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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
MLB rumors: Yankees, Phillies named best trade fits for Rays stars
The post MLB rumors: Yankees, Phillies named best trade fits for Rays stars appeared first on ClutchPoints. The Major League Baseball trade deadline is approaching, and trade speculation is heating up. The New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies are two teams expected to buy before the July 31 deadline. Two Tampa Bay Rays stars are seen as fits for the Yankees and Phillies, per ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan. Advertisement Passan believes the Yankees would be a great fit for Rays infielder Brandon Lowe. 'Lowe's career numbers at Yankee Stadium are admittedly abysmal, but his left-handed stroke and the short porch in right field feel like a match made in heaven,' Passan wrote for ESPN. The MLB insider believes the Phillies, meanwhile, should make a deal for Rays relief pitcher Pete Fairbanks. 'The Phillies' bullpen has been one of the worst in baseball. Even if it was much better in May, their only reliever with a sub-3.00 ERA was Orion Kerkering,' Passan wrote. 'And with Jose Alvarado down for 80 games and out for the postseason following a PED suspension, the need for help is that much more grave.' Advertisement Fairbanks is 3-1 on the season, with a 2.05 ERA. He also has posted 10 saves for Tampa Bay. Yankees, Phillies and Rays are all in contention for the postseason New York, Philadelphia and Tampa Bay could all end up in the playoffs this season. While the Yankees look in good shape to take the American League East, the Rays aren't far behind them. Tampa Bay currently holds a 30-29 record. They have won seven of their last 10 games. Fairbanks and Lowe have each given Tampa Bay fans something to cheer about. This season, Lowe is hitting at a .242 average, with 11 home runs and 31 runs batted in. It is not far-fetched to think that Lowe could end up a Bronx Bomber. The Yankees are rumored to be looking for an infielder, ahead of this year's trade deadline. Like New York, Philadelphia also looks like a solid contender for a postseason berth. The Phillies are 36-23 on the campaign, and sit in second currently in the National League East. The club is just one and a half games behind the New York Mets, heading into Tuesday's action.
San Francisco Chronicle
12-05-2025
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
Yankees crushed A's pitching in Sacramento, signaling summer of blowouts in Valley heat
WEST SACRAMENTO — On Friday night, Aaron Judge's first swing of the bat at Sutter Health Park was his loudest of the weekend. It rocketed out at 114.7 mph off the bat and soared through the warm Central Valley air before bouncing off the left-field wall, a few inches shy of a home run, for a double. Judge knew the hit wasn't home run material — too much top spin. In his eyes, it was more surprising that the ball had a chance to get over the fence in the first place. But the reigning American League MVP, playing at this ballpark for the first time since his Fresno State days, couldn't help but smile about what was in store in Sacramento after the New York Yankees' win. 'It's a good place to hit,' Judge said. 'A couple of balls have no business getting to the track like that and they did. Looking forward to tomorrow.' Sure enough, on Saturday, Judge hit two home runs in back-to-back at-bats. One traveled 399 feet to the opposite field, the next 433 off the newly-constructed batter's eye. The optics were hard to ignore. The 6-foot-7 Bronx Bomber made the Sacramento Athletics ' temporary big-league home look like the Triple-A ballpark it is. And Judge's show of power unhappily brought to life the vision A's owner John Fisher clumsily invoked when the club initially announced it would be moving into the Sacramento River Cats' home for at least the next three years. In April 2024, Fisher said he couldn't wait to watch 'Athletics players or Aaron Judge and others launch home runs out of this very intimate, the most intimate ballpark in all Major League Baseball.' In that moment, Fisher couldn't name an A's player he'd like to see do the same. Yankeses 12, A's 2 New York AB R H BI BB SO Avg. Totals 42 12 15 12 5 10 Rice dh-c 3 2 1 4 1 0.260 Judge rf 5 1 4 2 0 1.409 a-Reyes ph-rf 1 0 0 0 0 0.174 Bellinger cf 6 0 1 0 0 1.221 Goldschmidt 1b 5 1 3 2 0 0.349 Peraza ss 1 0 0 0 0 1.200 Domínguez lf 5 2 2 0 1 3.250 Volpe ss 5 2 2 1 0 1.236 Escarra 1b 0 0 0 0 0 0.212 Wells c 3 2 1 0 1 1.214 Matzek p 0 0 0 0 0 0 --- Cabrera 3b 4 2 1 2 1 0.243 Vivas 2b 4 0 0 1 1 2.158 Athletics AB R H BI BB SO Avg. Totals 32 2 7 2 3 4 Wilson ss 4 0 0 0 0 1.348 Rooker dh 4 1 1 0 0 1.253 Soderstrom lf 3 0 1 0 0 0.288 Brown lf 0 0 0 0 1 0.220 Langeliers c 4 0 1 0 0 0.248 Andujar rf 3 0 1 1 0 0.306 Schuemann rf 1 0 0 0 0 0.235 Kurtz 1b 3 0 0 0 0 1.269 b-Pereda ph 1 0 0 0 0 1.194 Urías 2b 3 0 1 0 1 0.259 Bleday cf 4 1 1 1 0 0.216 Urshela 3b 2 0 1 0 1 0.233 New York 051 050 100_12 15 0 Athletics 000 110 000_2 7 0 a-popped out for Judge in the 8th. b-struck out for Kurtz in the 9th. LOB: New York 11, 6. 2B: Goldschmidt 3 (11), Cabrera (4), Judge (11). 3B_Goldschmidt (1). HR: Rice (9), off Spence; Bleday (5), off Yarbrough. RBIs: Volpe (22), Cabrera 2 (11), Vivas (3), Judge 2 (39), Rice 4 (20), Goldschmidt 2 (20), Andujar (16), Bleday (16). Runners left in scoring position_New York 9 (Reyes, Volpe 2, Goldschmidt 2, Vivas 2, Domínguez 2); Athletics 2 (Urías 2). RISP: New York 6 for 20; 1 for 4. Runners moved up: Vivas, Cabrera, Langeliers, Kurtz. GIDP: Urshela, Andujar. DP: New York 2 (Volpe, Vivas, Goldschmidt; Volpe, Vivas, Goldschmidt). New York IP H R ER BB SO NP ERA Yarbrough, W, 1-0 5 6 2 2 1 2 67 3.70 De Los Santos 3 0 0 0 2 1 34 1.29 Matzek 1 1 0 0 0 1 21 4.76 Athletics IP H R ER BB SO NP ERA Severino, L, 1-4 4 9 8 8 2 2 97 4.70 Spence 2 4 3 3 1 4 44 5.11 Alvarado 1 2 1 1 0 2 21 10.13 McFarland 1-3 0 0 0 0 0 3 5.23 Harris 1 2-3 0 0 0 2 2 28 4.38 Inherited runners-scored: Spence 2-2. HBP: Severino (Rice), Spence (Wells), Alvarado (Rice). WP: Severino. Umpires: Home, Edwin Moscoso; First, Tom Hanahan; Second, Chris Guccione; Third, David Rackley. T: 2:49. A: 12,224 (14,014). The slugging Yankees made the ballpark look tiny as they combined for 29 runs in three games to take the 2-1 series win after Sunday's 12-2 blowout victory. Judge's big game thrilled Yankees fans who took over the ballpark's stands. But the series between the A's and Yankees brought up again the question: When do the problems outweigh the novelty of playing MLB games in a minor league ballpark? Home runs by venue A's Foes Total HRs in A's 21 home games 22 35 57 HRs in A's 20 road games 29 12 41 Impressive as it is how quickly the A's and their partners in Sacramento renovated Sutter Health with new clubhouses, weight-training rooms and all the necessities, the visiting clubhouse barely has room to walk through and the home clubhouse doesn't have much room for activities. More than a month into this shared arrangement, it has become noticeable how much the River Cats — the Giants' Triple-A affiliate whose home this first belonged to — must defer to the A's needs. Sometimes, that means the River Cats' staff has to pack up and remove everything from their training rooms to make way for the big league teams. 'It's different, it's tough,' Giants infielder Brett Wisely, who spent the first month in Triple-A, said. 'Triple-A, we always get the short end of the stick. Whenever the A's need something, we're kicked out.' The actual ballpark dimensions and elements are a challenge, too. Judge's pair of home runs were two of 12 hit between the two teams in the three-game series. The ball was flying as Saturday marked one of the hottest days of the season yet, but visiting Yankees players were thrown by the swirling winds. That kind of weather pattern could happen in any big league ballpark, but the conditions will take some adjusting to, the New York players noted. A's infielder Luis Urias hit a second-inning fly ball on Saturday off Carlos Rodon that had a .090 expected batting average according to Statcast, but got a nudge from the wind at the right-field foul pole turned it into a home run. 'Definitely hitter-friendly, but everyone is playing in this park so it's part of it,' Rodon said. 'You can account for the wind, there's not many buildings around to knock it down, (it's) not a big built-up stadium so the wind played a big factor, especially during the day.' Asked if there was anything he could change in his approach in this ballpark, Rodon said, 'get more ground balls.' Luis Severino, Sunday's starter for the A's, previously expressed concerns over playing in a minor league ballpark, but most of those qualms had to do with the logistics. He revealed how much of a challenge it's been pitching at Sutter Health Park, one that's telling in his home and away splits: He has a 7.10 ERA in six home starts with a 0.95 ERA in three away games. 'Pitching here is tough,' Severino said. 'Some days the ball is flying, some days it's not. Last time, the ball was flying to right field and left field wasn't flying. You have to know how to pitch here. It's tough, I'm not going to lie, but in the end it's what we have and what we have to deal with.' The oddities are hard to ignore, but the park's novelty has its moments. On a crowded summer day, the concourse feels almost state fair-like, with families picnicking in the outfield lawn. The team store is filled with A's merchandise that staffers must switch out when the River Cats return home. For the players, a media-frenzied opening series at Sutter Health slowed their ability to settle into their new home, but they've made an underdog sentiment a driving force. 'You can make excuses for playing in a Triple-A ballpark. Our motto is, nobody cares,' A's outfielder Tyler Soderstrom said. 'The more comfortable we got here, we've made it our home for sure. That's our mindset going into it. Visiting teams are going to come in here and try to beat up on us. Nobody cares that we're in a minor league ballpark, still have to come out every day and put the work in, the effort in and take care of business. It took us a little bit to get settled in, but we're definitely building our home now.' How long the novelty can last is still to be seen.
New York Post
10-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Post
Fernando Cruz credits mom's 'deal with God' to make him a Yankee
She spoke to the Big Man upstairs to get her son to the big leagues. It took 16 years for New York Yankees ace reliever Fernando Cruz to get called up to the majors, two more to get the opportunity to play for his beloved Bronx Bombers — and three words from his mom to make it all happen. Virginia Manon, a mother of four and devout Christian, always 'had this connection with the Lord,' and encouraged her son to continue his quest even when his minor-league career dragged into its second decade, Cruz, 35, told The Post from the dugout at Yankee Stadium ahead of Mother's Day. Advertisement 'She told me: 'Don't quit please. God has something really, really special for you,'' he recalled. 'It took me 16 years to get to the big leagues. And those 16 years, straight up, I was always thinking about those words. And here I am . . . living a dream every day.' 3 Fernando Cruz always remembered his mother Virginia Manon's words of advice as he worked to get to the big leagues. Courtesy of Fernando Cruz Advertisement Manon died of brain cancer in 2021 at the age of 69 — and tragically never got to see her son get called up to the major leagues a year later by the Cincinnati Reds, or traded to his favorite childhood team, the Yankees, in 2024. Yet she predicted his future with uncanny accuracy. 'In 2019, she told me, 'Next year won't be your year, 2021 will be your year,' ' Cruz recalled. The pandemic wiped out professional baseball in 2020, but Cruz starred in the Caribbean Series in 2021 and was signed to play in Mexico by the Mariachis de Guadalajara. He earned the most saves in team history, and suddenly MLB took notice. Advertisement 3 Cruz's mom even uncannily predicted when he would make his dream come true, he said. J.C. Rice 'That's when Cincinnati and other teams became interested in me,' he said. He wound up making his rookie debut in the majors at the ripe old age of 32. 'I think she made a deal with God. Like, 'Alright, put my guys in the best position possible and take me with you.' Because everything took place incredibly after she passed,' he continued. Manon worked just as hard to fulfill her own dreams. A native of the Dominican Republic, she went to Puerto Rico illegally. She met Cruz's dad and earned a degree in accounting while working odd jobs in bakeries and selling jewelry. Advertisement Cruz learned to pitch by throwing against a wall in front of his house in Dorado, Puerto Rico. 'I imagined being in Yankee Stadium at the time,' he recalled. He credits his father, who worked for the Puerto Rican government, for giving him the discipline it takes to be a Bronx Bomber — and his mom for fueling his obsession. She would 'buy me anything that comes from the Yankees. I remember having all the hats all over my room.' 3 Cruz calls his wife, Omaley, the daughter of his former third base coach, 'the MVP.' Courtesy of Fernando Cruz Cruz was hanging out with his wife Omaley and their four children when he got the news he was being traded to the Yankees in phone calls with GM Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone. 'We almost closed the Dave & Buster's,' he recalled. 'We started yelling, we started crying. We started jumping around.' Advertisement Cruz even credits his mother for his successful marriage. Omaley, the daughter of his third-base coach when he was 18, 'fell in love with my mom first,' he said.
Atlantic
25-02-2025
- Sport
- Atlantic
The End of the Clean-Shaven Yankees
The New York Yankees have abandoned their half-century prohibition of beards, a policy that was archaic even from its infancy. Now I find myself strangely, unexpectedly bereft, stroking my own beard in contemplation of what the world might lose when a Bronx Bomber goes unshaven. The Yankees, as any Yankee fan will tell you, don't have a mascot. They don't put names on the back of their jerseys. And most crucially, they haven't had a single player with a goatee, Van Dyke, or soul patch since 1976. This was the bedrock of Yankee exceptionalism. Although Joe DiMaggio famously said, 'I want to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee'—the quote, printed on a sign, long greeted players as they entered the home dugout—the good Lord himself could never be a New York Yankee. God, per many enduring renderings of him, still doesn't meet the team's grooming standards. Though the white-bearded God on the Sistine ceiling would no longer have to shave to play second base in the Bronx, he would have to trim his magnificent head of hair, which descends below his shirt collar. Or it would, if he wore a shirt collar. Baseball players don't wear shirt collars at work, but the ban on over-the-collar hair still applies to the Yankees, for whom the mullet remains a bridge too far. After he was traded to the team in 2005, the Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson forsook his own Mississippi Mudflap, becoming business-in-the-front-business-in-the-back, which might as well be the Yankees' motto. Mark Leibovich: How baseball saved itself Like a restaurant that still requires diners to wear a jacket, the beardless Yankees upheld a pointless standard long after the rest of society had moved on. 'The vast majority of 20s, 30s into the 40s men in this country have beards,' the Yankees' managing general partner, Hal Steinbrenner, said in reversing the policy implemented by his late father, George, an ex–Air Force man. He seemed to ignore the fact that the clean-shaven Yanks were admirable, even aspirational. These were men, I always inferred, who made their bed, shined their shoes, and flossed. My own ex-Army father, seeing me with a two-day growth of stubble, always said: 'You stood too far from your razor today.' It was only after he died, last April, at age 89, having shaved until the second-to-last day of his life, that I dared to grow my own beard. 'Going for a Hemingway thing?' a friend asked. No, but the Yankees beard ban did impugn, by implication, the personal grooming habits of countless great men: Socrates and Shakespeare, Darwin and da Vinci, LeBron James and Lionel Messi. None would have been allowed to scratch himself in the home dugout at Yankee Stadium. It has often been said that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for General Motors. (That was in the middle of the previous century, when both factories were rolling out winners year after year.) If we may extend the automotive metaphor: The unbearded Yankees were a Ford (Whitey), not a Lincoln (Abe). This arrogance, this over-the-top exclusivity, suited the Yankees. The rest of baseball abandoned classic home and road uniforms for the permanent casual Friday of 'alternate jerseys' (beginning in earnest at the turn of this century) and 'City Connects' (which Nike introduced in 2021), but the Yankees still only ever wear pinstripes at home—though those pinstripes are now sullied by a sleeve patch advertising an insurance company, another inevitable bow to modernity. It's a wonder the team held out this long on facial hair. George Steinbrenner instituted the no-beards-or-hippie-hair rule around the same time Archie Bunker was ridiculing his son-in-law, 'the Meathead,' for wearing long hair on All in the Family. Even in 1976, Archie was an anachronism, and with their tonsorial rectitude, the Yankees instantly became one too. Barry Gibb, Bob Seger, and Kris Kristofferson were bearded gods in their pop-cultural prime in 1976, which was not just America's bicentennial but also an annus mirabilis of magnificent facial hair. That October, the Yankees lost the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, who did have a mascot, Mr. Redlegs—he was clean-shaven then but now sports a cartoon-villain mustache. Kaitlyn Tiffany: Why are baseball players always eating? Until the past decade or so, Major League Baseball was a conservative institution, slow to evolve with the times. Ballparks still have signs warning visitors to stay off the grass. But the Yankees, with their fussy barbering rules, took 'Get off my lawn' to another level. On the facial-hair front, they were Abe Simpson yelling at a cloud, King Canute trying to hold back the tide. And it worked. As those tides of fashion waxed and waned, the Yankees remained clean-shaven colossi, bringing their total number of World Series wins up to 27, 16 more than their nearest rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, with their bearded icons Ozzie Smith, Bruce Sutter, and Al Hrabosky. All of that has changed now. 'Our new vice president has a beard,' Hal Steinbrenner said by way of justification. 'Members of Congress have a beard.' And just like that, the Bronx Bombers have become a little more like everybody else, one more institution in flux. In the name of progress, they've emulated Congress. Talk about a beard-scratcher.
