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Yahoo
an hour ago
- General
- Yahoo
Colorado Rockies game no. 61 thread: Chase Dollander vs. Sandy Alcantara
Looking to build off their fourth road win of the year on Monday and hoping to capture their first series win of the season, the Rockies (10-50) will take on the Marlins (23-35) again today in Miami. Chase Dollander (2-5, 6.28 ERA) will return from the 15-day IL to make the start. Dollander was pulled from his last start on May 18 with right forearm tightness. The RHP rookie attributes throwing too many pitches — 38 — in the first inning against the Diamondbacks, according to Thomas Harding. Despite that rough first inning, Dollander only surrendered one run on three hits with six strikeouts and two walks in 4 2⁄ 3 innings. Hopefully, shorter, more efficient innings can prevent cramping in his throwing arm in the future. Advertisement To clear a spot on the roster, Tanner Gordon was sent back down to Triple-A Albuquerque. In other news, closer Zach Agnos was placed on the bereavement list and Angel Chivilli was called up from the Isotopes to fill the opening. Read more about today's moves here. The Rockies will face 2022 NL Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara. The 29-year-old RHP isn't looking like his 2022 self this season. He is 2-7 with an 8.47 ERA with 40 strikeouts and 29 walks in 51 innings over 11 starts. In May, Alcantara went 0-4 in five starts with an 8.46 ERA, which includes his last start against the Padres when he was hit hard, giving up six runs on seven hits with four walks in four innings. After being pulled from Monday's game, Ezequiel Tovar won't be playing the remainder of the series against Miami. First Pitch: 4:40 p.m. MT Advertisement TV: Radio: KOA 850 AM/94.1 FM, KNRV 1150 AM (Spanish) Lineups: More from
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Braves at Phillies game two thread
The Atlanta Braves will be facing the Phillies in game two of the doubleheader which looks like it will most certainly be a pitchers' duel. Chris Sale will be taking the mound as the reigning NL Cy Young winner. He will be facing Zack Wheeler, the NL Cy Young runner up last season. When both pitchers are on their game, they are some of the best pitchers of their generation. Advertisement On paper this looks to be a low scoring game. First pitch is at 6:45 pm EDT. Games Notes Preview Lineup More from
Fox Sports
15-05-2025
- Sport
- Fox Sports
Braves are facing surplus of starters as Smith-Shawver emerges and Strider is ready to come off IL
Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — AJ Smith-Shawver is breaking out as an emerging force in the Atlanta Braves' rotation. That rotation soon will receive another boost, as Spencer Strider is ready to come off the injured list. After Smith-Shawver allowed only two hits and no earned runs in six innings in the Braves' 5-2 win over the Washington Nationals on Thursday, manager Brian Snitker said Strider would return to the rotation when Atlanta plays at Washington next week. 'We're not sure which game,' Snitker said. Snitker didn't say how the Braves would create a spot for Strider, who threw a five-inning simulated game at Truist Park on Wednesday. The right-hander was placed on the 15-day injured list on April 21 after straining his right hamstring. The hamstring injury came after Strider had completed his comeback from UCL internal brace surgery on his right elbow on April 12, 2024. He was an All-Star in 2023, when he finished fourth in the NL Cy Young Award voting after going 20-5 with a 3.86 ERA and a major league-best 281 strikeouts. Strider pitched five innings in a 3-1 loss at Toronto on April 16 in his first game back from the surgery. Then his comeback was put on hold, thanks to the hamstring injury. Smith-Shawver, 22, has been dominant since his recall from Triple-A Gwinnett on April 29. Though it's not clear how the Braves will make room for Strider, Smith-Shawver has made a strong case that he ranks as one of the team's top starters. 'For me, it's really just been trusting my stuff,' Smith-Shawver said Thursday. 'I don't know if it's more belief or just getting more comfortable with more reps.' Smith-Shawver (3-2) has allowed one earned run in 19 2/3 innings over his last three starts, leaving his ERA at 2.33. The right-hander took a no-hitter into the eighth inning of a 4-0 win over Cincinnati on May 5. Snitker said Thursday's start, which included six strikeouts, 'might have been better.' 'Very impressive right there,' Snitker said. 'He came out of the shoot firing, boy.' Smith-Shawver has won his last three decisions and is a big reason the Braves (22-22) returned to .500 for the second time in three days after losing their first seven games to open the season. The rotation also includes 2024 NL Cy Young winner Chris Sale, Spencer Schwellenbach, Grant Holmes and Bryce Elder. Right-hander Reynaldo Lopez was shut down for 12 weeks last month following surgery on his inflamed right shoulder but could return in the second half of the season. Snitker said a six-man rotation is 'not feasible' when the team has off days. Smith-Shawver says he knows the team is facing a difficult decision when Strider returns. 'Those decisions are always tough,' he said, adding he's just focusing on each opportunity. 'When they tell you to throw the ball, you throw the ball and enjoy it.' ___ AP MLB: recommended
Forbes
02-05-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
Sandy Alcantara Off To Poor Start, Imperiling Marlins Present, Future
Miami Marlins catcher Agustín Ramírez, left, and starting pitcher Sandy Alcantara talk during a ... More baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Los Angeles, Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong) No, the Miami Marlins were not one of the majority of MLB clubs entering 2025 with designs on a playoff spot. They were well aware of their lot as non-contenders, and entered the season with an everyday lineup filled with career minor leaguers with limited upside. Ditto their starting rotation, with a couple of major exceptions. Youngster Eury Perez has a fairly extreme ceiling, and is in the midst of rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. By midseason or so, he could be ready to take the ball in major league games that count. Despite a lengthy rehab, he just turned 22. Then there's recent staff ace and 2022 NL Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara. He too underwent Tommy John surgery, in October 2023, and at age 29 took the ball on opening day of this season. To put it mildly, things haven't gone quite as planned in his first six starts. 2-3, 8.31, with an ugly 19/17 K/BB ratio and 26 hits allowed in 26 innings. There's simply no way to spin those numbers positively, and the eye test has been at least as alarming. A typically insightful 'MLB Now' segment the day after his most recent start featuring Al Leiter with host Brian Kenny and Joel Sherman about summed it up - as much as anything else, the sheer volume of non-competitive pitches thrown in his last outing against the mighty Dodgers is cause for concern. So where have we come from, where are we now, and where might we be going with regard to Alcantara? Remember - there's a huge elephant in the room here. Alcantara's greatest long-term value to his club is as a trade asset. He's guaranteed $17.3 million this season and next, with a club option for $21.3 million in 2027. If he's an ace, that's a bargain, and he could bring a much-needed haul to the perennially rebuilding Marlins. But if he is what he currently appears to be…..well, that's another story. Alcantara may have won the 2022 Cy, but my batted ball-based evaluation system didn't consider him particularly deserving. He would have been 5th on my hypothetical ballot, behind Aaron Nola, Carlos Rodon, Corbin Burnes and Max Fried. He was exceedingly lucky on grounders that season, with a 59 actual, Unadjusted Grounder Score compared to a much higher 108 adjusted mark. Overall, his 76 'Tru' ERA- about equaled his 77 FIP- and was way above his 58 ERA-. He made a run at NL Contact Manager of the Year honors (Fried prevailed), with an 84 Adjusted Contact Score. His ability to rack up grounders and minimize liners and walks while muting contact authority of all types made up for a middling K rate. In 2023, Alcantara when slightly backward in many respects. His K rate dropped from 23.4% to 19.8%, over a half standard deviation below league average. His grounder rate remained high and his liner rate low, though both crept in the wrong direction. Despite all those grounders, his contact management performance was basically average (98 Adjusted Contact Score), and his 'Tru'- checked in at 93, right in line with his ERA- and FIP- (both at 94). My methods had him as the 14th best qualifying NL starter. Then injury struck, putting him on the shelf until this 2025. In spring training, we heard a lot of talk about the resurgence in his velocity to pre-injury levels. And sure, when you're a guy who bumps 100 mph with both of his fastballs and sits in the upper 90s, that sounds impressive. But his velocity isn't all the way back - all four of his primary pitches, his four-seamer, sinker, changeup and slider have all lost at least a full mph since 2023. That's not insignificant. And let's drill a little deeper into his arsenal to get a better feel for his overall pitching profile. In 2022, 2023 and 2025, he has never thrown a single one of those four offerings more than 30% of the time. He really doesn't own a go-to out pitch - he relies on the interaction among all four. Each season I issue pitch grades for all of the qualifying offerings of every MLB starting pitchers with 135 or more innings pitched, based on their bat-missing and contact management performance relative to the league. All four of his pitches got 'B' grades or better in both 2022 and 2023, but only two (his changeup in 2022 and his four-seamer in 2023) got 'A' grades. The sinker got a 'B+' in 2022, the slider did the same in 2023. The rest were average 'B' grades. This shows that any of his pitches has flashed above average at one time or another, but just as importantly, their respective floors were at the league average level. While Alcantara has a reputation as more of a contact manager than a bat-misser, he showed bursts of excellence in both disciplines in 2022-23. His four-seamer was an above average bat-misser in 2022 and 2023, while his changeup also was in 2022. His changeup, sinker (both in 2022) and slider (in 2023) stood out with regard to contact management at one time or another. Now it's too early to run any meaningful contact management numbers for 2025, but we can make some cursory conclusions based on some surface level numbers. After never allowing higher than league average exit speeds on any batted ball type in 2022-23, he's allowing higher than league average authority on flies (95.0 mph), liners (96.4 mph) and grounders (87.3 mph) in 2025. His liner rate allowed is way up. He's allowed 10 of his 24 hits with his sinker, his second most frequently used pitch. And he's allowed six hits - half for extra bases - with his four-seamer, his third most frequently used pitch. That's pretty concerning. The bat-missing trends aren't good either. Alcantara's overall swing-and-miss rate was 12.3% in 2022 and 12.2% in 2023. Pretty good for a pitcher with an ordinary K rate. Lots of swings and misses, plenty of weak contact works. This year, his whiff rate is down to 10.6%, and the biggest issue surrounds his most important pitch - his four-seamer. While the four-seamer is the game's least effective pitch, and overall usage has been trending downward for years, the great ones have great fastballs. So even though Alcantara took a slight step backward in 2023, the emergence of an 'A'-grade fastball was heartening and gave me good feelings about his future. His pitch-specific whiff rate had climbed from 10.8% in 2022 to 14.2% in 2023. Well, it's sitting at 6.2% thus far in 2025. If you could localize all of his issues down to a single number (beside the walks), this would be it. There are plenty of questions to be asked here, and some should be directed at Marlins' GM Peter Bendix. Was Alcantara ready for a full workload as of Opening Day, or was the club perhaps a little too aggressive to get him off to a good start and enhance his trade value? Sure, his velo looked good in the spring, but was he stretched out to the level one expects of their #1 starter? Pitchers have been in Alcantara's situation many times before. Some take a while to bounce back - but do - others continue to struggle, and some re-injure themselves. Heck, just last year Garrett Crochet got off to a terrible start with the White Sox coming off of TJ, righted himself and then got dealt to the Red Sox for a king's ransom at the deadline. This could go in any number of directions. But all eyes will be on Alcantara when he makes his next starts, when the opposition isn't as formidable. A lot is at stake for both player and team.
Hamilton Spectator
25-04-2025
- Sport
- Hamilton Spectator
Excellent start for baseball's NL West foreshadows a potentially historic 4-team summer race
PHOENIX (AP) — The Los Angeles Dodgers seem like they have nearly unlimited amounts of money, three former MVPs in their starting lineup with Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, and a pitching staff that never runs out of overpowering arms. So far, that's good for third place in their five-team division. Welcome to the National League West, which is far from a one-team show four weeks into the season. Going into Friday night's games, the San Diego Padres (17-8), San Francisco Giants (17-9), Dodgers (16-9) and Arizona Diamondbacks (14-11) are all off to a good start, foreshadowing a potentially fascinating summer race. 'For us, who are so close to it, not surprised,' Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. 'They're all very good teams. I think it's the best division in baseball. We're all sort of built differently, too, which is interesting and fun if you look at the construction, the strengths, weaknesses of the four clubs. 'It's going to be an interesting season how this all plays out.' To be clear, the big-spending Dodgers have not underperformed this season. Los Angeles has a .640 winning percentage through 25 games, which translates to a 104-win pace. That's right where everyone pretty much expected them to be. Instead, it's the great play from the Padres and Giants — and to a lesser extent the D-backs — that has set up a summer of fun. Since baseball split the NL and AL into three divisions in 1994, the 2002 AL West has the record for the highest winning percentage with a .566 mark. So far, the 2025 version of the NL West is off to a .544 start — and that's including the Colorado Rockies, who are a dreadful 4-20 for the worst record in baseball. Take out the Rockies, and the other four teams have combined for a .634 winning percentage. 'It's gonna be a battle the entire season,' Giants third baseman Matt Chapman said. 'We knew the Dodgers are the Dodgers, the Padres are really, really good and so are the Diamondbacks.' The Dodgers continue to be the undeniable favorites to win the division. Los Angeles is off to a quality start despite Betts' illness that caused him to drop around 15 pounds , Freeman's shower mishap and Blake Snell's arm trouble . A good first month from Tommy Edman, Will Smith and Teoscar Hernández at the plate have showcased the lineup's depth. Yoshinobu Yamamoto looks like a potential NL Cy Young award winner with an 0.93 ERA through five starts. Ohtani has slugged six homers with his return to the mound looming . The Padres are playing well largely thanks to Fernando Tatis Jr., who is off to a torrid start with a .333 batting average, eight homers and 17 RBIs. Veteran starting pitchers Nick Pivetta and Michael King have led the rotation while closer Robert Suarez hasn't given up a run this season and leads the NL with 10 saves. 'Obviously, we're aware to some degree of what is taking place in the division and in the league, but our energy — my energy — is not about what anyone else is doing. It is on what we do,' Padres manager Mike Shildt said. 'We're spending our time and efforts on taking care of ourselves, because if we don't do that, nothing else is going to matter.' The Giants are arguably the division's biggest surprise, led by a productive lineup that includes Jung Hoo Lee, Mike Yastrzemski, Wilmer Flores and Chapman. Right-hander Logan Webb has been dominant, with a 1.98 ERA and 44 strikeouts over six starts. The D-backs have been a little more inconsistent than their division rivals, but are still lurking. Outfielder Corbin Carroll is off to an MVP-caliber start with a .321 batting average, nine homers, 23 RBIs and five stolen bases. Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo echoed others when he said he's aware of the division's excellence, but tries not to dwell on it. The 162-game regular season is hard enough to navigate without worrying about other teams. Being in the NL West might prove particularly stressful — and fun — this summer. 'At the end of the day, it makes everyone crazy,' Lovullo said, grinning. 'It makes you guys crazy, you guys make me crazy, I make you crazy. Everyone's crazy.' ___ AP Baseball Writers Janie McCauley and Jay Cohen, and freelancer Dave Hogg, contributed to this story. ___ AP MLB:
