'm just here trying to help the team win. I haven't really done a great job of that lately, so that part of it sucks. But I'm still rooting for everyone around here, and hopefully everyone has success throughout the rest of the year. So I'm just trying to help us win games. 'Our job's to go out there and play every single day and do the best we can. That's just what I'm trying to do. Obviously, it hasn't been great lately, but I'm trying to do my best and help our team win.' Tucker's pronounced offensive struggles over the last four weeks have seen the typically fly-ball hitter post a 46.5% ground-ball rate in his last 110 plate appearances (26 games) compared to a 30.7% GB% in his first 423 plate appearances (95 games). The longer the lack of production has trended — he is in the midst of the second-longest home run drought of his career — Cubs fans have more frequently directed boos toward Tucker, something he said Tuesday is 'fine, I've still gotta do my job, regardless of cheers or boos or whatever.' Cubs fans' frustration became particularly noticeable during Monday's 7-0 loss after Tucker half-heartedly, and on a delay, ran out a grounder in the fourth inning that Brewers first baseman Andrew Vaughn initially bobbled and dropped before making the unassisted out. 'It's kind of exhausting for I don't know how many times I've rolled over it to first or second,' Tucker said of the sequence. 'Regardless, you've still gotta run down the line whether you're out by 50 feet or not. It's just a little tough right now.' Tucker couldn't pinpoint a stretch during his career in which he's gone this long without being able to identify what's wrong mechanically. He's been looking at anything that could be impacting him, whether it's related to his swing path or timing. Part of the bubbling frustration: Tucker's approach has still been elite and he keeps putting himself in a good position to do damage. Even during this troublesome stretch, his 17.3% walk rate leads the Cubs and ranks fourth among the 174 qualified MLB hitters. Counsell pointed to Sunday's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates as an example of where the right process hasn't converted into results for Tucker. He got ahead 3-0 versus Pirates starter Carmen Mlodzinski, then took the next pitch and put himself into a fastball count. That was exactly what he got from Mlodzinski: a 96 mph fastball down the middle that Tucker again rolled over for a groundout to first base. 'Kyle is still doing a pretty good job of swinging at the right pitches and getting himself to the places he wants,' Counsell said. 'I thought the first at-bat Sunday was really the defining thing of what he's feeling. … Trying to put on the player hat a little bit is that you're like, 'I don't know why this keeps happening, I did exactly what I wanted to do for four pitches, did my job really well and got myself a pitch to hit and I got the same result.' 'It's not happening when he gets in the box and so there's separation of what he wants and what's happening, what he thinks he feels and what's happening, and you just try to keep working on that.' Tucker doesn't seem to think there is a lingering issue or impact from when he jammed his right index finger June 1 on a slide. Asked if he is dealing with any physical ailment that would be best served by a stint on the injured list, Tucker replied, 'No, I'm fine.' 'I mean, I've played for the most part every game this year so I'm fine going out there.' Tucker's impending free agency keeps creeping closer, a market that coming into the season was expected to be robust for the 28-year-old outfielder whose consistency became a staple of his success in Houston. Being this close to free agency, Tucker stated he doesn't care how this stretch could impact that right now. Tucker reiterated how he just cares about Tuesday's games and helping the Cubs win. As Tucker spent five minutes discussing his frustrating situation in the clubhouse Tuesday morning, a 'Jobu' figurine sat on a shelf in his locker behind him. 'Jobu' was memorably at the center of a locker shrine created by fictional hitter Pedro Cerrano in the movie 'Major League' to try to help him hit a curveball. Tucker figured maybe this version could help channel a change in his own mojo. 'It hasn't helped yet,' he noted.
