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Fox Sports
19-05-2025
- Sport
- Fox Sports
Last Night in Baseball: Rivalry Weekend or Sweeps Week?
There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to handle themselves. That's why we're here to help, though, by sifting through the previous days' games, and figuring out what you missed, but shouldn't have. Here are all the best moments from this weekend in Major League Baseball: The brooms were out this weekend MLB's inaugural Rivalry Weekend ended up being a lopsided affair overall. Out of the 15 series, seven of them were sweeps. Some of those outcomes were not terribly surprising — the Phillies winning three games against the Pirates, and the Cubs doing the same to the White Sox, for example — but at least a couple were unexpected. For one team, their sweep over a crosstown rival was a long time coming — 15 years to be exact. The Los Angeles Angels came into the weekend with the worst record in the AL West and hadn't even won a three-game series at Dodger Stadium since 2012. The Dodgers, the reigning World Series champs, hadn't been swept since last season in Philadelphia. But the Angels gave the Dodgers more trouble than they could handle. On Sunday, one day after spoiling Clayton Kershaw's season debut, they took an early 4-0 lead and then rallied late. After the Dodgers had tied the game at 4-4 in the bottom of the seventh inning, one of their former players delivered the fatal blow. Travis d'Arnaud briefly played for the Dodgers in 2019 —extremely briefly, as in one game — so this was his first Freeway Series. And the Long Beach native delivered with the go-ahead home run, his first with the Angels. The Angels added an insurance run for the 6-4 win to complete the sweep. And although they're still in last place in the AL West, and the Dodgers are still in first in the NL, for one weekend the City of Angels belonged to the Angels. Rockies avoid sweep, however… One team that somehow wasn't swept over the weekend was the Rockies, who merely dropped two out of three to the Diamondbacks, courtesy of a 14-12 victory on Saturday. Why bother to single them out here, then, when it was a ho-hum series for them at this point? To catch you up on where they stand historically, of course. The Rockies' record now sits at 8-38 through 46 games, which is the worst record through that many games in history, just as 8-37 was the worst record for 45 games, and 7-37 was the worst through 44. The current holder of Worst through 47 belongs to the 1904 Washington Senators, who were 8-36-3, two losses behind the present-day Rockies. Which is to say that the Rockies will still have the most losses in history through 47 games even if they win on Monday against the Phillies, and also beyond that for a little bit, since it took the Senators 50 games to lose their 38th of the season. The Rockies need to string together a few wins in a row, basically, before things get even worse from here. Twins' winning streak comes to an end in gut-wrenching fashion For the past two weeks, no team had been hotter than the Twins this season. On Saturday, they extended their winning streak to 13 games and were two short of tying their franchise record of 15 straight wins set during the 1991 season. (OK, technically, the franchise won 17 games in a row in 1912 as the Washington Nationals, but for simplicity's sake, let's only count the Minnesota Twins, as they've existed since 1961.) The Twins fell behind the Milwaukee Brewers early on Sunday, their franchise-record scoreless streak ending at 34 innings. Their winning streak, however, still had a chance to reach 14 straight. Down 4-2 in the eighth inning, Royce Lewis launched a deep ball to center field that seemed destined to tie the game and give Minnesota its best opportunity to keep its run alive. Jackson Chourio had other plans. The 21-year-old leaped near the wall, reached his glove up and snagged the ball at the exact perfect moment, robbing Lewis of the two-run home run. Even Lewis had to tip his cap to Chourio for that play, despite it more or less snapping the Twins' impressive streak. Yankees get the last laugh The Subway Series, as usual, garnered quite a bit of attention this season. Most of that was due to Juan Soto, who decided to sign with the Mets this past offseason after they gave him a better offer than the Yankees did. Yankees fans welcomed Soto back to the Bronx with, naturally, a chorus of boos. Soto paid them back by going just 1-for-10 with four walks and three strikeouts across the three games. Still, Soto and the Mets could have clinched the series with a win in Sunday night's rubber match. Instead, it was one of Soto's replacements who came through for the Yankees. Cody Bellinger was acquired by the Yankees last December once Soto had agreed to his mega deal with the Mets. In his first Subway Series, he blasted a grand slam in the bottom of the eighth inning that broke open the game. With that one swing of the bat, Bellinger totaled four more RBIs than Soto had all weekend. He had two more earlier that night, matching a career high with six RBIs, on a perfect 3-for-3 night at the plate. In all, Bellinger was 7-for-11 with two home runs, three walks, four runs and seven RBIs against the Mets. With a 13-game hitting streak, he's kind of playing like he's from another planet right now, which is fitting because he always looks like that's where his mind is: Phillies are able to get the sweep thanks to Abel The Phillies and Pirates don't have a ton in common, other than residing in the same state and laughing at, as we all do, the "POOP" scoreboard (RIP). But perhaps nothing sums up their differences more than Sunday's duel between two young pitchers. Paul Skenes, the reigning NL Rookie of the Year, threw his first complete game in the majors. He gave up one run on a fielder's choice, lowering his ERA to 2.44 (fourth-best in the NL). He struck out nine batters. He surrendered just three hits. And he lost. In fact, Skenes has yet to win this month, falling to 0-3 in May with a 3-5 record overall. Meanwhile, Phillies right-hander Mick Abel made his MLB debut and tossed six scoreless innings for the win. He fanned nine batters, tying a franchise record for the most strikeouts in a debut. Abel allowed five hits, but the Pirates did nothing the two times they had runners in scoring position while facing him. Not to take anything away from Abel, who was terrific in his first outing. But he should probably feel fortunate that he was drafted by Philadelphia and not Pittsburgh. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? 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Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
MLB Announces Historic Angels News After Sweeping Dodgers
The Los Angeles Angels were having their typically trying times heading into their road series against the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend. They were 17-25, 4-6 in their previous 10 games, and last place in the AL West. However, all they needed was a three-game set against the defending World Series champions to inject life into their season. The Angels (20-25) swept the Dodgers (29-18), which they completed with Sunday's 6-4 victory. Advertisement Zach Neto, Travis d'Arnaud, and Taylor Ward all homered, while southpaw Yusei Kikuchi allowed just one run in 5.2 innings before exiting the game with right ankle irritation. The sweep was a historic one, via MLB's social media. Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and Los Angeles Angels manager Ron Lee-Imagn Images "The Angels complete their first 3-game sweep in the Freeway Series in 15 years!" the league announced. The Angels also won 6-2 on Friday and 11-9 on Saturday, spoiling Clayton Kershaw's season debut in the latter contest. The future Hall of Famer allowed five runs on five hits in just four innings, with three walks and two strikeouts. The Angels and Dodgers are on the opposite ends of the spectrum historically. The Angels were founded in 1961 and won their only championship in 2002, while the Dodgers were established in 1883 as the Brooklyn Grays and have eight titles. Advertisement The latter club won it all in 2020 and 2024, and the former hasn't made the playoffs since 2014. The Angels signed future Hall of Famer Shohei Ohtani in December 2017, but he inked a 10-year, $700 million deal with the Dodgers in December 2023. The two-way superstar, of course, won the World Series in his first season with the latter team after never making the playoffs with the former. Related: Angels Announce Move for Former Giants Star After Dodgers Game Related: Angels' Ron Washington Announces Kenley Jansen News After Blue Jays Game
New York Post
02-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Post
MLB umpires quietly shifted how they're calling strikes in shocking ‘buffer' change
If you think your team's pitchers have been getting less strike calls on pitches just off the plate, you might not be crazy. According to The Athletic, MLB changed how its home plate umpires are evaluated on their calls of balls and strikes. MLB's change? Shrinking the strike zone. Home-plate umpires have long been judged with a two-inch 'buffer zone,' which essentially gave them that much leeway when it came to being judged on their correct or incorrect calls. The buffer zone has now shrunk to ¾ of an inch — effectively pushing umpires to call their zones tighter. 'The rulebook strike zone has not changed and we have not instructed umpires to call a different strike zone,' an MLB official said, according to The Athletic. 'In response to consistent player and club desire to have umpires evaluated more closely to the rulebook strike zone, we agreed with the MLB Umpires Association in their new CBA to reduce the size of the 'buffer' around the border of the strike zone, which essentially protects an umpire from being graded 'incorrect' on extremely close misses.' With the new rule change, Brock Ballou and MLB's home-plate umpires are being judged differently this season for their calls. Ken Blaze-Imagn Images The effects are somewhat being seen, as the overall correct-call percentage through the start of this season is at 88.2 percent — the most accurate since Statcast began tracking pitches 10 years ago. Albeit, the percentage is just a few ticks above most other recent years. 'We pulled the numbers of strikes that were called balls in the first week of the season, this year versus last year,' Angels catcher Travis d'Arnaud said. 'Last year, there were like 300 or so. This year, (we found) like 550 at the same point in time, with strikes that are called balls.' Travis d'Arnaud (right), who spoke about MLB's change to the buffer zone, with pitcher Yusei Kikuchi. Jerome Miron-Imagn Images While players, coaches, executives and analysts haven't had any major complaints about the change itself, it did catch them off guard. 'What do you think of the new strike zone?' an umpire asked one catcher, to which he answered the question with another of his own: 'What new strike zone?' More than two dozen managers, front-office executives and sources with ties to the players' union said they had no recollection of MLB alerting them of the change. And despite the league's claims, sources tied to the player union 'dispute the notion that the league briefed them on the buffer zone changes before the season.' While frustrated, no sources told the outlet that they felt they were intentionally uninformed, but rather would've simply liked to know about it so they could have an approach to the advantages and disadvantages of it going into the season — as a rule change so marginal can affect how pitchers pitch, hitters hit and coaches coach. After all, baseball is a game of inches.
